Does anyone have tips for learning vibrato? I just got a slow piece of music for my band and it turns out, I got my first solo in it! It would make it sound really pretty I guess. I`m in seventh grade in school, grade 2 for playing. Current model: Buffet Performer

My private teacher is teaching me it now, but I only see her once a week. Plus it`s boring to blow on my reed over and over again. Help me!

Personally for me, learning to play the oboe with vibrato was not something I really strived for, but something that just showed up in my playing. I use it now instinctively.

Perhaps, though, the best way to begin using vibrato is to listen to recordings of the big-time oboists, as almost all oboists (except perhaps those from Austria) use vibrato on a regular basis. Listening to great oboists is a great way to "borrow" techniques you like in their playing and use them yourself, including vibrato. A Great site to listen to free oboe samples (and buy cds) is http://www.oboeclassics.com/catalogue.htm Listen to this recording for good vibrato technique on the English horn, a close relative of the oboe. http://www.oboeclassics.com/aRA.mp3

To understand how producing a vibrato feels, try saying the word "who" over and over again. Try producing the same affect without actually using your vocal chords. That is basically what it feels like to use vibrato. It may feel forced and unnatural at first, but like most things on the oboe, it will take patience to master. Good luck!

Vibrato is easy enough to learn, but it takes constant work. Try this little excercise:
-Put your metronome on between 52-56.
-Play a long tone for four beats.
-On ever quarter note make an exagerated pulsation from your diaphragm-like saying HA.
-Do that for every quarter note pulsation.
-Now continue to do the same pulsation on 8ths, triplets 8ths and 16ths.
-You may now find that the sixteenths notes are difficult to do with your diaphragm, and have found there way into the larynx or voice box.
Continue practising, and it will come very easily, but you need to work at it.

That's exactly what my teacher told me. I've got it pretty well now.

yeah same for [Gutta_Percha],
vibrato just came naturally..
its wierd how you just suddenly do it,
now like i just do it naturally without thinking about it.

JaspIE
[<3]loves it

Try this:
Whistle Yankee Doodle and feel how your abdomen moves when you do.
Whistle it again, with no sound.
Do this on the oboe (obviously not whistling)
Then connect up the "notes" - is should sound like and undulating sound - from the pitch to below it and back.

I play the oboe for 9 years and i still cant use vibrato. My teacher says you have to take a breath from as low in your body as possible, so breathe from your low back. And then practise with long notes with crescendo and decrescendo.