When a reed responds badly, you have to distort your embouchure, and you can fall into bad habits. On the other hand, you can be too fussy about reeds. You don’t find too many tremendous reeds. You could spend all of your lifetime on reeds.

I’ve never had the patience to do much [preparatory] work on the reed. If you have a good reed, you can wet it and play it and you know it’s good. If you have a bad reed, you wet it, you treat it, you baby it, you roast it, you fry it, and it will still be a bad reed. Somebody once told me. .. “Joe we found out if you dip your reed in olive oil and you put it in the oven at 350 degrees for forty minutes, the reed will last forever.” I looked at this guy and he had a straight face. The poor guy meant it. I don’t know, maybe he’s right and I’m wrong – I’ve never roasted my reeds.

-Joe Allard, 1910-1991 (professor of saxophone and clarinet; Juilliard School the New England Conservatory, The Manhattan School of Music)

The first paragraph above can certainly be applied to oboe reeds as well! The second is posted because a friend of mine said she’d heard that someone recommended soaking an oboe reed in olive oil. I had to check that out — it sounded pretty crazy, you know? — so I googled it. And that’s how I landed at the site with the quote above.

So … anyone else heard the “soak your reed in olive oil” thing? I’d probably then want to dip it in balsamic vinegar and chomp on it. ;-)