Lesson bingo
A little something to keep myself entertained on long days of private lessons. Um, good luck?
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Report: NNFA Conference, Southeastern Region, 2014
I’m back from the outstanding NNFA regional conference, where I spent the week rubbing shoulders (or should I say noses?) with over 700 very fine musicians from the Southeastern US.
I gave a brief presentation on my Fingering Diagram Builder and its potential applications to the instrument’s pedagogy. I think that’s an interesting problem, considering, well, you know, and I fielded some questions on the topic and got some excellent input.
Photo, Pierre-Alain Dorange But mostly I was there to learn, and learn I did. I attended workshops on vibrato, Baroque ornamentation, nasal hygiene, and building a private studio. I also audited several masterclasses, and, of course, attended fabulous evening concerts. Thursday was “jazz night” at a downtown club, and I worked up the nerve to take a few choruses on “Donna Lee” during the open jam portion. Of course, I usually play jazz on saxophone, so this was definitely outside my comfort zone!
The vendor exhibits were a conference hotspot, as usual, and I must have tried several dozen instruments. The usual makers and retailers were there, but I was also very surprised to see Conn-Selmer; they are apparently entering the market in a big way, and held a fancy reception to celebrate their new line. I tried a few and I think they have a solid intermediate-level “horn” which should do pretty well if they price it reasonably.
I hadn’t planned to buy an instrument, but I fell in love with this model from Trophy and ended up bringing it home. The one pictured has a red finish, but as I am fairly conservative about my instruments’ appearance I picked out a classy purple. I find that the purple has an appealing depth of tone but doesn’t lose anything in terms of response.
I hope to see some of you at the national conference next year in Des Moines. Last year’s national had attendance of almost 4,000 and some really incredible concert headliners. Join the National Nose Flute Association
Breaking: Rico to produce bizarre double-tipped reeds
Okay, folks, hang onto your hats: I have stumbled onto what appears to be some truly weird news about things going on at Rico Reeds.
I use Google Alerts to keep track of lots of woodwind-related topics on the web. Most days they don’t turn up anything especially interesting, but this morning I awoke to an alert of a new patent, just filed by Rico. Check it out here. [UPDATE: The PDF appears to have been removed from Google Patents. Rico must have connections!] [UPDATE #2: I managed to retrieve a partial copy of it from my web browser cache. Here it is.] It appears to describe double-ended clarinet and saxophone reeds. Yes, you read that correctly.I assumed at first that the filing of this patent must be some kind of odd business practice required by Rico’s legal department. Maybe Rico held a brainstorming session on new products, and patents got filed on every idea, no matter how ridiculous, just in case.
But, out of curiosity, I Googled some of the other patents referenced in the PDF. And one of the patents listed as related to “specialized adaptations to existing machinery” used in reed manufacture turned up something surprising. Check out the search results, for the patent number in the ricoreeds.com domain. [UPDATE: The single web document that previously showed up in this search appears to have been removed or otherwise secured. The document appears to be an archived email message, intended for internal use within Rico (located at the subdomain “intranet.ricoreeds.com”, now inaccessible). I have retrieved the document from my web browser cache. The formatting is lost, but it is still legible. Read it here. I have removed the names of Rico employees.] Here is a summary, based on my best guesses from the document:
- “Duality” appears to be either a brand name or an internal code name for the double-tipped reeds.
- Conversions of some existing machines to produce double-tipped reeds seem to be in process already.
- “Duality” is due to launch (as in a new product release?) in “late 2012.”
- The email refers to 15 “units” in all, with 12 being converted. I don’t know if this represents all of Rico’s reedmaking machines; if so, it seems they are converting 80% of their production capacity to Duality, with 20% to continue producing “legacy” products. If this is case, Rico is betting big on the Duality reeds.
I’m not sure what to make of all this. Let me know what you think in the comments.
[BIG UPDATE: Rico has responded to my blog post with a “press release” on their Facebook page. Apparently somebody is working over the weekend. Check it out here!!]
Reedcast™ version 2.0
A couple of years ago I introduced my Reedcast™ tool on this site, which uses my proprietary software code to predict reed quality for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone based on environmental factors:
I have spent the past few months compiling and studying as much research as I could gather about environmental factors’ effects on woodwind reeds, and developing an algorithm to process this information into reed quality “forecasts.” It’s not perfect, of course, but so far I have found it to do a surprisingly satisfactory job.
Today I’m pleased to announce the release of version 2.0. Reedcast™ is now more accurate than ever before, and has a polished new look as well. Go try it out, and have a great reed day!
LOL.
Yeah!
This absolutely perfect! Thank you!
The eerily unsettling thing is a distant sense of self-recognition. I used a couple of these myself way back in the day….
Several of my private teachers would’ve hit Bingo during just one of my lessons. Ouch, my toes!
Excellent!
You have obviously been teaching the same students that I have been teaching, although one might substitute “my lesson books are in ______’s car, and they are not on campus”.