Epiphany
I love those moments when suddenly something becomes completely clear. Last night I suddenly, for the first time, really understood how to play oboe.
I played for years when I was at school, but I never really put in the time to practice, and so progress was slow. I passed grade 5 and was working on grade 7 pieces, but then just totally stopped when I got to uni, really.
My big problem was always stamina. Oboe has a reputation of requiring very strong lip muscles to hold the embouchure (the shape of your lips around the reed), and I was always collapsing after 45 minutes. Now, since about christmas I’ve been playing almost every day, and could play for an hour, but then I was totally exhausted.
My oboe teachers always used to tell me not to “bite the reed”, and I didn’t think that I was. But after reading a description of how to make sure that a reed is playable I realized that I was. I was using my lips to force the reed to make a noise, whereas I should really just blow the thing and let it play itself.
The change was immediate. Suddenly, my tone improved drastically (I’d been blaming my v. basic oboe), and I can play for hours. It means that I have to learn a new type of control, but this is coming easily. I suddenly have a completely new level of sensitivity to tone and dynamics that I have never experienced before.
My technical skills are returning (slowly), my sightreading and theory are recovering, and now I’ve got a nice dark tone rather than a rather raspy effort.
I love it when things come together like this.
March 28th, 2006 at 19:53
Congratulations! Nice to hear that you are enjoying the oboe, and that its’ getting easier for you. Ah reeds … it’s so much about the reed, you know?
(I happened upon your site by doing a blogger search on oboe. Hope you don’t mind that I stepped in the room for a moment.)
March 28th, 2006 at 20:47
Hi Patty!
Thanks for stopping by, it’s nice to know that people do occasionally read what I put up here :
))I’m very much enjoying playing again. Partly because I’m older I appreciate the music more, partly I’m spending the time to practice and so I’m making more progress. It’s all good :
March 29th, 2006 at 02:18
Well, I do hope you continue to blog about your “oboing” as I love to read about other folks’ experiences. Of course if you find perfect reeds you can send them my direction! Oh … but I wonder if you play on the long scrape or the short scrape reed? (I use long scrape.)
Okay, okay, I’m kidding about the reeds … you don’t HAVE to send them. 8-)
But you can if you’d like.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:05
Yeah, short scrape (so-called British scrape, rather different to the american style) and wired! Although since I’m re-learning everything anyway, I might experiment with some different styles…
I suspect there will be the occasional oboe post on here. I don’t feel the need to blog every practice session, but perhaps when I come to important milestones :-)
March 29th, 2006 at 20:54
First important milestone: sending me a reed. ;-)