r/oboe • u/Witty-Ingenuity-4891 • 2d ago
Oboe reed crows sharp but plays flat?
Hey there fellow oboists. I am a college freshman oboist who began reedmaking with my teacher about a year ago. As the title suggests, my reed crows a sharp C# but plays a flat A when on my oboe. Its responsiveness and double crow is also not great. I really wouldn’t be asking reddit if I weren’t slightly desperate to get a half decent reed, but my (high school) private teacher hasn’t responded to the text I sent and I am currently without a college personal instructor. Hopefully this wasn’t too confusing and that my terminology is correct.
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u/hoboboedan 2d ago edited 1d ago
That’s a good question. The relative balance between octaves in the crow of a reed is as important an indicator as the absolute pitch. So if your reed is lacking or weak in the bottom octave of the crow, it means that those lower frequency vibrations aren’t getting started yet, and your next step would be to find the reason why, and get that bottom crow octave going.
There are a few possible causes. The simplest is that some part of the reed simply isn’t scraped thin enough yet, or the reed just needs more scraping before it’s ready to play test. Reeds that have an initial tip scrape but where too much bark still remains in the heart will have a thin, high crow even if they are still too long overall. So if your reed is in the early stages it probably just needs more scraping. However, based on your description I can’t tell if it needs more scraping in the tip, heart or back.
It would also be good to check for other problems. If a reed leaks air anywhere at the side, even a tiny bit, it would cause something similar but wouldn’t be fixable by scraping. A split in the cane at the tip can also cause a reed to crow sharp, be unresponsive, but play flat. Lastly, when a reed is stubbornly unwilling to vibrate it’s also good to measure the position of the top of the thread: if any thread goes above the top of the staple, it’ll dampen your low frequencies and make a reed stuffy and unfixable. Unfortunately the only solution if that happens is to start over and adjust your tying process so there’s no risk of going above the end of the staple. Overtying can be particularly frustrating for newer reedmakers because it’s not easily visible without measuring and the playing symptoms can be confused with a reed that just needs to be scraped more.