Double Reed Club | with Sarah Willis
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 лип 2015
- Sarah Willis meets up with her Berlin Philharmonic woodwind colleagues to talk about being members of the “Double Reed Club”. These musicians have to make their own reeds and this involves a lot of work - they are constantly scraping and whittling.
Sarah Willis is a British-American French horn player. In 2001, she joined the Berlin Philharmonic, becoming the first female member of its brass section.
She was born in Maryland, USA and grew up in Tokyo, Boston, Moscow and London. At age 14 she started playing French horn and then attended the Royal College of Music Junior Department in London, UK. She studied full-time at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, UK.
In 1991, she moved to Berlin, where she became Second Horn in the Berlin State Opera under Daniel Barenboim.
More videos with Sarah Willis:
• SARAH'S MUSIC - with h...
Subscribe to DW Classical Music:
/ @dwclassicalmusic
I had a reed that played in tune no matter what, I miss it
As an Oboe player, I can tell you that another reason the Oboe tunes the orchestra is that an oboes tuning is done in the reed making process. There is no tuning slide and you can not pull the reed in and out at this effects the perfomance of the instrument. Therefore It is a well tuned reed and a competent player that gives an in tune (ish) tuning note for everyone else.
A good trivia question is "What is the only instrument in a standard symphony orchestra that uses all 10 fingers?" It is the bassoon. (Not really counting the piano or the harp as instruments in standard music sections.)
Correct. If you lose a finger (especially a thumb!) you can no longer play this instrument. Also, Maurice Ravel wrote a piano concerto to be played with only the left hand. So, if you lose your entire right hand, you can still play this piece.
Many years ago I played bassoon and did make some of my own reeds. But I had the bad habit of being sometimes careless and when bringing the instrument to playing position hit the reed into my teeth. Good by reed (and a quick grab for the spare on the music stand). Of course, this only seemed to happened once I had a reed just the way I wanted it. If you can find a brand of ready-made reeds you are mostly satisfied with, you can modify them with scraping and trimming to still do some customizing. Sarah's video here has shown a little window into the difficult world of double reed instruments. There is even an International Double Reed Society where members help each other regarding issues unique to the instruments or perhaps spend some time commiserating with each other. I was never sure which issue was more prevalent at conferences.
11:53, best moment of the video
Wonderful video and discovery of DW English! Vielen Dank....ich hab' ALLES genoßen! (Leider spielte ich Cello).
I’ll answer the question. Oboes give the tuning A because the sound of an oboe is the most piercing and can be heard over the orchestra so all of the other instruments can tune to it. You may say a piccolo is a piercing sound, or a violin is piercing in a way. Well one, imagine tuning a double bass, or contrabassoon to a piccolo. And as for the violin, it’d get drowned out by the sound of the other violins too easily. Oboe is a good middle ground of the instrument voices, and has the piercing voice. And it won’t be drowned out because there’s usually only 1 other oboe in the orchestra, and an English horn.
My Instrument is the saxophone, but i do want to learn contrabassoon because i love the darkness in it's sound
BASSOON IS BETTER
Seconded except I would rather play a Cor Anglais.
Cos I play sax too
Ever hear of the tubax? Approximately the pitch of a contrabassoon, slightly larger than a baritone sax but about twice as long, single-reed mouthpiece, saxophone fingering.
My ex was super into Sarah! If I had only found this channel sooner we might still be together ;p
Makes sense that the oboe would tune the orchestra. For as long as orchestras have included winds, they have included an oboe or two. Strings can't tune themselves, so it fell to the principal oboist, whose pitch could be generally relied upon.
I read in a comedy music dictionary once that the reason for so many violins in an orchestra was to increase the probability that one might play in tune.
I've tried a sarrusophone before (sarrusophone not a sousaphone). Probably the only double reed instrument I've played lol. I really want to try a rothphone.
Why concert A and not F concert?
Girl have you ever tried to play the bassoon? It's definitely challenging to play. Ugh
Not really. I learned a Bb Major scale within 30 minutes. It just takes some getting used to.
Splodinate Kabloominate playing an instrument is way more than one scale.
the embouchure of the bassoon is pretty easy. you need a lot of air though. and the fingerings are very hard because of the really antique key system
Ray Zhang yes I know that I play it, thanks
wasn't talking to you, tryna explain to the other guy. just a clarinetist who loves the sound of bassoon a lot :)
I absolutely love Saint Saens' Bassoon Sonata
It's pretty much the exact same for single reed instruments though :/
1:00 man, that's just the ps3 intro