Hello,
I was wondering if any of you could help me.
To try to sharpen my back D and C sharp, I sank the reed slightly, giving a light squeeze - pushing the blades apart - hoping to make it slightly stronger. Now the reed is very quiet and very ‘mellow’. There’s no bottom soft D at all, just a very high pitched squeak. It also hardly takes any air.
What’s to do? Anything - or have I knackered it?
Sounds to me like the bridle needs to be pulled up a bit, opening the reed up.
Ok cheers Jager - I’ll give it a go tomorrow evening.
In the meantime, what else could it be? I’ve only the one reed…
Sounds like the reed has closed down and you’ll need to open the lips slightly, as Jäger suggests, by adjusting the bridle. However what you wrote about pushing the blades apart confuses me. How did you manage to push the blades apart when pushing the reed further into the seat?
How about this: if the lips are “pushed apart” - I take this to mean “opened”, all other details mentioned above notwithstanding - they can be opened too much to the point where the sides of the reed part (their intended condition is to be always closed), and leak air. I’m hearing descriptions from Dinner Ken that remind me of this possibility.
Thanks everyone.
I’ve now adjusted the bridle up the way slightly - I may have originally moved it inadvertently - and it plays better again. So thanks again.
I had originally squeezed the reed (quite gently) laterally - at the sides as Nanohedron suspected - in addition to pushing the reed lower, but fortunately this doesn’t seem to have damaged it.
Trouble is I’ve still got the very flat back D and C#. Any ideas how to rectify this?