Hiya!
Today I'm going to talk about reeds. Reed is the beating heart of the clarinet which generates the sound so it's no surprise how important it is to find the right reed to play with. There are tons of brands nowadays and even more models and levels of thickness than ever before. It can be quite a handful to experiment with all of them and find the right one for you. I haven't tested everything and I have still more research to do but here are my thoughts on some of those that I do have tested.
The most common reeds are made from Giant cane and they are the traditional ones. The sound is rich and has layers in itself. You have to keep them moist so that you can play well with them. It's also good to have 2 different levels of thickness available at all times because natural reeds are affected by weather conditions. Somedays I like to play with level 3 reed but sometimes when it feels too thin I go for 3 and half or 3 and half+. Here is picture of the exact brand that I'm using.
I already told you guys why I like Vandoren reeds and why I don't like Rico reeds especially on my students so I'm not going too much into that this time. These are the 2 newest models from Vandoren and I've been using 56 Rue Lepic for quite some time now and I'm very pleased with their sound and quality. There is usually no bad reeds in the pack of 10 (sometimes 1 but c'mon, that's pretty great still!) and they last quite long. V21 is the latest model which I also tried but didn't fell in love with. Sound wasn't as good and there were more bad reeds in the pack I bought. Could be bad luck or just bad quality overall.
There are also synthetic reeds available nowadays. You don't have to keep them moisturized and they last pretty much forever. Still the sound isn't as good as in natural reeds so you really can't replace them with synthetic reeds especially if you are performing a lot. I find them very useful while teaching though. Usually I'm mostly talking or accompanying on piano so my reed gets very dry multiple times over the course of the lesson. Then once I have to play an example I have to wet my reed again and find the good sound. This problem is basically gone with synthetic reeds and that's why I like them. It's also nice to know that you always have one decent reed with you for emergencies.
Thanks for reading!
- Sinna