Hello,
I hope I am posting to the correct Forum.
I run into issues when playing my alto and my tenor. When I start playing or practicing, my reed seals tightly to the mouthpiece. Playing feels great, I am happy with the tone and projection. About 15-20 minutes in, the tone goes dull, and I loose projection. Intonation becomes inconsistent. When checking the MP/Reed, I notice that there is no "pop", and I can hear air. It is consistently at the back of the lay, near the curve.
The curious thing is that all of my mouthpieces do this. I play a Morgan Florida 6 on tenor, a Morgan Excalibur 5 or a NY Meyer 5 on alto. This also happens once in a while on bari - i play a Berg Larson 95/2. All Vandoren reeds (red on the alto (2.5) and tenor (3) ZZ on the Bari (3).) It happens if I seal the back of the reed with 600 grit paper, or not. It happend on new reeds, usually from the 2nd to 3rd playing.
I retired the NY Meyer thinking the table had issues, but reeds on the Morgan have the same behavior. This leads me to believe that there are reed issues.
A few other details:
I do not spend a tremendous amount of time adjusting reeds, but I do seal the back. It has never helped (actually made things worse) I am comfortable on what I play from a strength perspective. I like how my reeds respond. Harder reeds did not improve anything. I fear a softer reed will mess with intonation too much. My practice room is to the warm side. I have heat coils in the floor (from a boiler) with no thermostat in the room. It does get warm, sometimes I open the window a little to get air circulating. This is the best I can do in my home.
This has been going on for years and would do my nerves well to solve. I play well, but it is not good to loose projection and harmonic depth of tone on a gig, especially on a solo chair.
Thoughts?
Lynn Lewandowski
I hope I am posting to the correct Forum.
I run into issues when playing my alto and my tenor. When I start playing or practicing, my reed seals tightly to the mouthpiece. Playing feels great, I am happy with the tone and projection. About 15-20 minutes in, the tone goes dull, and I loose projection. Intonation becomes inconsistent. When checking the MP/Reed, I notice that there is no "pop", and I can hear air. It is consistently at the back of the lay, near the curve.
The curious thing is that all of my mouthpieces do this. I play a Morgan Florida 6 on tenor, a Morgan Excalibur 5 or a NY Meyer 5 on alto. This also happens once in a while on bari - i play a Berg Larson 95/2. All Vandoren reeds (red on the alto (2.5) and tenor (3) ZZ on the Bari (3).) It happens if I seal the back of the reed with 600 grit paper, or not. It happend on new reeds, usually from the 2nd to 3rd playing.
I retired the NY Meyer thinking the table had issues, but reeds on the Morgan have the same behavior. This leads me to believe that there are reed issues.
A few other details:
I do not spend a tremendous amount of time adjusting reeds, but I do seal the back. It has never helped (actually made things worse) I am comfortable on what I play from a strength perspective. I like how my reeds respond. Harder reeds did not improve anything. I fear a softer reed will mess with intonation too much. My practice room is to the warm side. I have heat coils in the floor (from a boiler) with no thermostat in the room. It does get warm, sometimes I open the window a little to get air circulating. This is the best I can do in my home.
This has been going on for years and would do my nerves well to solve. I play well, but it is not good to loose projection and harmonic depth of tone on a gig, especially on a solo chair.
Thoughts?
Lynn Lewandowski