One of the things that I see on many of my students and in fact many other people playing the oboe is that they lift their fingers way too high! I have a book that is available on my website for free if you will ask for it, and it is a digital book called Method for Oboe by Stevens Hewitt, and one of the things that says in the book is: “Blind horses lift their feet too high and do not run fast.” What this means is that if you lift your fingers too high when you play the oboe, you will not be able to play very fast. You will also make many mistakes that are totally avoidable. I remember my lessons when I was in high school from a beloved teacher named Bill Benjamin, who was principal in the San Antonio Texas Symphony. His teacher was Ray Still, and I have mentioned Mr. Still on this blog before. One of the exercises that Mr. Benjamin did with me was that I would play a scale and slowly…. very slowly lift my fingers so where the pitch was coming up so slowly to the note. What this does is to make the oboist aware that it is so important to keep the fingers low. In fact, I tell my students that their fingers should not leave the metal of the keys. This is not possible on other instruments like the clarinet, but is totally something you would want to do on the oboe. So when you play, there should be very little Motion in your fingers. They should just barely lift enough to make the next note sound. And, if you do this, you will find that you play smoother and also much faster.
Practice this with scales first and then be very aware of this when you play any other work. And that goes for etudes like the Barret Method for students or orchestral playing also.
Play Pretty!
Kerry