Reed Making Videos

The Five Minute Reedmaker

This series of bite-sized videos offers deep dives into the details of oboe reed making.  This page is better organized and curated than the playlist over on YouTube, so you can easily find what you need.  I’m working on filling in some gaps – please let me know if you have other questions that I could answer in a five minute video!

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Winding – Winding your reed – attaching the cane to the staple – is a skill that quickly becomes second nature. But it doesn’t start out that way! Here’s my step-by-step of the process for you.

The Knot – Some people feel terribly clumsy at the very end of the winding process. Here’s my easy technique for tying the reed off.

The Overlap – Why are the two blades offset on oboe reeds? How do you make that happen? How do you know if you are doing it right? The Five Minute Reedmaker explains.

I have this explained in words and pictures, too, over on my blog.

Batch Processing – Yes, I can make a reed in five minutes.  And I can play it.  But this is not my ideal way to work – the cane needs time to settle between soakings, and I find that my stability and longevity improve dramatically when I take MORE time rather than less to get to my finished product.  What I actually tend to do is work batches of cane – from pre-gouged to blank, to rough-scraped, to finished, and to polished – over the course of several days.

Also covered: What makes the Five Minute Reedmaker give up on a reed? What’s not recoverable? When do you stop struggling and move on?

The Asymmetric Crack – Your oboe reed has a big crack, right down by the thread. What do you do? In this video I try out a new idea from one of my Reed Club members.

Stemware and Staples – What does barware have to teach us about reedmaking? Maybe not tooooo much – but it’s a fun metaphor!

Gripping the Mandrel – Have you ever struggled with the sheer AWKWARDNESS of holding onto a reed as you are winding it or scraping it? The Five Minute Reedmaker validates you and provides some helpful advice!

The Throat Dimension – When we talk about how LONG to tie a blank, or when we talk about the narrowness or width of a given shape at the THROAT – what are we talking about, and what does that MEAN for our reeds?

Anthony – A virtual reed lesson with Jennet Ingle.

Dave – A virtual reed lesson with Jennet Ingle.

Commercial Reeds – What do you do when your commercially-made, profiled-cane reed is not up to your standards? Here’s my only slightly judgmental take.

Annette – Three reeds look very much alike, and are beautifully constructed. Why are they so different? Watch me solve someone else’s reed problems!

Karen – Karen’s reeds have a lot going for them! But a couple of consistent issues stand in the way of greatness. Do you recognize any of these problems in your own reed work?

Kathy – Three reeds on different tubes. They have their differences, yes – but one important problem is consistent for all three!

Kate – There’s a reason I usually give up on a reed after 5 minutes. You can really hear my frustration as I keep trying to recover Kate’s Reed Number 3 – but some reeds just can’t be saved.

Oboist 787 – This oboist , Oboist 787, chose to be anonymous. But I was eager to share their video, because there’s a LOT of value here.

• Why overwinding is a big deal
• Why you need a stop between the tip and the heart
• How to rebalance a reed when it SEEMS already too short and easy
• Balancing a reed to the crow
• HOW MANY THINGS get better when the sides and corners of the tip are the thinnest parts!
• The best hand position to access the left side of the reed
• How to safely scrape in the heart
• How to create symmetry after you make a mistake
• Sometimes you have to CLIP to get the crow back?

Gwen – All three of these reeds are BEAUTIFULLY constructed, but to Gwen they felt too hard and too flat. Ironically? She had scraped TOO MUCH, in ONE specific area.

Jerry – I loved Jerry’s reeds! In fact, I learned some things from them. (These reeds are from an Opus One gouger, on the Jeanne M shape)

Anne – Today’s Reed Repair Shop is extra long – because I went back in for a second attempt at Anne’s reeds. And we’re both glad I did! We discuss:

• How to finish a reed that came off a profiling machine
• Specific knife strokes to work at the tip, in the windows, and over the heart
• What to do when the response is JUST awful How to deal with notches in the cane
• Strategies for the windows
• When an overlap goes wrong…
• The magic of persistence

Oboist 593 – All three of these reeds were ALMOST reeds. But fundamental flaws from earlier in the process stymied all of them.

• Why a consistent tie length is important
• Why the overlap is important
• Where a leak is a recoverable problem, and where it’s fatal
• The importance of knowing your measurements
  And yet – some reeds want to be reeds. It’s worth scraping more!

Oboist 377 – In Oboist 377’s reeds, we learn:

• EXACTLY how to work in the tip to make the corners the thinnest part
• How to deal with a CHIRP
• How to think about the structure of the Heart
  And all three turn out quite lovely!

Have I ruined my Jennet Ingle reed? – Anne had ordered one of my reeds. It was too hard for her. She worked on it, it didn’t really get better. Her question: Have I wrecked this? How should I have approached it differently?
Spoiler alert: Success! I adjusted this reed to be easier for her, and I explained how.

LaVon – LaVon’s reeds are very DIFFERENT from each other. Each one has something to teach us. THANK YOU, LaVon, for sharing these reeds with us!

Evan – Evan’s reeds are very short and lack stability. Is this a tip issue? Windows? Spine? Heart?

Ted – Ted’s reeds all felt different to him. But they LOOKED basically the same to me! Here’s what happens when your habits CRYSTALLIZE into being your consistency. You’ll hear me get GIDDY about how easy and fun these reeds are to diagnose and fix.

Sally – Sally’s reeds all LOOK like great reeds. They feel a little different from each other – but the solutions were ALL the same. Isn’t it amazing how the very same subtle structural problem can manifest in different ways on the finished reed?

Anne – Anne’s reeds all work, but they have a distinctive feature that LOOKS very different from mine. We explore:

• taking a chirp out of a reed
• seeking symmetry in the rooftop
• finishing a Day One reed
• thinning versus shortening the heart

Oboist 564 – These reeds have some issues in common – looseness at the top, thinness in the center. Can the Five Minute Reedmaker recover them?

Oboist 250 – These reeds were all TOO CLOSED and BARELY CROWED. The Five Minute Reedmaker explains why, and turns them back into reeds.

Julie – Julie needs her reeds to be light and responsive. But she ALSO needs them to be stable and hold their pitch up! The Five Minute Reedmaker struggles at first, but gets there by the end.

Christine – This is a study of three reeds from three stages of Christine’s reedmaking. We ALL do this, right? We try one thing and it works until it doesn’t, and then we pendulum the other way, and eventually, SOMEDAY, we hope to find our way to the perfect Baby Bear reed.

Kim – Kim’s reeds have a beautiful consistency to them. They respond easily and play up and down the whole oboe. BUT they sound so wild she can’t stand them! The Five Minute Reedmaker happily diagnoses them.

Oboist 353 – These reeds look so right! But they all suffer from the same symptoms – a little too difficult to play over extended periods, a B crow that DOESN’T improve by clipping. The Five Minute Reedmaker is happy to dig in and discover the answer.

Sarah – Sarah’s reeds are all too short and too flat. She’s a consistent and savvy reedmaker who has done everything right – except for a couple of things. The Five Minute Reedmaker offers some thoughts.

Oboist 722 – What does the crow mean about the pitch of your reed? What does the crow mean about how much you like the reed? Is there something ELSE going on to make these reeds feel bad? The Five Minute Reedmaker explains.

Oboist 480 – These reeds are working. But they could be so much better! The hearts are hugely disproportionate, and that is causing leaks, pitch instability, and a host of other problems. The Five Minute Reedmaker digs in.

Susan – These reeds both WORK! They even feel pretty good. Does that mean they are perfect and can’t be improved? Absolutely not! The Five Minute Reedmaker explains.

The MS That Isn’t – In this special Reed Repair Shop episode, I tear apart some of my OWN reeds, reeds that were returned by a customer as too hard. My goal was to understand what went amiss for my customer, so I can improve their experience and that of others, AND to normalize for other professional reedmakers that we are not and cannot be perfect all the time.

Kathy B – These three English horn reeds all have slightly different issues, so we were able to talk about: structure of the tip, notches in the windows, breaching the rails, leaking, wide shapes, upper register stability, wire, and sound. It was fun to work on these!

Shelly – These three reeds looked just right – but weren’t, quite. The SMALLEST amounts of scraping absolutely lit them up. Does your diagnosis match mine?

Lydia – These three reeds looked and felt different. Hopefully as you watch, you’ll find helpful tips for all sorts of reed finishing issues!

Karen – Karen’s reeds all look correct. The measurements are right, the winding is above reproach. They play! But somehow, the balance is not right. Play along and fix these three reeds with me!

Cheryl – In this Reed Repair Shop, we have three perfectly functional good reeds, on three different shapes. The Five Minute Reedmaker analyzes the reeds, notices how the scrapes change over the shapes, and makes some modest tweaks – hopefully improvements!

Oboist 349 – A few really interesting things about this anonymous oboist’s reeds. They are so well constructed and so consistent that it was easy to pick up on a couple of small habits getting in their way. They were clear about what they WANTED in a reed, which made it easy for me to help them – or at least to not get too far off track. And these reeds introduced two variables – gouge and staple – that I invite viewers to comment on!

Oboist 1092 – “Hi Jennet, I just bought my first gouger and am having an existential crisis after scraping the first three reeds I wrapped with my new gouge. They don’t feel or sound like my reeds at all and I am trying not to panic. If you’d be willing, along with sending you the three reeds, I would love to send you a few pieces of the cane I just gouged to see what you think of that too. I thought it may be a fun Reed Repair Workshop – New Gouger: Existential Crisis.“