This is our third year of doing another tristate tour with the famous folk rock band Renaissance with 4 strings ,3 brass and 2 doubling woodwind players .Each venue and hall presents acoustic challenges to instruments such as the oboe,English horn, and clarinet .You can’t play louder on these instruments to compete with the high decibel output of keyboards,drums,and guitars. We were surrounded with plexiglass walls and a percussionist with full array of instruments including marching snare drum and going was immediately to the right of me. With all this sound surrounding me I could only feel the vibration of the oboe reed and a tonal buzz in my head that let me know what I was putting out was in tune. It felt horrible but it is a highly professional situation and all involved were committed to getting past personal discomfort to make the best possible performance at each gig. Learning how to play with a certain amount of discomfort is expected in these situations.It can disorient your perception of sound production and can throw you if you have no experience with how to survive and stay focused in this type of environment. When the joy of producing our beautiful hard earned tone with that personal reed and mouthpiece is taken away any player can get totally anxious.

.I want a reed with frequencies that will give a lift and projection.This will allow the instrument to find a slot to sit in and as a player you can then focus on aiming for that space rather than blowing against a perceived wall of sound.

Another example which first presented me to this type of playing was back in 1992 when I played in Frank Zappa’s Universe. This was a large group with saxophone doublers ,brass and strings..

Woodwind Doubling and the Rock Band