Obohemia – Oboe Comics by Esther Wheaton » Archive

Oboe and Bassoon Mouthpieces

March 15th, 2009

So once a year, Dick pulls out his “oboe mouthpiece”–a teeny tiny mouthpiece with a teeny-tiny single reed–and tells us about how he used to bring it on tour and tell the other musicians it was “just in case” or whip it out and warm up on it to scare the pants off them (because it sounds reed-iculous). But it’s adorable, as all tiny inanimate objects are, so I went on a hunt to see what the internet had to say. Every post I found was filled with scorn and derision and none of the “Awwww, lookatthetinymouthpiece” that I first felt. Philistines.

I also discovered that you can still buy them for bassoon. Jesus. Lizard. What.

I have also heard tell, in my wanderings of “emergency reed tape” and can’t for the life of me wrap my head around it. Does anyone know more?

And I know it’s mean to laugh, but this site makes me giggle.

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Miriam
March 15th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

The judge for sight-reading when my high school went to contest this year was talking about those things. It was pretty hilarious. They’re definately on my list of things I wish I had, just to say so. Kind of like how I really want to play a hecklephone, to say to my friends, “hey guys guess what I did yesterday? Yeah, I played a hecklephone. Hecklephone. Yes it’s real.”

Joel
March 15th, 2009 at 12:09 pm

I’ve seen one of those before! I’ve also seen a metal ‘marching oboe’.

Reed tape: I assume that refers to plumber’s or Teflon tape, where if your reed springs a leak close to the thread you can wrap it in plumber’s tape to stop the leak. Unfortunately it can tend to stop vibration as well, but it is definitely an effective stopgap measure.

patty
March 15th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

I owned one of those little mouthpieces … somebody had one and just gave it to me. I’m SO bummed that I gave it to a doubler (or at least I think that’s what I did). I really should have hung on to it. Sigh.

ren
March 15th, 2009 at 4:33 pm

I work at a bookstore, and one of the books in the kids section is about instruments. It is actually pretty comprehensive! The oboe pages (which, of course, I read) list the heckelphone as “a poorly made bass oboe.” It made me laugh a lot, because how do these children’s book writers *know* that?