Hello and welcome to my personal inquiry project. I have chosen to dive head-first into the world of double reeds and learn to play the oboe. Now, you might ask, why would I do this to myself? The answer is pretty straight forward: the double reed instruments (oboe, bassoon and English horn) are currently the only band instruments that I don’t feel confident that I could pick up and play at any given time. In order to be the best band teacher I can be, it’s time for me to figure out these mysterious creatures.

My goal for week one of this project was to pick up an oboe, put it together, and just make a sound on the instrument. I have since learned that oboes are terribly expensive to rent, and essentially unreasonable to purchase, but since it’s for the children I went ahead and rented one anyways.

Now that I have an oboe in my possession, the first challenge was putting the thing together. I have learned that oboes have not one, but two bridge keys, and unlike clarinet there is no way to lift them while putting the instrument together to prevent damage. You just have to be really, really delicate when putting the thing together. The one I rented is also relatively new, so the corks are a bit stubborn – basically putting it together was the most stressful part of my first oboe experience because I was so afraid of breaking it as I forced all the pieces together.

When I am instructing beginners on any instrument, I get them to make a sound on their mouthpiece first before putting it into the instrument, so with the oboe I started with the reed. If anyone was wondering what that sounds like:

After playing around with the reed a little bit, I put it into the instrument and made some sounds. None of them were pretty, and I’m fairly certain there’s something not quite right about my embouchure because it hurts if I play for more than five minutes. I will check back next week where I attempt the first three notes of the Bb major scale.