WARNING: your bombard reed is fragile - be very careful if you make any adjustments to it.
I managed to find a book in the local library : " The Art of Oboe playing: including problems and techniques of oboe reedmaking" by Robert Prenkle - no ISBN number as the book was printed in 1961) and although the oboe reed different a lot from the bombard reed I thought it would be useful.
When I first got my bombard I got one of the reeds that came with it and I also got a practise chanter reed from Katherine - I had no problems making noise with the chanter reed but was totally unable to get any noise out of the bombard reed - even when the reed wasn't in the bombard! I just could not need the reed to resonate so I set about trying to figure out why.
The first thing I did was soak the reed - I did this by popping the tip into my mouth and leaving it there. After about 5 minutes I was able to get very short 'skwarks' out of it but there was still a lot of resistance and I could not get a good stream of air going. I inspected my reed and noticed that the end was really squished together and there was no space at all between the blades of the reed.
I noted in one of the chapters of the above mentioned book that having too much reed in your mouth will also force the opening of the reed closed - making the problem worse (if it was in fact caused by a tight opening). It is also possible to close the opening when playing (to adjust pitch and dynamics) but it is almost impossible to enlarge the opening with your embouchure - I figured that as the reed is shorter and appears to be held further in the mouth i I would try enlarging the reed opening to see if it would help with the responsivness of the reed.
As I had soaked my reed and it was fairly soft I decided to open the reed up to see if it would help - apparently opening a reed on the oboe makes it _harder_ to play but I wondered if my reed so squished so tight that the air just could not get in - it was so tight I could not even insert a sheet of paper through the centre of the reed and there was no space between the centre of the blades
To open the reed I very gently pinched the reed between my thumb and index finger, squeezing the blade at the sides of the reed, on the binding closest to the tip
Page 12 of this PDF http://www.foxproducts.com/pdfs/LetsPlayOboe.pdf gives you an idea of roughly what the opening for an oboe reed should look like - I figure that it should be similar for the bombard, but I have noticed that one of the blades of my reed is not concave but is flat, and I use this as the 'bottom' of my reed as the reed resonates better when this is against my lower lip - can someone let me know if this is the same with their reeds or if it is a distorted reed that I have
I haven't had the change to check the tuning of my bombard yet - opening the reed _will_ flatten the notes, and it will also give you a 'darker' tone and will make the instrument louder.
WARNING: your bombard reed is
WARNING: your bombard reed is fragile - be very careful if you make any adjustments to it.
I managed to find a book in the local library : " The Art of Oboe playing: including problems and techniques of oboe reedmaking" by Robert Prenkle - no ISBN number as the book was printed in 1961) and although the oboe reed different a lot from the bombard reed I thought it would be useful.
When I first got my bombard I got one of the reeds that came with it and I also got a practise chanter reed from Katherine - I had no problems making noise with the chanter reed but was totally unable to get any noise out of the bombard reed - even when the reed wasn't in the bombard! I just could not need the reed to resonate so I set about trying to figure out why.
The first thing I did was soak the reed - I did this by popping the tip into my mouth and leaving it there. After about 5 minutes I was able to get very short 'skwarks' out of it but there was still a lot of resistance and I could not get a good stream of air going. I inspected my reed and noticed that the end was really squished together and there was no space at all between the blades of the reed.
I noted in one of the chapters of the above mentioned book that having too much reed in your mouth will also force the opening of the reed closed - making the problem worse (if it was in fact caused by a tight opening). It is also possible to close the opening when playing (to adjust pitch and dynamics) but it is almost impossible to enlarge the opening with your embouchure - I figured that as the reed is shorter and appears to be held further in the mouth i I would try enlarging the reed opening to see if it would help with the responsivness of the reed.
As I had soaked my reed and it was fairly soft I decided to open the reed up to see if it would help - apparently opening a reed on the oboe makes it _harder_ to play but I wondered if my reed so squished so tight that the air just could not get in - it was so tight I could not even insert a sheet of paper through the centre of the reed and there was no space between the centre of the blades
To open the reed I very gently pinched the reed between my thumb and index finger, squeezing the blade at the sides of the reed, on the binding closest to the tip
Page 12 of this PDF http://www.foxproducts.com/pdfs/LetsPlayOboe.pdf gives you an idea of roughly what the opening for an oboe reed should look like - I figure that it should be similar for the bombard, but I have noticed that one of the blades of my reed is not concave but is flat, and I use this as the 'bottom' of my reed as the reed resonates better when this is against my lower lip - can someone let me know if this is the same with their reeds or if it is a distorted reed that I have
I haven't had the change to check the tuning of my bombard yet - opening the reed _will_ flatten the notes, and it will also give you a 'darker' tone and will make the instrument louder.
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