How to use the ReedGeek to FIX YOUR REEDS!

have you got read problems every saxophone player clarinet player struggles with reeds I don't so much anymore though I used to go through a box of 10 Riis and get maybe one that played really well and the rest would be either too hard too soft stuffy or just dead and lifeless a couple of years ago I came across this tool that's called the reed geek and it has made a huge difference on how well my reeds play for me and they last a lot longer now in this video I'm gonna break down the three ways you can use the reed geek to adjust your reeds it's a lot easier than I thought it was and in a minute or two you can take a lousy reed and make it playable and you can take a good read and make it much better and lasts a lot longer recently I met up with Reed geek creator and actual reed geek malreaux DJ uh on Long Island New York at Weiner music in Mineola Mauro gave me an in-depth demo of how to use the reed geek properly to get the best results so here I am with my roadie Julia from Reed geek Morrow is gonna show me some of their cool products show me how to use my reek properly if you watched my three best saxophone accessories video you know I've been using this reed geek for the last couple of years and I've been getting great results with it but I've been mainly just flattening the table just doing the back part of the Reed I've been hesitant to do too much with the other side of the reed mainly because I didn't really know what I was doing but after my training session with malreaux and a bit of practice my reed case is full of six reads that play great some of these were Reed's that have been sitting in there for months not being played and some are brand new out of the box these Reed's now have an improved response in a low register and altissimo range let's listen to Melrose analogy of how you're read and mouthpiece work like a car's engine basically this mouthpiece is like a carburetor in a car this is what really generates the energy of the sound so when you blow this Reed is almost like a valve seal the Reed tends to warp we're not sealing until we lose compression in our engine so when we blow we want this mouthpiece to go just like think of an old Camaro muscle car you want just a rumble and when that happens it takes the wave and it just explodes your saxophone and the whole thing resonates let's begin with step one which is the easiest and also most important flattening the table of the Reed I do this before every playing session on every reader so the first thing I always do is I go on and hit it with the geek what I'm doing here is I'm just kind of going forward and back some people just swipe this way but you can see we're taking off anything that is out of square and you can also feel how smooth that is as you probably know we're sealing the pores so two things are happening we're closing the sponge because as we know when the reed is porous it takes up the moisture and it wants to swell and belly now when I use it I've always gone in one direction and I flip it and go the other direction and that's okay too but I tend to want to feel what's going off here and I tend to kind of you're actually feeling the resistance again yeah the cane but if I just went like this we're gonna get there and also as we come back this way think of that as shaving up so we're cutting the fibers when we come back this way we're almost burnished and you're laying them down there cutting but it's like that smoother feel so you're actually kind of sealing the pores a little good I used to use more pressure in this step but now I use a very light pressure and let the reed gig do all the work I'm now using the back and forth movement instead of one direction at a time and feeling for any resistance use your finger to check the smoothness of your read before and after now if you're lazy like me you could just stop there you can just do that one adjustment and you'll get an enormous benefit increase in playability on all of your reeds and they're gonna last a lot longer since i've been using the reed geek my reeds last me for months now keep in mind that the table and facing of your mouthpiece need to be flat and in good condition any deformities here can adversely affect how all your reeds play in the next steps we're gonna improve the response and clarity of our reeds we don't need to use this every time but we do have a plaque engaged kit so what this does is tells us exactly where our mouthpiece facing is and we could see that it's seating very well very even that means where our reed was flat did we flatten it with the reed geek what I'm working here that's the facing on the mouthpiece if I just run a little sense of our spine here this is where our facing is this is our heart and these are our wings I call like an airplane wings so basically we want these wings to be ultra flexible any of the fiber in here the more we clean out the area in here the Clara Reed's going to be the clear of the sound is gonna be you can we hold this read up to the light which is on the mouthpiece we'll see all that fiber density in there the more we clear out and get this wing to be flexible around the facing the clearer the read is gonna be so I can feel a little bit of just even in the real is a little bit of stiffness imbalance right here so this is where I would hit we can also use your Black Diamond but just with the standard geek I'm using the tip I'm actually just pushing and feeling a little bit of the rails um I could use any other side of the geek in here coming in here you don't have to do this on the mouthpiece you can do it on your plaque but what I'm doing is I'm just feeling a little different vibration we're are facing is at first this might seem a little tricky like me you may be worried you're gonna mess up a good read so do this instead take your lousy reads take some old reads you may have lying around in a box somewhere and practice on them get your read geek out take a horrible read and see how well you can improve it using these different steps I'm showing you here I've got this box of old reads to practice an experiment on nothing to lose I find using the gauge to find the facing and outlining the spine helps a lot so let's do that first I also find that leaving the reed on the mouthpiece for all these adjustments makes the process go much faster which makes it easier to hear and feel the difference after each adjustment you're going to want to clear out fibers in this area and also on the rails of the reed at first you'll probably feel like you're guessing as to which side of the reed is less flexible or more dense here's a trick I came across while practicing with a lot of reeds just adjust one side one wing of the reed first make the adjustment and then play test it you should then hear a clear difference and feel a clear difference between the two sides of the reed then go ahead and adjust the other side and work on both sides until you get them to match up at the flexibility level you want I find doing it this way makes it easier to feel the difference between the two sides of the reed and eventually match them up think of this as an airplane wing okay we have the facing curve the wing is doing this heavier one side you end up putting more pressure to try to okay get it divided how are you able to tell which I mean so is it just by looking at it visually that you that you tell which is you can look at it visually look for density more density it's not thickness it's density of fiber so I'll also hold it up and I can actually feel just by bending it a little bit that there's a little bit more density and you almost can see it on that right side yeah that felt I could feel a little bit more on them yes I'm just using this pencil eraser to erase away a little bit of his density here and most Reed's have a lot of congestion I call it it I can also feel that right side some more so I will tend to come in here and even just take it out this kind of shows the gauge on the mouthpiece to read laying flat and again here's our spine here's our cavities and think of this almost as our nose here's the nose that's our spine here's our facing and there's where the wing is vibrating on the curve the more we clear out all that density the clearer our nasal cavities are gonna do so the stuff here it is the stuffy or you can you go too far is there is there a point where you've kind of overdone it there well what generally not too much but most other reads they have plenty there to to move out so I think you could feel free to kind of open this up because the biggest problem I hear everyone says the stuff he reads stuffy reads my reads are stuffy do yourself a favor and take an hour or so and just work on reads adjust them using all of the tips in this video go over and over again and see how well you could make some really terrible reads play once you've done this for a while moving forwards you'll know what to do you'll be ready to work on reads and it's only going to take you or a minute or two to get the results you're looking for keep in mind that different brands and different types of reads you're going to have different amounts of fiber density so it's all part of the experimenting and learning how to work on the type of reads that you use once you have these techniques down you should be able to get every read in a box to play and the goodreads the ones that come out of the box is a great piece of cane are gonna play even better place effortlessly I mean if that's the worst read that's right the worse for you to have right now I asked Mauro if he ever had a bad read and he gave me a very honest answer some pieces of cane are just better than others sometimes you get a read and it's the cane itself is fantastic you can make that read better using these adjustment techniques sometimes you get a read and the cane is not so good those reads you can also improve on and make them play well they may not be a great read but you don't have to just throw them away anymore the third adjustment we're gonna make is on the spine other thing we can do at the end and this is where the Black Diamond is very nice we have these curves on the tool is they can come in here and work fat the spine contour just a little bit the spine is really thick you're trying to vibrate this tip it's going it's just it's thick it's it's stiff if we start getting that spine back a little bit and if you find that the low notes are really stiff you can work into the back now this one we're gonna want to do in the opposite direction and again we're gonna want to leave the reed on the mouthpiece so that we can go back and forth and quickly test to see the difference our little fine adjustments are making once you've got the wings of your Reed flexing evenly and vibrating freely you can make this adjustment on the spine to change the color of your Reed I find it taking a little bit off the spine will brighten up a darker Reed and add a little buzz to your sound if that's something you're looking for [Music] again you're gonna want to practice on some old stuffy reeds that you wouldn't be playing on anyway let's listen to the malreaux recap the three types of reed adjustments number one are flatness that goes a long way our engine is now got compression hence we play number two is the airplane when just getting the density so it's not so stuffy number three is that action and that's your spine think of Reed adjustment like the saw sharpening analogy you're in the woods you come across somebody who's working really hard to slow down a tree with a dull saw so you say to them maybe you should take a break and sharpen your saw then the work will be much easier and going off faster and they reply I don't have time to sharpen my saw can't you see I'm busy sawing let's not be that person I know I'm not the only one out there we struggled with dead stuff the unresponsive reeds I know I'm not the only person who's ever said at our gig or rehearsal sorry I've got a really bad read today now that I've learned to adjust my reeds I've got no excuse and really neither do you I put links in the description below on where you can pick one of these up on Amazon I'll be honest it's a little bit expensive however think of it like this if you can afford to spend money on reeds that you're never gonna play you can afford to buy one of these I promise it's gonna save you lots of money in the long run it will last forever and you're gonna have more fun playing your saxophone and save lots of time I would go so far as to say that it should be considered essential gear for any serious saxophone or clarinet play that's all for today if you've got any questions about the reed geek and how to use it put them in the comment section below I'll respond maybe I can even get malreaux to answer some of your comments directly if you got some value out of this video go ahead and click the like button if you're not yet 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Channel: Better Sax

Views: 172,513

Rating: 4.9272175 out of 5

Keywords: better sax, jay metcalf, reed geek, mauro di gioia, bad reed, how to fix reeds, saxophone reeds, clarinet reeds, reed adjustment, how to adjust reeds, reedgeek, alto saxophone, saxophone mouthpiece, saxophone lessons, how to play saxophone, tenor saxophone, clarinet, woodwind, stuffy reed, good reeds, reed tool, working on reeds, bad reeds, best saxophone reed, vandoren, d'addario, Selmer, Yanagisawa, Rigotti, V16, Select Jazz

Id: a9e-bcORE8M

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018