I`ve just started playing again for about 7 months after not playing for 30 years. I never was able to produce a satisfactory vibrato. It`s a little better. I`m wondering if there are exercizes one can do to get a nice singing tone for those slow solo passages when the band expects something special from their oboe player

Well, everyone`s pretty much summed it up for you there!
It`s funny that you describe it as a dying duck. That`s exactly
how the describe the oboes at my school, but personally,
I think they just playhatin`! Lol!
I play four instr. and I think oboe is one of the best. My instructor tells me that if
sometimes it`s sharp, take the reed out of ur mouth some. If it`s to flat, you bring more in.
That`s all I can tell you....and keep ur embrochure up...( I think that`s how u spell it)
and that always helps me. Good Luck with the oboe!
JMin

how do you do rubato on the oboe and how do you do fluttering?

I know this is a horrible thing to say, but if your reed is out of tune, its really too bad. If you move the reed in and out to change tuning... well, thats bad. ou`ll learn bad habits. Like me. Sigh.
The reed has to be in tune, and you have to play on the tip. That`s why the tip is thin, so you can play on it. Why try to get a sound out of the hard part of the reed?
Yeah, um, don`t bite either. THe only way to fix the tuning on an oboe is to fix the reed. Pulling the reed out to make a sharp reed flatter changes the shape of the bore, so the other notes aren`t equal.
Kinda sucks, really.

You can always make ur reeds like I do or you can get them made for you. That way, you can have them made just for you and your climate. The climate around you does affect the tone of your reeds sometimes.
Hope that helps...
JMin

i m playing eagle bend by james barne and there is a lone oboe solo but my tone sounds like a duck! The reeds r not the problem as i tried many, i dropped the jaw, that didnt work. I bite more, that made my oboe squeak. My teacher told me to imitate professional oboe sounds, how do u do that? My tone sounds like a blasting duck!Wat should i do!?Theres a competition this april!!!

I guess there`s not too much you can do if you havent been practicing...
Alls I can tell ya is to roll in your bottom lip and to put all your pressure on it, rest ur top lip on it and play on the tip...
Hope that helps you any at all..
JMin

Well, I`ve only been playing for two years, but I have a great teacher, and I`ve been learning a lot. For Embouchure, there`s two important points that I feel helped me a whole lot. First off, tightening up on the reed is almost always a bad thing. If you have to do this, you probably have a bad reed, which would also cause problems with low/high notes.
Tightening up also causes playing to be a whole lot more difficult and strenuous, sometimes even painful, because as my teacher calls it, you have a case of the "Try-too-hards."
The way you want to play is to have your mouth as open as possible, while still rolling your lips in around the reed to hold it in place (very lightly though).

Then, you want to push with your abdominal muscles to generate the air speed/pressure etc. to get the reed to vibrate. You don`t really need to use your mouth at all.

Errr, this is a little hard to explain on the internet!!

One thing you might want to try to improve your tone and embouchure, besides playing long tones, is to try and see if you can play notes without tonguing them, just using a big air attack. This requires you to use your abdominal muscles much more and might get you into the habit.

The best way to improve all of this though, is to play as much as possible, paying attention to your intonation as you go along and testing things out. When I did show orchestra in my high school this year, I got a lot of opportunities to play and experiment, and it caused me to play 2-3+ hrs. per day, which improved my playing a whole lot.

Good luck, and I hope this helps a bit.

Tone - it is very much a marriage of the reed, the oboe and you. When dry the two pieces of reed should be ever so slightly curved (think horizon lines) with the sides just kissing each other. Do not use a reed if it is any more rounded than this or if the reeds are flat or not touching at the sides. They should sit atop one another and not be skewed in anyway. The opening should be no more than 3 mm wide (preferably 2mm). The strength depends on the brightness of the instrument. The brighter the instrument - the softer the reed for more control. But the strength should never be less than medium and I would say medium hard if you are using a wooden instrument. You`ll never work up a decent embrochure with a soft reed. And you`ll have to relearn your breathe control when you make the inevitable switch to a harder reed.

Store bought versus make your own. It is not true that every professional makes their own reeds. They know how to of course but I know several oboists in Manhattan who make very good money (think $30 - $50 per reed) making reeds for professional players who haven`t the time or inclination to make their own. I can make decent reeds but I really don`t enjoy the process so I do a mix of the two and buy hard reeds and then scrape them down and adjust them to my mouth.

Now someone else had an excellent point about the openess of the throat - that is very important. Remember to drop your jaw and your tonguing should come from below the tip of the reed and just touch the tip ever so slightly to interrupt the vibration of the reed - this leaves the air stream free flowing at all times and makes for cleaner articulation. Visualize a small golf ball sitting just in front of the back of your throat. When you do this correctly you will feel the soft palate in the roof of your mouth rise up very high. This open area combined with a tight embrouchure creates the proper tension needed to produce and control the sound.

Since you don`t have a teacher in your area I would recommend listening to recordings and imitate the sound. A word of warning - do not listen to Heinz Holliger for tone - we all love Heinz and appreciate his fingering technique which is the best in the world but his sound is horribly tinny and has absolutely no depth to it at all.

The last word of advice is just keep practicing and feel free to disregard anything or everything I just wrote and do whatever works for you. At the end of the day - when you walk into the audition room - the conductor or musical director or producer hiring you has his back to you and his only impression is your sound so create it anyway you can.

Let me clarify what I meant by `tight` embrochure. You should not be clenching the reed with your mouth. I was referring to a tight seal around the reed. But there shouldn`t be any clenching - your lips are pillows cushioning the reed. They should be in a relaxed state but by no means loose or slack. Any pressure on the reed comes from the proper angle that the oboe is held from you. If your body in a straight line ran through the 6 and 12 on a clock - the oboe should stick out somewhere around 4. Now, with that position when you place the reed in your mouth there should be some natural pressure exerted on the bottom of the reed as it sits on your lower lip. The upper lip is more of a place holder and serves to seal off the air supply.

Has anyone heard of Armenian Dances by Alfred Reed? They have a really difficult oboe parts where you have to run like mad. My conductor says that the oboe is a tranquil instrument and it is not suitable for running but i guess alfred reed has to break the rules. How do you run demi-semi quavers on an oboe?