an oboe is an example of a double reed instrument.
what is an example of a double reed instrument?
an oboe
a single-reed instrument is a woodwind instrument that uses only one reed to produce sound. the very earliest single-reed instruments were documented in ancient egypt, as well as the middle east, greece, and the roman empire. the earliest types of single-reed instruments used idioglottal reeds, where the vibrating reed is a tongue cut and shaped on the tube of cane. much later, single-reed instruments started using heteroglottal reeds, where a reed is cut and separated from the tube of cane and attached to a mouthpiece of some sort. by contrast, in a double reed instrument (such as the oboe and bassoon), there is no mouthpiece; the two parts of the reed vibrate against one another. reeds are traditionally made of cane and produce sound when air is blown across or through them.
single-reed instrument
the cornamuse is a double reed instrument dating from the renaissance period. it is similar to the crumhorn in having a windcap over the reed and cylindrical bore. in "syntagma musicum" ii (1619), michael praetorius writes: "die cornamuse sind gleich aus/und nicht mit doppelten/sondern mit einer einfachen röhre/gleich den bassanelli" ("the cornamuse are similar to/and do not have a double, but rather a single tube (bore)/like the bassanelli".) this statement differentiates it from double bore instruments of the period like the sordun, kortholt and curtal. praetorius did not include a woodcut of the cornamuse, but his depiction of the bassanello has a single bore and double reed. another clue to its appearance is given in his description of the schryari: ("they...are nearly the same as the cornamuse in size and appearance".) assertions by some modern writers about the cornamuse having a single reed stem from the misreading of "röhre" (pipe, tube, duct, canal) as "rohr" (reed).
cornamuse