Dutch Double Reed Instruments of the 17th and 18th Centuries

Jem Berry

The oboe used in this experiment was copy of a Stanesby Sr made by a well respected maker (not me!). A laptop computer and software was used for two functions:

1. A tone generator programme was used to generate a sine-wave tone at the required frequency. This was fed into the bore using an old earphone as a speaker and a specially made staple equivalent to the acoustic volume of the usual reed. The oboe was ‘fingered’ using Blue-Tack. If the frequency of the sine wave tone was appropriate to the fingering (e.g.