Off to Bellingham, Happy New Years!

Sunday December 30 2007

Well, I’m off to Bellingham with my wife to spend New Year’s Eve with Peter Hurd. We’re going to play around with instruments, make reeds, and talk shop.

January 1st is the Metropolitan Opera Live broadcast! Don’t miss Hansel and Gretel at a theater near you!

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BC English Horn and Hannah

Friday December 28 2007

— is a very good instrument! It came to me in kind of a mess. It appeared that the person who recently overhauled the instrument (not Mr. Weber, I checked) kind of hurried through the repadding, and didn’t do a very good job making sure all of the cork pads sealed well. A lot of them weren’t laying flat on the tone hole, and so they weren’t sealing very well. I spent 4 hours this afternoon going through every single cork pad on the top joint, and resurfacing each pad just as Mr. Weber showed me and how Moennig had shown him;

1. Take a graphite pencil and a piece of cigarette paper. Color a big dark circle on the cigarette paper.
2. Put the dark circle under the pad with the graphite facing the cork. Close the key a couple of times, even holding it lightly while tugging the cigarette paper away.
3. Take off the entire key. Look at the pad to see which part of the pad is hitting first (it should be marked with darker graphite). If part of the pad is not closing all of the way, there will be no graphite mark there.
4. Using fine sand paper or pumice, sand off the dark graphite. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until you have a fine graphite circle all the way around on the pad showing that the entire pad is closing all of the way on the tone hole.

The other way a lot of repairmen like to repad a key is with shellac. They “float” the cork in by heating up the shellac, putting in the cork pad, and while the shellac is still hot and soft, they can adjust the cork to the position that seems to sit pretty well across the tonehole. Then they go in and often bend the key just a little bit to get the last remaining bit to cover. I hate the idea of bending a key, but bending is a lot faster than taking off a key, sanding, putting back on, testing, taking back off, sanding again, putting back on, testing, etc. To my knowledge, Loree still does the ole’ graphite and sandpaper technique.

So now I have the topjoint of the EH sealing almost perfectly. The one problem is as I mentioned, the repairman was in a hurry and wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing, so he put a piece of buffer sheet cork on the bottom part of the half key, which is normal. But the problem is that he put it not realizing that the edge is right on an imperfection in the cork, where there’s a natural “swiss cheese-like” hole, so it leaks. I’m going to have to get that replaced, and then the bottom joint has 3 skin pads which aren’t doing the horn any favors. Finally, the low B key is buckling, so I’ll need to take a good look at it.

But the BC horn plays at least (although I still have to push the half-hole down very hard) and I can get a good sense of the sound. It has a very warm, beautiful clean sound to it, and has a good register. It doesn’t have a left F, which would be another $400 or so to get added on. I have worked out a deal with Hannah to rent the EH for a month from her, and by then I should have the other KK EH horn back from the shop so that I can compare the two horns side by side. If I decide to keep the BC, she’ll count the rental fee toward the purchase. Meanwhile, anyone looking for an older special Loree EH?

As for Hannah, I can officially say that she has been nothing but a delight to deal with. Originally, I was interested in this BP English Horn back in July, but I couldn’t get back to the States in time to try it, and I lost out on the opportunity to buy it. I didn’t give her a second thought, but obviously she did. She sent me an email last week about this BC English Horn (because she knew I was looking for a C series or a B series EH at the time) and offered me to test it out first. She’s been more than generous, and I will certainly deal with her again if need be.

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Royal reeds and Regular reeds

Friday December 28 2007

I received my Royal bell back from Mr. Weber yesterday. I had sent it to him to get an update on the bore adjustment. Recently, I oiled the bore of the oboe with grenadilla wood oil which had some really nice effects. I oiled it on the outside probably a total of 10 coats, taking all of the keys off and letting each coat soak in. Finally, the coats stopped soaking in so I figured it was pretty saturated. I put one coat in the inside of the bore and POOF…! Lots of tuning problems occurred, which probably means the bore was so dry that it soaked up the oil, changed shape, and got messed up. Anyways, I needed it to be re-updated.

I’ve been playing quite a bit with the Royal bell, and I never realized how much better the Royal bell plays with MORE… OPEN… reeds. With my usual smaller openings, it just feels nice up to a Mezzo Forte/Forte. I can’t get much more than that. But when I use the same smaller opening reed with my GV bell, the reed sounds and feels great. The GV bell just has a more resonant feel to it, but it is a bit brighter. Since I’ve been trying to get more cover in the sound, I’ve been going back to the Royal bell.

This is obviously going to effect how I make reeds for clients! I need to make reeds with my Royal bell for my reed clients who play a Royal, which there are quite a few. Meanwhile, there are also quite a few playing on B series and C series instruments.

Circus Night

Thursday December 27 2007

So a few months ago I asked my sister if she’d consider ever painting a work for our new home. My sister’s name is Johanna Wright, and she’s a very talented painter. Very soon, her first children’s book will be published, entitled “The Secret Circus”. She was always the most artistic one of the family, and moved out to NYC… to sell her artwork for 7 or 8 years. She did very well, and decided that she had built up enough of a customer base to move back to Oregon, where she’s settled with long-time-boyfriend-recently-turned-husband up in Portland. Her decision to move, along with my other second sister Kirsten’s recent move back to Portland with her husband, son and daughter, all contributed greatly to my decision to come to Oregon.

For Christmas, my family draws names and only gives one gift to one other family member. Families of 10 (2 parents, 4 siblings and 4 spouses along with 2 grandchildren now) can be very complicated to shop for during the holidays so we just decided to simplify. I had my brother-in-law’s name. My mother had mine. Namju had my mother’s, and my second sister Kirsten had Namju’s. But this year we received an extra special gift.

I had asked Johanna to paint me a musical painting, and she certainly did. I love our new 20’‘ x 20’‘ addition to our living room, and I’m very grateful for such a loving and wonderful sister.

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New Poll.

Wednesday December 26 2007

New Poll on the lower right-hand side. Just curious. Please click on one! Totally anonymous (unless you choose to leave your name.)

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