Oboe colours

  When practicing it can sometimes be helpful to have a practice plan. Here I give my ideas how to make a good practice plan. Write it down When you make a practice plan it is best to write it down. When you write it down you will remember your plan a lot better, but when writing down you will also think more clearly about what you need to plan. I can recommend having a small notebook or calendar to write down in.   Plan as far ahead as possible If you know you will play a concert 3 months from now, write it into your practice plan. This way you will have a clear picture of all the upcoming things you need to prepare for. When you can see you need to prepare for a concert you can plan how much time you have to prepare and when you need to start. If you have several concerts coming up it is a good idea to start early and plan precisely what you will practice when. This way you will have a system in your practice plan and you will not end up having less time than you thought. ...

  When playing the oboe you need a lot of stamina in order to be able to play an entire recital or concert. Some pieces require a lot of stamina and sometimes it can be hard to have enough stamina to get through the whole piece. Therefore, I would like to give my ideas to how to increase your stamina. Start with lighter reeds When you want to increase your stamina many immediately starts playing on harder reeds, but this is not good to do for too long. A better way is to play on reeds that are a bit to the lighter side of what you like, and in this way, you are able to play the whole piece and practice long enough to learn the piece.    Increase the strength of the reed When you have been playing on lighter reeds for some time and you feel that you don’t play down your embouchure completely when you practice, then you can start to increase the strength of your reeds. But it is very important not to increase a lot at a time. You might want to just increase a bit strength a...