You are going to need to make a LOT of reeds before you master the techniques, so keep at it and learn to find the fun in it!
A few tips to reed making:
- Keep track of what you are doing so you can learn from your success and failures, make a reed journal
- Let your reeds age AFTER the tube is formed. The longer you let a reed dry and settle before you clip the tip, the more stable the reed will be. Best thing I ever learned in reed making was to wait six months before clipping the tip, the consistency I’ve attained by doing this is truly remarkable. I wait six months before clipping the tip on a reed blank, which means planning ahead so I have reeds for now and reeds waiting for the future.
- After your initial scraping that got the reed down to the correct measurements, give it time and put the knife away! A LOT can be done with wire adjustments. I rarely scrape a reed on the day of a performance, if it was a good reed to begin with, a wire adjust is usually all it needs to be fantastic again.
Learn how to profile, shape, or form tubes