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Soprano sax mouthpiece on oboe? Anyone ever tried or want to try?

13K views 27 replies 14 participants last post by  milandro 
#1 ·
As some of you may know, Chedeville used to make a single reed mouthpiece for oboe. It looked pretty similar to a soprano saxophone mouthpiece and it used a clarinet reed.

Anyways, has anyone ever tried to affix a soprano sax mouthpiece to an oboe? If not, would you be willing to test it for me?

I made a way to attach my sop mpc to an oboe, but I don't have access to an oboe to try it out. here's what I did:

I took a standard oboe staple and wrapped the metal part of it with a sheet of cork so that it could attach to the sop mpc. I then inserted it all the way into the mpc until the chamber opening stopped it from going farther. There is slightly less than half the staple's original cork showing, in order to insert it into the oboe.

The mouthpiece works and makes a sound when you blow into it, but I wonder what it would make an oboe sound like.

Here's a demonstration of the Chedeville oboe mouthpiece:

It sounds like an oboe to me.
 
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#3 ·
I've seen these before--both the bassoon and oboe versions. These do not use a clarinet reed. They use a specialized single reed that's about the size one side of an oboe (or bassoon) reed. If you look closely at the video, you'll see that the mouthpiece is just over twice the 5 or so mm of the opening of the oboe, making it ~1cm in diameter. No clarinet reed, even an eefer reed, would fit that.

It did sound like an oboe played by a talented beginner--a very spread and 'squawky' sound.
 
#4 ·
An oboe's sound is soft, delicate and rounded.

This sound is loud, bright and wide.

I think the main reason for this is that the double reed is also the resonating chamber, and the cane naturally produces a softer sound. A single reed with a plastic/rubber mouthpiece naturally is going to produce a harder, more brackish sound.
 
#7 ·
I think it's a solution looking for a problem, especially the runyon bassoon mouthpiece. The challenge of playing the bassoon is not the reeds, it's the 'illogical' fingerings. I've read that Santy had someone make some good bassoon reeds, and then he measured the volume of the reed, and matched that to the mouthpiece. It's easier to believe that a clarinet reed would work, since a clarinet reed is about the same width as a bassoon reed.

As kymarto rightly states, the internal volume of a soprano sax mouthpiece is too big.
 
#11 ·
I think some go this route because they think that playing on a double reed is too difficult, and they'd rather stick to a set-up they already know.

I play oboe, English horn and bassoon, and it really isn't that hard at all--with a little practice, of course.
 
#14 ·
There are a couple of issues. Consider how stuffy and unresponsive single reed mpcs with extremely wide side rails are. Now consider the internal volume of an oboe reed--above the staple end. It's tiny. The oboe has an extremely narrow bore. You'd have to fill 75% of a sop sax mpc's internal volume to get into the ballpark. Where are you going to fill? You'd end up filling the baffle except for a narrow center channel. That means you only have something like 25% of the reed width actually being coupled with the pressure variations inside the mpc. The rest of that reed is nothing but excess baggage. It's going to be a nightmare.

Two more points: the mpc is much too long. That will screw with all the tube impedances peaks, especially all the higher ones. And then consider that the staple is analogous to the sax neck. You need it. Now look at the ID of the end of the staple and that of the sop sax mpc. That is the impedance mismatch from hell. I doubt if you could get a sound out of it, but I'd love to see somebody try just to see if I am right.
 
#16 ·
Thanks for reviving this. Benade actually grouped all of the conical woodwinds together in his writings since they all follow the same acoustic principles. The requirements for the oboe, bassoon, and saxophone to work "properly" are: 1) the "effective volume" of the oboe reed on its staple, bassoon reed on its bocal, and saxophone mouthpiece on its neck must be a close match to the volume of the "missing cone", and 2) the "played frequency" (Frs)* of this part of the instrument must match the "natural resonant frequency" of a cone of equal length. The Frs of an oboe reed on its staple is a C concert. The Frs of an alto saxophone mouthpiece on its neck is an Ab concert, and a tenor mouthpiece on its neck and E concert. I don't know the optimum pitch of a bassoon reed on its bocal.

* Frequency of a reed on its staple. The equivalent of the staple on bassoon is the bocal, and on saxophone the neck.
 
#18 ·
What I remember reading is that the Runyon bassoon single reed MP used a clarinet reed, and that the tonal results were variably reported - I remember a range from "sounds almost exactly like a double reed" to "pretty awful".

What I remember reading about oboe is that someone made up a few single reeds for it using a special narrow reed (I'm guessing, cut down from a clarinet reed) but not much more than that.

My late friend Bob Kershner showed me a specimen of each back around 1990; but I've rarely seen or heard of them since.
 
#19 ·
What I remember reading is that the Runyon bassoon single reed MP used a clarinet reed, and that the tonal results were variably reported - I remember a range from "sounds almost exactly like a double reed" to "pretty awful".

What I remember reading about oboe is that someone made up a few single reeds for it using a special narrow reed (I'm guessing, cut down from a clarinet reed) but not much more than that.

My late friend Bob Kershner showed me a specimen of each back around 1990; but I've rarely seen or heard of them since.
Actually it appears that it is possible to construct a single-reed oboe mpc using a clarinet reed, as cited below in a research paper. The caveat is that the volume of the chamber has to closely match that of the missing conic apex of the oboe. A soprano sax mouthpiece has a much larger internal volume than an oboe reed. However it might well be possible to fill the interior of a nino mpc and create a throat that would match the diameter of the oboe reed staple, in such a way that a nino reed could be made to power an oboe. Failing that, a clarinet mpc would next best.

https://acoustics.ippt.pan.pl/index.php/aa/article/viewFile/178/pdf_223
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#22 ·
Thanks for sharing. It would be interesting to know how long it took Patrick to play the oboe with a single reed and if he had oboe experience beforehand. If you can play the instrument as a sax player without much practice it might be an interesting option if someone needs to double on an oboe. However, if you can actually play the oboe, I am not sure about the benefit of a single reed.

BTW, here is the direct link for the video, if anybody can't find it through Kymarto's duckduckgo link:
 
#24 ·
As an oboe (and bassoon) doubler for many years, in my opinion the double reed emboucher is the least of the problems in playing these instruments. Reed making and adjusting for pitch, timber and response are far more critical, not to mention technical considerations of fingering. After all, the ultimate goal of any doubler should be to play at a level technically and tonally that the listener will be unable to detect which is your principal instrument. To handicap yourself by using a single reed setup on either of these instruments is to set yourself up for failure at the outset, and make what should be your goal in playing these instrument harder, or actually more or less impossible to attain. There are truly no shortcuts in becoming a truly skilled woodwind doubler! It takes hard work and good teachers, and dedication. Just my two cents.
 
#25 ·
I agree 100%. When I started oboe in high school, I was already playing clarinet, alto sax, and baritone sax. It was no easy feat to make the switch but I accepted the challenge.

There is/was a single reed mouthpiece made for the oboe but to me it makes the instrument sound like a duck call.

My suggestion that the student learn to make his own reeds was shot down by some on another thread but I believe that one important step for an oboist to learn control the instrument is to learn to make his own reeds. (That and practicing playing long tones). Starting on a store-bought reed is okay but after awhile it becomes limiting. There are hand made custom reeds for sale but it doesn't take long to see how prohibitively expensive that route is.

Practice!
 
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