I am in 9th grade and I am doing good, except one reason. I make my own reeds and my A (at the top of the staff) is REALLY flat! so flat that my band director said that it is unacceptable. That made me mad so please help! should I scrape the reed down or what??

This is me again... the one who wrote this question and I forgot to say that I play the bassoon and I (b)NEEEEEEEEEEEEED YOUR HELP!!!! PLEASE REPLY!!!!!(/b)

Hello, I`m a junior in my high school band, and our band is going to japan this year to represent the us in 4 different concerts. Anyways, I always thought that shaving your reed was always best... Whenever you play, you should always get this feeling like "damnit... I gotta shave this one area again" over and over... but it can`t be helped, since thats the way it is with double reeds. Anyways, did "lipping" help your pitch at all? Bassoons are usually sharp... i dunno what else to say, and at the moment I can`t remember if stiff reeds are flat or sharp either LOL Sorry I`m a little forgetful at the moment... anyways, does your reed crow well? does it take too much breath pressure to crow? Is it free-blowing? I don`t think you have too much lip pressure, since your flat... lip pressure causes increase in pitch... I`m not exactly sure what your problem is...

shaving too much off the reed will make it too weak to support your notes, hence the A goes flat. make sure you never scrape off the center part of the reed UNLESS your notes that you use octave keys for are really sharp. Be careful not to cut off too much at a time because you can`t put back on what you take off. Make sure you shave off the same amounts everywhere. If all off your notes are flat then you could consider clipping the tip of the reed off to make it shorter. Also make sure that the tip of your reed is shaped like a diamond somewhat. If the edges are somewhat pinched together then the reed doesn`t have any support and will go flat on some notes. To fix that take sandpaper and use that to shave down the sides of the reed, this will make it thinner but it will have support.

I don`t think it is a concern of the reed as much as it is the way you play. Try lipping up for that note only and take in some more reed in your mouth. Bassoon is a really difficult instrument to keep in tune and some models require a lot of adaptations based on the player and what kind of reed it is. Keep fiddling around with how you shave the reeds and how you play each note. Get a tuner, that should help too. I reccommend a Korg CA-30.

buy a few professional reeds to give you a backup if you wreck any of your reeds. It`s always good to have a dependable backup!!

high a wil bwcome sharper if you sqeeze the second wire from the sides ( make the tube rounder

succes!!