Ghys cane solved.

Earlier today I posted about how I’ve been getting frustrated with the current gouge not working with this very hard Ghys cane.

Well, I made about 5 reeds today, and on the 4th reed I said, “To heck with this. I might as well scrape it down until its at least usable.” I did, and it works great!

Usually the thickest part of my heart/spine measures about .48-.46 and tapers away to about .42-.40 on the sides. On the upper corners  of the heart toward the integration line I usually measure around .37-.33.

Well, the Ghys reeds are working great when you take about .04 away from all of those measurements. I guess since it’s harder, I can scrape away more without the reed collapsing, and need to scrape more since it’s harder and doesn’t want to vibrate quite as easily. I am not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier.

Next on my list is solving this Rigotti cane which feels like a soft cane, but has the sound qualities of a hard cane. Meaning, I hate it.

Downloading torrents (which is illegal)

So, downloading pirated stuff is illegal, and we’re all not supposed to do it. Of course I NEVER do it.

But if I were to do it, this would definitely be one of the things I would download.

1. First, you need a torrent program like Azureus. I’ve heard this program is very good. It’s easy to download and install. Downloading this program is perfectly legal (freeware)

2. Next after you install it, you have to search for different torrents. So if you were looking for episodes of 24, season 1, you’d google  “24 season 1 torrent” and it’d show you different websites from where you can download the torrent.

3. The torrent that I think is very interesting is this one with 18 oboe CDs on it. It appears as though some college kid went into his college CD library, copied them, and posted them on the internet.  It’s very large (4.6 gigabytes) so make sure you have enough space. Downloading this might take a couple hours, or even a couple days.

4. Finally, all of the music comes in FLAC files, so you’ll have to download a FLAC decompressor.  FLAC frontend is a very friendly program. Once you have all of the 18 oboe CD files downloaded, go into the files and drag the .FLAC files into the FLAC Frontend menu screen and hit “decode”.

The downside of all this is that when it decodes, it decodes into one gigantic 60 minute long mp3, rather than breaking it down into separate mp3s (which you can do with different programs such as AVS Audio Tools Manager, but hey, it’s 18 Free oboe CDS!

Some CDs of the 18:

Alfred Genovese CD I blogged about with him playing with Peter Serkin

Nancy Ambrose King - Winning Program

Lucarelli - Concertos CD which I listed as one of my favorites.

John Anderson - Strauss, Martinu, and Francaix

Redgate - Pasculli Oboe Solos

This is all the steps I would do if I downloaded stuff. Which I don’t. 

Growl… Graf Machine

My Graf machine worked great for Alliaud and Bonazza cane, which I would classify as a medium hard cane and a medium cane, but now that I ran out of that and switched over to Ghys, which is usually a medium hard cane, but I think this batch is particularly hard. In any case I am very unhappy with the results. Sigh, maybe I should just use it on my other Graf machine which gouges thicker, and use softer cane on this machine.

Speaking of Graf machines, I think they are some of the best machines available. They’re very flexible, and have persevered over the years. There is currently a Graf machine for sale on the IDRS website for $385 (a steal in my opinion) but I don’t have any extra $385 to throw around. Three machines for me is enough.

So, as a reedmaker, I’m faced with this difficult decision. I spend a lot of time adjusting a gouging machine to be just right for a certain kind of cane, and then *POOF* I run out of that cane and have to switch to another kind of cane. Do people buy mass amounts of cane (more than 4 pounds?) and use it forever? Or do you buy a pound at a time and play around with variety?

The best kind of cane I have used is Mr. Weber’s Grimaud, which has a hard texture to it which makes it easier to get thin tips and better definition, but a softer sound to it which gives more warmth and depth. I love it, but it’s expensive, so I don’t work on it much unless I have a big concert coming up. But meanwhile, I have all this other cane that just sits around. For example, I have a pound of this Rigotti which I think is horrible. What am I supposed to do with it? I can’t sell it on good conscience.