[RootyTootoot]

My suggestion is to practice with the same setup you would perform on. Find a reed strength you are comfortable with and that gets the sound you want and stick with that. If you need more control in your sound, practice long tones rather than put on a harder reed.

This has to be right, surely? I would have thought the best thing is to aim for a setup you're happy with throughout the range and which sounds good and stick to it. At that point you can just let the music happen and stop worrying about m/ps, reeds etc. Of course, pro players swap m/ps and reed strengths for different types of gig but that's out of necessity because of the demands of different musical settings. The best thing is to have as much consistency as possible especially if you haven't been playing that long. IMHO.