Instrument Care: Swabbing v. Feather

Part of being a solid player is knowing how and when to maintenance your instrument -- if your instrument is not performing at its top ability, how can you?

I've already covered topics that have covered some issues of repair, but this post will focus on the issue of cleaning out the inside of a wooden oboe using a swab or a feather. This past week has  sparked an enlightenment on how important this issue is. 

At my studio class this week (when everybody who plays oboe meets for a class), our professor performed a demo on cleaning out the octave vents on an oboe.

Taking a step off to the side, for those who don't play oboe, the the octave vent is a piece of metal (often brass, but not always) that has a hole in the middle -- in other words a vent. It is placed under the octave keys. One of the octave keys is shown below. This octave vent must be removed with a special sort of tool, which is also shown below.

The reason why one must clean out the octave vents is that a lot of, well, crud gets stuck in it. If you don't brush your teeth before you play, food waste can be a culprit of this crud. However, another and often times bigger cause of the crud is lint. Where does this lint come from? The use of a swab.

At the above mentioned studio class, it was evident that the owner of the oboe being used as a demo was a swab user. There was a matted clump of gross, greasy lint, food and moisture caught in the octave vent. When our professor asked what color swab this girl used, she confirmed it was the same color as some of the very small pieces of the swab that had been stuck together in the octave vent.

Mostly, crud stuck in an octave vent is gross. More importantly, it prevents certain notes from sounding correctly. Luckily, this can be prevented through teeth brushing and using a turkey feather to clean the inside of your oboe instead of a swab. Feathers will not leave behind lint, and help to clear water and condensation out of the oboe more effectively.