Just a reminder to my students:
MAKE THOSE REEDS!
… and don’t forget that my Reed Making Tutorial is online.
Recently it seems that my students (even those who took the summer reed making class) are working on reed making. So hop to it! Get those reeds wound. Start scraping. Work on reeds.
A reed a day keeps embarrassment away.
Or at least it helps.
Making reeds is a great challenge. I still have to deal with lousy reeds. I still have difficulty making them. (I still pray for a reed fairy!) But it’s just a fact of oboe life; you have to work on reeds.
At the same time, I don’t want you to get discouraged. Some famous double reed player (I think it was a bassoonist but, hey, even they can come up with some truths! Just joking!) suggested that you’ll have mastered making reeds when you’ve filled a laundry basket full of reeds. (That’s a long time!)
I love what Martin Schuring writes to beginning reedmakers:
You are not making reeds. You are learning to make reeds. There’s a big difference. It’s not all your fault.
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