Last night Platnumb played a wedding reception in Commerce, GA (way up I-85). It was actually pretty fun. They hired a full horn section. The biggest news of the night was that I tied my tie a different way--half windsor instead of four in hand.
I gave up on a reed last night. It was a weird one. It felt mushy but it had some resistance. I started working on it by balancing the sides. That improved the response, but it was still mushy. The altissimo was not reliable--it'd do that thing where it would sound like I'd overblown it. I tried taking some wood off the back, but it was about the same so I gave up and threw it out. My next reed is better.
I'm into some reeds that I soaked too long. Lately my reed break in procedure has been to soak reeds for an hour or so, let them dry for a day (maybe play on the a little), soak them again for another hour, let them dry for a day, and then start trying to figure out what I've got. This box of tenor reeds was accidentally left soaking for about twelve hours (I fell asleep). I dried them off and thought I'd let them dry long enough before putting them back in the plastic sleeves, but the next time I pulled them out they were blackened with mold. Oops! I soaked them briefly in Listerine to kill the mold and left them out to dry some more. Hopefully they'll bounce back from all that water and won't start too soft on me.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com
www.davidfreemanmusic.com
