I would say I`m a failr advanced high school oboist, and I have discovered that I`ve been vibrating very inefficiently. Theres the whole stomach vs. throat thing, and my teacher says he feels it towards his upper chest/throat, and that his stomach is expanded while he plays. He also said that he compares vibrato to panting like a dog.
I have been using my stomach, to the point where I could actually see my stomach moving and it would sometimes cause my oboe to move along with my body, which I`m sure isn`t right, no professionals look like they`re shaking when they play. Plus, it`s so much work to get the stomach going, there`s no agility in it, I can`t color quick accents with a quick flurry of vibratolike a violin, and it`s very difficult and tiring to play long phrases where the notes move, to connect the vibrato.
My teacher at EMF said that at my age his vibrato slowly moved up into his throat, and got faster and more varied, but I don`t see this happening. SHould I just continue on to use this stomach vibrato, and do excersises with it? Or try and learn to use the throat technique? Has anyone been in this position before? Thanks for any help!

Hi,

What usually happens with my students is that their throat is actually too tense. You need to relax it and aim the air tward the roof of the mouth. Play a long tone and then relax the throat and see what happens to the pitch and sound. Then support your air a bit more. You need a faster air stream, not necessarally more air.

As your basic tone production gets better, you should start to feel the vibrato move upwards. Remember the key is to not force in the throat.

To practice, you can use a metronome. 1/4 =60. Pulse with the metronome and relax the throat.

The more you develope control of the throat muscles tha better the vibrato will come out. Remember also that the vibrato will not make a musical line sound good if the line doesn`t have enough direction.

Keep working on it and you`ll get it.

Joseph Shalita
*********************
www.makingoboereeds.com
webmaster@makingoboereeds.com

main advice i can give is don`t worry about it too much.
I spent ages worrying about why i couldn`t get that gorgeous natural vibrato other players seem to get, but the thing is that as soon as you start forcing it you`ll most like get yourself into bad habits. Eventually it`ll start too creep in of it`s own accord, particularily when playing long notes. When it does just try and remember the feeling, so you`ll be able to duplicate it in future.
good luck