As a vocalist, I’ve come to intimately know the ins and outs of proper vocal care. But when it comes to the daily maintenance undertaken by my instrumentalist colleagues, I’m woefully naive. I’d heard about the agonies of reed-making from oboists and watched as French horn players casually emptied spit valves of shocking quantities of saliva, but beyond this cursory understanding, my knowledge abruptly grinds to a halt.
So last week, in an effort to learn more, I spoke with four musicians over the phone, listening (and wowing) as they shared with me the not-so-elusive secrets of their trade.
Caring for a Violin, with Violinist Michelle Kim
Michelle Kim, Assistant Concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, has been working with high-quality violins since she was about 15 years old, when she played one loaned to her through the Colburn Foundation. “We sat in a room with the lady who handled the instruments, one by one, as she told us how to care for them.” The first item of business was the case. “Nothing flimsy was acceptable.” They should be sufficiently sturdy with proper suspensions — “like tire suspensions” — to protect the instrument. When Kim’s not playing, her violin is safely put away, even if it’s just a 15-minute rehearsal break. “Accidents happen,” says Carlos Tome, Director and Head of Sales at Tarisio, matter-of-factly, and with instruments that can be centuries old (the oldest Tarisio has worked on is from the late 16th-century), such preventative measures are paramount.
In addition to bumps and bangs, temperature and humidity can also spell trouble. Dry air can make wood brittle, and if the temperature is too cold, the instrument can crack. Such a fix, Kim explains, is like “major surgery,” sometimes taking six months to as long as two years. “It’s like taking the frame of a car apart and putting together a new frame.” To prevent such catastrophes, Kim might bring her violin into the bathroom or insert a Dampit to keep the wood humidified, but she cautions that overdoing this could be dangerous, too: “If you don’t know how to use [a Dampit] properly, the water could leak out and damage the instrument.”
To keep the violin looking, feeling, and sounding fresh, daily cleaning is essential. In addition to regularly wiping the violin down, Kim picks up the rosin dust that has settled on the middle of the violin and cleans out the tiny area beneath the bridge with a cotton swab. It’s imperative to use a fresh cleaning implement, too — otherwise, she explains, “It’s like you’re wiping off your lipstick with the same tissue over and over and over again.”
Professional maintenance and repairs are an integral part of a proper care regimen. A violinist might take their instrument to a violin repair person, known as a luthier, once every six months or so to ensure it’s in good health. They clean and inspect the instrument, checking for open seams, making any necessary adjustments (functional or artistic), and, “God forbid,” Kim shudders, addressing any cracks. Luthiers are masters of their trade, with most trained not only in cosmetic and / or structural restoration, but also in the intricate art of building violins from scratch. As Tome explains, “This is a craft that has not changed in 400 years,” and many of its instruments are still basic hand tools and brushes. But today, “We can create 3D models and 3D print certain parts to help us with the restoration,” a welcome technological advancement that adds an unprecedented degree of precision to an already highly-exacting discipline.
Caring for a Flute, with Flutist Brandon Patrick George
When it comes to flutes, we may be more familiar with seeing the metal versions, but as Brandon Patrick George, flutist of Imani Winds, explains to me over Zoom, these didn’t arrive on the scene until the mid-19th century. Players today, performing works from the Baroque all the way up through Brahms and Mahler, may therefore elect to play on wooden flutes, notable for their thicker bore and darker tone quality. “You have to be very careful that the temperature is not too cold,” George explains — as with the violin, the wood can crack. Considerations of moisture and humidity, too, are paramount to proper care.
Temperature variations, both in the air in the performance space and that being blown into the instrument, create condensation that, when left inside the bore, can cause problems. It causes unwelcome swelling in wooden flutes, and can spell trouble for metal ones, too — specifically for the pads under the keys, which tend to absorb moisture, causing them to swell or contract. Flutists regularly swab the inside of their instruments and use cigarette paper to clean and dry the pads. Still, the mechanism wears out over time, which is why professional checkups are essential.
Just as a luthier cares for a violin, specialized flute repair technicians (sadly, they have no fancy name) perform regular “COAs,” cleaning, oiling, and adjusting(like shimming, or fine shaving, of the pads, to ensure they cover the tone holes perfectly at the precise moment of impact) of the instrument. Flutes will also go in for an overhaul once every few years, in which it’s taken apart, the pads replaced, fine adjustments made, and the tube soaked in a sonic bath to fully remove debris and buildup. Phil Unger, President and Owner and Master Repair Technician of Flute Center of New York, says that a common workstation includes 12 or so pliers of different shapes and sizes, half a dozen screwdrivers (which flutists also carry around to perform ad hoc adjustments), bench motors, and synthetic oils. But Unger is equally prepared to improvise a fix on the fly: “I’ve been called up a few times in my career to come on stage to repair an instrument that suddenly wasn’t working. I didn’t have any tools, but you find knives and forks and whatever you can to help in an emergency situation.”
Caring for an Oboe, with Elaine Douvas
When I got in touch with Elaine Douvas, Principal Oboe of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, much of our conversation revolved around ”reed-making,” a term most oboists utter with just the slightest hint of trauma, pain, and self-loathing (kidding!). Douvas and I chatted about the instrument itself, and as we did, our conversation harkened back to many of the topics I’d already discussed with Kim and George: “Our overall goal,” Douvas explains, “is that there won’t be any mechanical interference between the music and the listener.” With a delicate wooden bore, silver plated keys with pads, and adjustment screws that need to be checked daily, the oboe has a lot of moving parts that require a fine eye (and ear) for detail. And as with the wooden flute and violin, unchecked condensation buildup and temperature changes can do more than just affect sound quality — in a worst case scenario, they can lead to cracks. Oboists must be attentive to swabbing the bore, and must become highly skilled at making adjustments with screwdrivers and other tools.
One particularly non-negotiable skill the oboist must master is that of reed-making. Put simply, a reed is a specially-crafted piece of cane that is hand-fashioned into the instrument’s mouthpiece. It’s a process that takes years of practice to learn and hours to do, and because a single reed is likely to last for only about 20 hours of play time, the journey never really ends. Douvas made a fantastic video demonstrating the process. “You want the reed to do as much work as possible for you so that you don’t have to do extra work to work around its problems,” she explains. “I tell my students that it takes about 1,000 reeds to properly learn reed-making. If they make 10 a week, they’ll become very skillful in about two years.”
Unlike violins, which may be around for centuries, oboes have comparatively short lifespans. “Just as the reed loses something of freshness from constant vibration, the oboe does too … The hunt for a new instrument goes on constantly,” Douvas explained, adding that most professional oboists own more than one.
Caring for a Trombone, with Colin Williams
Of the brass family, the trombone is rather uniquely situated, Colin Williams, Associate Principal Trombone of the New York Philharmonic, explains: “We only have one valve on our instrument that we use, whereas the French horns, trumpets, and tubas can have five or six that they’re using at any given time.” The principle of the trombone, however, remains consistent with the others: “It’s basically a long steel tube, bent a bunch of different ways.” And it’s not terribly hard to care for.
Daily maintenance involves applying special lubricants as necessary to various parts of the instrument, especially ones for the tuning slide that allow it to move and stay in place when the player lets go of it. Trombonists also have to clean out any condensation that may have built up overnight, and buildup of acid from the hands is also a concern, so some players hold their instruments with leather grips to avoid wearing out the metal. (Williams finds that grips interfere with his perception of resonance, though.)
As with the other instruments, the trombone has to go in for a doctor’s visit from time to time. But while a flutist, for example, might visit a specialized flute technician, a trombonist typically goes to a more general instrument repair person for fixes they’re unable to perform at home. Slides can prove particularly finicky — if it gets out of alignment and the trombonist can’t move it around fast enough to play, they might have to take it in. Similarly, if it gets dented, it may have to be professionally rolled out, or if a valve needs to be repaired or replaced because it has corroded over time, it likely has to be taken into the shop, too.
Of course, the intricacies of care go far beyond the cursory sampling of regular practices and rituals presented here, and there’s more than an orchestra’s worth of instruments to be explored. So if you’ve caught the curiosity bug, I encourage you to dig deeper — the Internet is filled with articles, podcasts, and videos just waiting for you.