Treating Reeds

[David A.]

I've been playing for quite a while, but I've never heard of anything about treating a reed before I play. My teacher just about a month ago told me something, and I can't remember what he said, and I can't ask him, so can anyone tell me what I'm supposed to do. I do remember a little bit though. He said something about about taking 600 grade sandpaper, and stroking the reed like 3 times, and then rubbing it, getting it wet, and play like 5 notes, and put it away for the first day, and basically just play it a little bit more each day for about 10 days, and after 10, I can play as much as I want. Am I forgetting anything? Does anyone have any other methods? Thanks.

[Hurling Frootmig]

The Art of Saxophone by Larry Teal has a good reed prep guide as does the Reed-Mate book.

Here's what I do:

Soak unplayed reeds for about 15 minutes the first day and then play on them for a couple of minutes in the middle of register at mf

Second day - soak reeds for about 15 minutes and play a couple of scales and see how the reed reacts to low notes. I don't play anything higher than G.

Third day - soak reeds for about 15 minutes and play up and down the register b flat to at least high f and see how the reeds react and get an idea about any adjustments.

Fourth day - Before soaking I will use the bootman reed drilling process on any really bad reeds (for me that means stuffy). Otherwise I give them a quick dunk in water and sand the heart and make any minor adjustments, then I sand the table of the reed (using a piece of flat glass as my work surface) and finally pass the rails over the sand paper once.

After all of this I usually only soak my reeds for about five minutes before I play on them. I generally use two reeds per practice session.

I always try to have at least four ready to go reeds on hand. I store all of my ready to use reeds in a old LaVoz reed-mate metal reed holder. The others are stored in the cheap plastic holders.

This process works well for me but you may choose to do something totally different. When I was young I just slapped a reed on and went from there. I think working over the reeds helps them last longer and I know what I want out of a reed more than I did when I was young.