Reed Adjustments..

[john]

I just been reading a Sax book called “The Art of Saxophone playing” by Larry teal – an awesome book, pages 21-29 gives an interesting insight into reads, if you want to learn more about them. you can actually read this book if you install Scribd on your i-touch. Some of these old books are amazing!

[john]

yup, good advice…. got that one in the late 70’s when I started playing! It goes very deep, too deep for some probably but there are people who like this kind of stuff. Like, you don’t need to know the difference between the “heel” and “stock” of a reed in this journey of learning but it’s all there and this book is considered the bible for this type of stuff.

[john]

just been reading what Joe Allard got his students to do to their new reeds. After soaking them in water for 15 mins and letting them dry out. They had to shave the flat side of the reed to get it flat. So i tried it out on a new reed and was gobsmacked to see with todays technology the reed i had wasn’t truly flat! After shaving the flat side, his students then had to place the reed on some paper and rub it round the paper 100 times, and then rub the top a 100 times with their thumb to seal all the pores. I don’t know if the reeds in his day were less flat than present day reeds, but he was all for getting a perfect seal on the mouthpiece, and a reed that wasn’t going to act like a sponge! The shaving & rubbing did seem to produce a reed that was better in tune accross the 3 registers than what i got from other methods.

[Author]

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