How to get a good reed?
The saxophone reed (fig. 1) is a natural product made from the Arundo Donax cane, which is cut and shaped to a reed what is used on the saxophone mouthpiece (fig. 2).
As a saxophone player with over 30 years experience, I recognize the struggle all saxophone players have with getting a good reed. As the reed is a vital component for a professional tone production and playing fun, the most frustrating part is finding a good reed. It is a challenging endeavour as selecting a good reed takes a lot of time testing and preparing what ends with the certainty that it will remain unclear how long the reed will perform.
There are no exact figures, but in average you will get 6 out 10 good reeds.
Below infographic shows figures of the current saxophone market and developments towards 2024
There are a lot of different techniques available for preparation of reeds, but it is not always clear what to use, how and when. So where to start?
The ReedScan app
The ReedScan app assists you with getting good reeds. This new innovative idea – the first ever saxophone reed scanner – will bring a couple of benefits:
- Improving preparation of your reeds
- Improving the match between your needs and reed brands and types
- Increasing the number of playable reeds from a box of reeds
- Lowering the costs per used reed
- Most important: uplifting the joy in playing saxophone
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Quality improvement & increase in usable reeds will also have positive environmental impact
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The ReedScan app features
This smartphone app is fun to use as you will be connected to saxophone players around the world, acting as very useful source to improve using your reeds. The ReedScan includes the following features:
- Reed scanning; providing playability and maintenance information
- Adding your personal judgement of the reed and a sound clip
- Marking your scanned reeds as placed in your reeds saving box
- Rating reeds
- Suggestions on replacement and timely rotation of reeds
- Suggestions on when and what reeds to purchase, based on your playing level, reed usage and preferences
- Automated purchase process with a push of a button anywhere you are
The app supports possible standardisation of reed classification, discount possibilities as well as increase in customization of reed production.
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The ReedScan app is more than scanning only
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Watch the video to find out more about the ReedScan app
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The saxophone player will benefit from lowering the cost of reeds, increased quality, improved matching with personal needs and uplifting the fun of playing.
Manufacturers will get a better and detailed understanding of saxophone player’s needs and get connected to saxophone players experiences on a large scale. This will help to add more reed specifications, improve quality and better match the individual players’ needs.
Shops will have the opportunity to improve services based on the saxophone players analytics from the app.
Researchers can capture a better understand of the differences between the subjective and objective measures of saxophone reeds on a large scale from real life usage. This will stimulate research on improving production processes and calibration techniques, what will encourage quality improvement and customization of reed production in the future.
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Interested in future developments of the ReedScan app?
Join our Facebook page via fb.me/thesaxophoneconnection. The Poll on Facebook about the ReedScan is getting response every day. See current results in the chart. Do not forget to vote following this link The ReedScan Facebook poll.
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References
All numbers are based on www.marketwatch.com (2019). At 5.4%, Acoustic Saxophone Market Size is expected to reach 220 million USD in 2024. www.marketstudyreport.com. Accessed on August 12th 2019. Waste in USD is based on an average 4,40 USD reed sales price and 6 out of 10 reeds. Average years a saxophone is played is set to 40 year. Estimated reed duration of 5 weeks is based on https://forum.saxontheweb.net and author’s 30 years saxophone playing experience. Estimations have been corrected with a 31,8% bias correction (based on a normal distribution). Estimations and calculations are all matching with the estimated market size developments as presented in the marketstudyreport.com report.
All other resources are authors’ own work for this blog.