I started my experiences in music when I was a very young child. My parents would sing with me and my brothers and my little sister on the way home from church on Sunday nights. I imagine that is where and how I learned to carry a tune and match a pitch. When I was in the 3rd grade, I was fortunate to go to school within a school system that had a strings program available to the students. I spent a year learning to play violin. At the end of the school year we moved, and I did not pursue study of the violin. When I was in the 6th grade I joined my school's band program, beginning with the study of the clarinet. My teacher/band director, Mr. Mercer Crook, was a first year teacher, and fortunately for me, also an oboist. At the beginning of the next school year, he encouraged me to switch to oboe. He provided me with an instrument (one of his own) and reeds. Throughout high school he taught me a lot about making a pleasing sound on the instrument, as well as general musicality. I participated in Allstate Bands and in the Georgia Governor's Honors Program in music.
The oboe is a double reed instrument. It is a member of the woodwind family, and is used in the orchestra and in the band. It is also used in chamber groups, such as the woodwind quintet, woodwind trio and flute/oboe duets. The oboe has a reputation for being notoriously difficult to master. The oboe has a distinct sound (think the duck in Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf).
One of the unique aspects of the oboe is the "mouthpiece", which is really a double reed. The oboe reed consists of two very small pieces of wood tied together. The oboist blows through the opening between the two pieces of wood (actually cane, harvested from the plant arundo donax), causing them to vibrate. This produces the sound. In contrast, the clarinet (for those of you more familiar with that instrument) has a mouthpiece consisting of a single reed (a thin piece of wood) attached to plastic. An opening is left between the plastic and the wood. The wooden reed vibrates when air is blown between the reed and the plastic of the mouthpiece.
One of the things nobody tells you when you start learning to play the oboe, is that you will eventually have to learn to make and adjust your own reeds. This one little fact can turn a normal person into an obsessive person:) The process of making an oboe reed has many painstaking steps. First the cane must be bought and prepared. I purchase it as tube cane. It is actually in the shape of a tube. I split the cane into three lengthwise segments and pregouge it. Then after soaking it, I gouge it with a planer-type instrument called, appropriately enough, a gouger. Next the cane is shaped. This means it is placed on a metal form and a razor blade is used to cut away unwanted cane. This gets it closer to the shape of the actual finished reed before beginning the more meticulous work of scraping the cane. Next the cane is tied on to a metal tube. The tube has a cork at one end. The cork end will be stuck into the oboe when the reed is used to play the instrument. But first the cane, now that it is tied to the tube (called a staple), must be scraped very meticulously. The measurements are pretty precise. The tiniest bit of error in thickness of the sections will cause the reed to have a bad sound, or to respond poorly. This diagram shows the sections of the reed and suggested measurements for the different sections.
Here are photos of the tube cane, and of the cane after it is shaped, but before it is tied to the staple.
This is a picture of some of the tools used in making oboe reeds.
