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I'm Sarah Navarro and I've been playing Clarinet for 9 years, I use a Vandoren M13 mouthpiece and a leather ligature. It seems like this past year has been really tough for me finding reeds that work. I've tried Vandorens, Mitchell Lurie, and Gonzalez. Its like I find one or two reeds that work for a day or 2 then they turn into pieces of junk. Whats wrong? Is there some kind of adjusting I can do ? Also the other reeds that didn't work,once in a while will start working for a few minutes again.weird . please help!

There's a lot of reed maintenance books on the market that you could get to help you fix some of these reed problems. With the books, a file, and a reed clipper, you could save yourself a lot of money and frustration in the process. If you take private lessons you might want to ask them to teach you to adjust reeds. Reed filing is a good habit to get in to, but you just need to know what you're doing or else you could ruin your reeds even more...if that's possible with a bad reed, haha!

I'm not sure what you use to store your reeds in either, but what I use is a commercially available case that has a pane of glass that the reeds sit on and then a hinged top lined with padded felt like stuff that closes everything up. The glass keeps the tips from warping and air is still able to circulate around the reeds.

These are just a few things to think about. I hope they help you out and maybe get your to start thinking about some reed care issues.

SarahNavarro wrote:I'm Sarah Navarro and I've been playing Clarinet for 9 years, I use a Vandoren M13 mouthpiece and a leather ligature. It seems like this past year has been really tough for me finding reeds that work. I've tried Vandorens, Mitchell Lurie, and Gonzalez. Its like I find one or two reeds that work for a day or 2 then they turn into pieces of junk. Whats wrong? Is there some kind of adjusting I can do ? Also the other reeds that didn't work,once in a while will start working for a few minutes again.weird . please help!

Every reed is different. You could buy a box of reeds and one is amazing and when you switch the other one sucks.
I would suggest a higher quality mouthpiece (not sure about clarinet because I play sax), traditional or v12 vadoren reeds, rovner or bay ligature.

Always store your reeds in a reedgard. Soak your reeds in a glass/cup of water before you play and keep a couple soaking just in case the one on your mouthpiece isn't happening. You didn't mention what strength reed you use, but a M13 requires nothing harder than a 3, IMO. If you're using reeds that are too soft like 1's or 1 1/2's, your tone will break at higher dynamics. If you're looking for a full sound at all dynamics, stay in the 2 - 2 1/2 - 3 strengths. Buy some reed rush and a reed trimmer if you want to experiment on your soft reeds.

Looks like not much has changed in this regard in 35 plus years ... I kept a box of everything from 1 to 4's in my case, plus soaked one of each the day before a comp. It probably took me 1/2 hr. during warm up to figure out which reed played best on any particular day.

I played a 1940's wood Paris Selmer that my dad gave me, and tonal quality completely depended on the weather, humidity, time of day and whether my instrument was PMS'ing at the time. (I kept telling my director "It ISN'T me!!!!"). Also, as you mature as a musician, your muscle control changes, thus your choice of reed for a particular occasion will become more and more of an issue and one which you will be more aware of for each situation. I also found that my reed choice depended on which music I was playing ... typically I was 1st chair 2nd clarinet, but I could fill in for 1st or 3rd if necessary and found my reed made a lot of difference with respect to that.

Now ... talk to me about my tenor sax reed nightmares ...

fieldshowqueen wrote:I played a 1940's wood Paris Selmer that my dad gave me, and tonal quality completely depended on the weather, humidity, time of day and whether my instrument was PMS'ing at the time. (I kept telling my director "It ISN'T me!!!!").

Heh! I understand you, "wooden instrument PMS" is a very real thing. Those real wood woodwinds can have beautiful, beautiful tone quality, but man do they have attitude to spare. My ex-girlfriend had a wooden Eb Alto Clarinet and was very good on it (which basically made her her HS band director's favorite student), but there were days when that instrument just said, "Nah, I'm not playing that (insert note here)."