Make sure ghamish is open before playing. If it is not completely closed you can blow warm air through it to get it to open a little more so it will play better. If the ghamish is completely closed, you can do one of three things:
- make sure cap is on and run some warm water into the bottom (open) end, shake it with your finger covering the hole and then pour out. Leave sitting with cap down in a vertical position for up to 20 minutes.
- an alteration of the above is to leave the warm water in the ghamish and let it sit for awhile with cap on, upside down.
- on a really dry day with a very closed ghamish you can take the cap/bridle off and set the top upside down into about 1/2 to 1 inch of warm water. This can be dangerous if you forget and leave it! The ghamish is not a split reed like bassoon or oboe; it will want to revert to a round shape if left in that water. This is not good and you would need to carefully put the cap back on and hope it comes back down to a reasonable opening with time.
Once it is open enough to play (you never want it too open- if so it will feel really hard to blow) you can use the bridle to make very slight adjustments to the pitch. Remember that ghamish can change pitch in the middle of a tune with no warning so that bridle needs to be able to hold on to the reed a little for adjustments. In dry environments you can put a little water under the bridle on the ghamish to help it grab.
The duduk is played with very little reed in the mouth. Just a quarter inch or so. The embouchure is not like oboe or any other double reed woodwind in that the reed is not held between the teeth with the lips covering them. You must keep the reed/ghamish in front of the teeth controlled by the lip muscles. The whole top minor third of the range (on an A duduk from G to the highest B) is all achieved by squeezing the reed so the opening has to be good to allow for the control to get these notes. If the opening is too little, or the ghamish is dry many times these notes can be very sharp. And conversely if it is too wet and open you will have great difficulty playing the top part of the range.
These tips for working with the duduk ghamish reed were provided by professional woodwind player Chris Bleth.
To purchase the Professional Duduk from Armenia, visit WorldMusicalInstruments.com.
