6 ms·

Musicians launch campaign to save the bassoon

oinksoft 11y ago
I played bassoon for years and would love to play bassoon now that I am not in school. The trouble is that bassoons are extremely expensive. Even a terrible plastic bassoon costs thousands of dollars, and a "good" bassoon is $20k-40k last I checked, though you can get lucky on a used wooden one, which still won't come cheaply. Another less important issue I think is the difficulty in finding a good reed source: Mass-produced single reeds (clarinet, etc.) play very well, but mass-produced double reeds are practically unplayable (a double reed is the mouthpiece so any inadequacies are glaring). Demand for bassoonists shouldn't diminish anytime soon, the sound is a crucial part of a symphony orchestra.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  How much does a good reed cost? They aren't very big, are they? If quality depends on skilled handwork, why can't they be ordered cheaply from e.g. the Philippines?
  - oinksoft 11y ago
    I used to pay $20 for a reed that my tutor made (about the same price as a box of nice clarinet reeds). It's possible they could be produced more cheaply in another part of the world, but you need a bassoon to test on (again, not cheap) and the manufacturer should themselves be a skilled bassoonist to capably test the reed across the instrument's significant range. A reed's musical qualities are influenced by local conditions (humidity, etc.) so a reed that works well in one place may sound terrible in another. The current model, where accomplished bassoonists and teachers make reeds to meet the small, local demand, seems to at least be workable. I pointed out reeds as only a secondary issue because there seem to be more oboists than bassoonists. Oboists have the same challenge of finding a good reed-maker, or acquiring reed-making tools and canes, and learning the craft themselves. Oboes are much cheaper than bassoons and sometimes can even be rented (good luck finding a place willing to rent a bassoon -- the vast majority of bassoonists get their instrument from their school system).
    - thrownaway2424 11y ago
      I'm slightly squicked by the idea that someone would test your reeds on their bassoon before you get them. Did I read that wrong?
      - viraptor 11y ago
        If it's mass produced, you can test every 100th, throw them away and assume that other 99 are ok. If you're producing small quantity for friends/students, they can always return the bad ones to you. You don't have to test the exact one you're selling.
        oinksoft 11y ago
        Due to the variability of cane, every reed must be tested.
      - NLips 11y ago
        At the woodwind shop I buy reeds from, it's pretty standard practice to try before you buy when looking for something new. You take a batch down to the basement and try them out on your bassoon. If you don't like them, they go back in the box and someone else may buy them. It's just the same as donating a reed to another player etc - all part of the job.
    - navbaker 11y ago
      I can't even imagine what my friend is going through now trying to keep his instrument sounding decent. He plays bassoon in one of the U.S. navy bands that is deployed with a hospital ship doing community relations type work in Southeast Asia. He's constantly posting pictures of the band hauling instruments up and down mountain sides, through rain forests, etc. The humidity must be wreaking havoc on the instrument.
      - oinksoft 11y ago
        That's incredible! The good news is that it's already warm and humid (woodwinds have a much harder time with being warmed up after very cold storage).
  - bentoner 11y ago
    Here's a video showing how a $22 reed is produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smanwe3_hY8&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smanwe3_hY8&feature=youtu.be
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      If that's all there is to it, ISTM most adult bassoon players could just make their own reeds.
      - vacri 11y ago
        There's quite a few tools used in that video, including a custom jig and some forms. You'd be looking at a moderate upfront investment, plus have a reasonable feel for working with the material to get it to the appropriate tolerances.
- beefman 11y ago
  It should be possible to make many musical instruments more cheaply. The pBone and pTrumpet prove that quality, affordable brass instruments can be made from plastic. Bassoon should be even easier (except for the reed).
  - analog31 11y ago
    Indeed, there are also good clarinets and piccolos made from plastic. I can't comment on how good. An issue with the "endangered" instruments is that the lack of demand frustrates the desire to win economies of scale. This is certainly true of the double bass, which I play. Student quality instruments can be made from plywood, but fitting and finishing are still done by hand, and economies are won by doing production in countries with low labor costs.
  - oinksoft 11y ago
    Brass and woodwind instruments are very different beasts though. Plastic clarinets for instance are mostly found in marching bands due to their inferior (brighter) sound, and those instruments are certainly not all plastic. Most woodwind instruments are mechanically intricate, so I'd be impressed if someone could make a pTrumpet version of a clarinet or bassoon (I'd be just as impressed by a pFrenchHorn). Note the difference in sound between a plastic and wooden recorder, one of the simplest woodwinds. I played on a plastic bassoon for the first year, and they do not sound good at all.
    - crdb 11y ago
      FWIW I consider the Yamaha YHR-862 horns to be your pFrenchHorn: at around $3,000 not exactly ultra cheap, but a lot of players have owned one as their first double horn. Mass manufactured, good enough for orchestra playing, can take an unbelievable amount of damage (I took the valves out myself for heavy duty maintenance, something I would never do on my gold brass 1103), a gateway to the much more expensive Alexanders that an all-brands trial will inevitably result in you purchasing... I think Yamaha is trying the same approach with pianos but do not believe (from experience) their officious claim that their grands are anywhere close to Steinways. There is nothing in the world like a Model C or D, yet.
- tashi 11y ago
  It's hard to believe I may have useful information about this, but I used to know a guy from the University of Colorado at Boulder who was getting his master's degree in bassoon performance by day and sneaking out to the physics lab at night to work on machining reed-making equipment. Now he's got a company, http://www.bartoncane.com/ http://www.bartoncane.com/, that seems to be way better than mass produced and way cheaper than custom... or at least, that's how it seems to me, a guy who doesn't play the bassoon.
  - oinksoft 11y ago
    Very cool! Now I just need to save up, for a long time, for a bassoon :)
    - gtani 11y ago
      I've been pricing student oboes, you could do something decent for $1.5k (used grenadilla Yamaha). Also, oboists have been trialling synthetic cane, with promising results: http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=10&i=27177&t=27161 http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=10&i=27...
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- aidenn0 11y ago
  If you are still looking for reeds, my sister sells hand-made ones at a reasonable cost: http://www.gobassoon.com/ http://www.gobassoon.com/
  - oinksoft 11y ago
    This looks great! I bet she could get away with charging a little more :)
- NLips 11y ago
  Honestly - the high end of the cost bracket isn't really very relevant. Yes, you can pay £25k for a Heckel, but that's pretty much the only make that goes that expensive. Puchners are _very_ highly rated and start sub-£10k new. And then you'd be surprised at the number of players who are still using e.g. a student Adler. My bassoon cost just south of £3k new, which isn't cheap for a 'student' instrument <edit>i.e. compared to non-bassoons</edit>, but has taken me through from grade 2 (I used a music service instrument for ~1 year first) to my diploma and onward - I haven't replaced it! Sure, I'd love an upgrade to some fancy-pants model, and it's thrilling to have a tootle on other bassoonists' instruments from time to time, but virtually no one needs what the parent comment called a "good" bassoon. Order of importance for making a good sound? player > reed > crook > bassoon I can't comment on the availability of reeds where you are, but I'll agree they can be a bit of a pain. They're expensive (mine are £20 each) and variable. That said, once you've got an instrument, the ongoing costs of playing the bassoon are much lower than many hobbies.
  - oinksoft 11y ago
    Interesting, I didn't know decent bassoons were available cheaply. I played on a couple of old Fox bassoons in school (a decent brand but nothing incredible) and found even these instruments to cost at least $7,000 used. More palatable, but still quite expensive for a musical instrument that might need repairs. I'll have to take a look at these Puchners some time!
analog31 11y ago
Just a personal observation, the instruments that are typically identified as "endangered," are all ridiculously hard to learn as an adult, even if you've played another instrument. Bassoon has bizarre fingerings compared to the other woodwinds. Viola has that damned clef. Double bass is physically dangerous to play. French horn is just hard.
- EvanAnderson 11y ago
  I'd agree re: the bassoon being "ridiculously hard to learn". I've never considered myself a good woodwind player, but at the point I tried to learn bassoon I'd played a reasonable amount of saxophone (alto and tenor) and clarinet. None of that prepared me for the oddness and difficult of the bassoon. I found it to be a supremely unrewarding instrument to attempt to learn (albeit I recognize that I'm the kind of person who is quick to give up if I don't feel like I'm making any progress at something). My instructor told me that I'd likely need to learn to make my own reeds, too. That wasn't something that made me any more enthusiastic for the instrument.
- mattlutze 11y ago
  On top of different fingerings, it's tough when the instrument isn't one of the "cute" ones, like big cats and other mammals getting more attention from conservation efforts. Its inability to find a home with a lot of popular genres over the last hundred or so years has let it fall further from the public consciousness, and its tonal sweet spot being so low means it can't easily slide into the parts written for other more pop-friendly instruments. It's a bit harsh as well, when we're comparing to alto saxophones and clarinets and such. I learned it and played it for years growing up and loved the bassoon. (For what it's worth, I also cut my fingers on a viola before that, so I may just have made a point to pick the odd instruments.) I'd certainly like to see it revived or even see it find a niche in modern music. I'm just not sure where that would be.
- jboggan 11y ago
  Bizarre fingerings and a lot of very unstable harmonics scattered throughout. You can't just hit the fingerings and expect the right pitches to come out, a lot of the notes (F# below middle C in particular) take throat contortions to get the note to land in tune, and of course you're changing this as you are fingering different pitches. Not to mention the challenges of quickly tonguing passages with a chunk of heavy cane in your mouth. The unstable pitches do tend to develop a young musician's ear mightily though. It's an instrument that forms an odd bond as well; I recently met another bassoonist and we dropped everything we were doing to make reeds together.
afsina 11y ago
I do not want to sound mean but perhaps the name "Faggot" is one of the cause of alienation.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  Where did you see that?
  - mattlutze 11y ago
    He's misspelled the word, but Germanic and Slavic languages use forms of Italian's "fagotto" for bassoon. Coming from the US, I'll admit I had a double-take the first time I saw a bassoon advertised in a music shop window in Germany, before I figured out what they were actually selling.
    - kissickas 11y ago
      My old score of the Rite of Spring had "fag." written on every line and I'm pretty sure it was an English-branded version on the cover. I could see kids being worried about getting made fun of for that. If anyone wants to hear the diverse sound of the bassoon, the very first notes of the Rite of Spring are the way to go in my opinion. The story goes that musicians were shocked by the line Stravinsky wrote, saying it sounded like it was meant to be played on a saxaphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4am3YRpfiHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4am3YRpfiHs
      - mattlutze 11y ago
        For what it's worth, they probably translated the cover and left the score in whatever language it had been previously published in.
      - mattlutze 11y ago
        I also really liked this recording of Gustavo Nunez's bassoon solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfg9IIXhcPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfg9IIXhcPk It's an interesting contrast in how open / mellow he can keep his vowels, and the variety in sound profiles various bassoons themselves have.
riffraff 11y ago
> “At the moment, only about 1% of people on the street can even recognise this instrument,” does this mean "look at this object, and guess what it is", or "recognize this sound" ? I'd expect a lot of people to be familiar with "the sorcerer's apprentice" due to Fantasia (contrabassoon, I believe). On the other hand, I consider myself a normally educated person with no musical culture, and I wouldn't be able to tell the name of most musical instruments.

I played bassoon for years and would love to play bassoon now that I am not in school. The trouble is that bassoons are extremely expensive. Even a terrible plastic bassoon costs thousands of dollars, and a "good" bassoon is $20k-40k last I checked, though you can get lucky on a used wooden one, which still won't come cheaply. Another less important issue I think is the difficulty in finding a good reed source: Mass-produced single reeds (clarinet, etc.) play very well, but mass-produced double reeds are practically unplayable (a double reed is the mouthpiece so any inadequacies are glaring). Demand for bassoonists shouldn't diminish anytime soon, the sound is a crucial part of a symphony orchestra.

jessaustin 11y ago
How much does a good reed cost? They aren't very big, are they? If quality depends on skilled handwork, why can't they be ordered cheaply from e.g. the Philippines?
- oinksoft 11y ago
  I used to pay $20 for a reed that my tutor made (about the same price as a box of nice clarinet reeds). It's possible they could be produced more cheaply in another part of the world, but you need a bassoon to test on (again, not cheap) and the manufacturer should themselves be a skilled bassoonist to capably test the reed across the instrument's significant range. A reed's musical qualities are influenced by local conditions (humidity, etc.) so a reed that works well in one place may sound terrible in another. The current model, where accomplished bassoonists and teachers make reeds to meet the small, local demand, seems to at least be workable. I pointed out reeds as only a secondary issue because there seem to be more oboists than bassoonists. Oboists have the same challenge of finding a good reed-maker, or acquiring reed-making tools and canes, and learning the craft themselves. Oboes are much cheaper than bassoons and sometimes can even be rented (good luck finding a place willing to rent a bassoon -- the vast majority of bassoonists get their instrument from their school system).
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    I'm slightly squicked by the idea that someone would test your reeds on their bassoon before you get them. Did I read that wrong?
    - viraptor 11y ago
      If it's mass produced, you can test every 100th, throw them away and assume that other 99 are ok. If you're producing small quantity for friends/students, they can always return the bad ones to you. You don't have to test the exact one you're selling.
      - oinksoft 11y ago
        Due to the variability of cane, every reed must be tested.
    - NLips 11y ago
      At the woodwind shop I buy reeds from, it's pretty standard practice to try before you buy when looking for something new. You take a batch down to the basement and try them out on your bassoon. If you don't like them, they go back in the box and someone else may buy them. It's just the same as donating a reed to another player etc - all part of the job.
  - navbaker 11y ago
    I can't even imagine what my friend is going through now trying to keep his instrument sounding decent. He plays bassoon in one of the U.S. navy bands that is deployed with a hospital ship doing community relations type work in Southeast Asia. He's constantly posting pictures of the band hauling instruments up and down mountain sides, through rain forests, etc. The humidity must be wreaking havoc on the instrument.
    - oinksoft 11y ago
      That's incredible! The good news is that it's already warm and humid (woodwinds have a much harder time with being warmed up after very cold storage).
- bentoner 11y ago
  Here's a video showing how a $22 reed is produced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smanwe3_hY8&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smanwe3_hY8&feature=youtu.be
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    If that's all there is to it, ISTM most adult bassoon players could just make their own reeds.
    - vacri 11y ago
      There's quite a few tools used in that video, including a custom jig and some forms. You'd be looking at a moderate upfront investment, plus have a reasonable feel for working with the material to get it to the appropriate tolerances.
beefman 11y ago
It should be possible to make many musical instruments more cheaply. The pBone and pTrumpet prove that quality, affordable brass instruments can be made from plastic. Bassoon should be even easier (except for the reed).
- analog31 11y ago
  Indeed, there are also good clarinets and piccolos made from plastic. I can't comment on how good. An issue with the "endangered" instruments is that the lack of demand frustrates the desire to win economies of scale. This is certainly true of the double bass, which I play. Student quality instruments can be made from plywood, but fitting and finishing are still done by hand, and economies are won by doing production in countries with low labor costs.
- oinksoft 11y ago
  Brass and woodwind instruments are very different beasts though. Plastic clarinets for instance are mostly found in marching bands due to their inferior (brighter) sound, and those instruments are certainly not all plastic. Most woodwind instruments are mechanically intricate, so I'd be impressed if someone could make a pTrumpet version of a clarinet or bassoon (I'd be just as impressed by a pFrenchHorn). Note the difference in sound between a plastic and wooden recorder, one of the simplest woodwinds. I played on a plastic bassoon for the first year, and they do not sound good at all.
  - crdb 11y ago
    FWIW I consider the Yamaha YHR-862 horns to be your pFrenchHorn: at around $3,000 not exactly ultra cheap, but a lot of players have owned one as their first double horn. Mass manufactured, good enough for orchestra playing, can take an unbelievable amount of damage (I took the valves out myself for heavy duty maintenance, something I would never do on my gold brass 1103), a gateway to the much more expensive Alexanders that an all-brands trial will inevitably result in you purchasing... I think Yamaha is trying the same approach with pianos but do not believe (from experience) their officious claim that their grands are anywhere close to Steinways. There is nothing in the world like a Model C or D, yet.
tashi 11y ago
It's hard to believe I may have useful information about this, but I used to know a guy from the University of Colorado at Boulder who was getting his master's degree in bassoon performance by day and sneaking out to the physics lab at night to work on machining reed-making equipment. Now he's got a company, http://www.bartoncane.com/ http://www.bartoncane.com/, that seems to be way better than mass produced and way cheaper than custom... or at least, that's how it seems to me, a guy who doesn't play the bassoon.
- oinksoft 11y ago
  Very cool! Now I just need to save up, for a long time, for a bassoon :)
  - gtani 11y ago
    I've been pricing student oboes, you could do something decent for $1.5k (used grenadilla Yamaha). Also, oboists have been trialling synthetic cane, with promising results: http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=10&i=27177&t=27161 http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/read.html?f=10&i=27...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
aidenn0 11y ago
If you are still looking for reeds, my sister sells hand-made ones at a reasonable cost: http://www.gobassoon.com/ http://www.gobassoon.com/
- oinksoft 11y ago
  This looks great! I bet she could get away with charging a little more :)
NLips 11y ago
Honestly - the high end of the cost bracket isn't really very relevant. Yes, you can pay £25k for a Heckel, but that's pretty much the only make that goes that expensive. Puchners are _very_ highly rated and start sub-£10k new. And then you'd be surprised at the number of players who are still using e.g. a student Adler. My bassoon cost just south of £3k new, which isn't cheap for a 'student' instrument <edit>i.e. compared to non-bassoons</edit>, but has taken me through from grade 2 (I used a music service instrument for ~1 year first) to my diploma and onward - I haven't replaced it! Sure, I'd love an upgrade to some fancy-pants model, and it's thrilling to have a tootle on other bassoonists' instruments from time to time, but virtually no one needs what the parent comment called a "good" bassoon. Order of importance for making a good sound? player > reed > crook > bassoon I can't comment on the availability of reeds where you are, but I'll agree they can be a bit of a pain. They're expensive (mine are £20 each) and variable. That said, once you've got an instrument, the ongoing costs of playing the bassoon are much lower than many hobbies.
- oinksoft 11y ago
  Interesting, I didn't know decent bassoons were available cheaply. I played on a couple of old Fox bassoons in school (a decent brand but nothing incredible) and found even these instruments to cost at least $7,000 used. More palatable, but still quite expensive for a musical instrument that might need repairs. I'll have to take a look at these Puchners some time!

analog31 11y ago

Just a personal observation, the instruments that are typically identified as "endangered," are all ridiculously hard to learn as an adult, even if you've played another instrument. Bassoon has bizarre fingerings compared to the other woodwinds. Viola has that damned clef. Double bass is physically dangerous to play. French horn is just hard.

EvanAnderson 11y ago
I'd agree re: the bassoon being "ridiculously hard to learn". I've never considered myself a good woodwind player, but at the point I tried to learn bassoon I'd played a reasonable amount of saxophone (alto and tenor) and clarinet. None of that prepared me for the oddness and difficult of the bassoon. I found it to be a supremely unrewarding instrument to attempt to learn (albeit I recognize that I'm the kind of person who is quick to give up if I don't feel like I'm making any progress at something). My instructor told me that I'd likely need to learn to make my own reeds, too. That wasn't something that made me any more enthusiastic for the instrument.
mattlutze 11y ago
On top of different fingerings, it's tough when the instrument isn't one of the "cute" ones, like big cats and other mammals getting more attention from conservation efforts. Its inability to find a home with a lot of popular genres over the last hundred or so years has let it fall further from the public consciousness, and its tonal sweet spot being so low means it can't easily slide into the parts written for other more pop-friendly instruments. It's a bit harsh as well, when we're comparing to alto saxophones and clarinets and such. I learned it and played it for years growing up and loved the bassoon. (For what it's worth, I also cut my fingers on a viola before that, so I may just have made a point to pick the odd instruments.) I'd certainly like to see it revived or even see it find a niche in modern music. I'm just not sure where that would be.
jboggan 11y ago
Bizarre fingerings and a lot of very unstable harmonics scattered throughout. You can't just hit the fingerings and expect the right pitches to come out, a lot of the notes (F# below middle C in particular) take throat contortions to get the note to land in tune, and of course you're changing this as you are fingering different pitches. Not to mention the challenges of quickly tonguing passages with a chunk of heavy cane in your mouth. The unstable pitches do tend to develop a young musician's ear mightily though. It's an instrument that forms an odd bond as well; I recently met another bassoonist and we dropped everything we were doing to make reeds together.

afsina 11y ago

I do not want to sound mean but perhaps the name "Faggot" is one of the cause of alienation.

kzhahou 11y ago
Where did you see that?
- mattlutze 11y ago
  He's misspelled the word, but Germanic and Slavic languages use forms of Italian's "fagotto" for bassoon. Coming from the US, I'll admit I had a double-take the first time I saw a bassoon advertised in a music shop window in Germany, before I figured out what they were actually selling.
  - kissickas 11y ago
    My old score of the Rite of Spring had "fag." written on every line and I'm pretty sure it was an English-branded version on the cover. I could see kids being worried about getting made fun of for that. If anyone wants to hear the diverse sound of the bassoon, the very first notes of the Rite of Spring are the way to go in my opinion. The story goes that musicians were shocked by the line Stravinsky wrote, saying it sounded like it was meant to be played on a saxaphone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4am3YRpfiHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4am3YRpfiHs
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      For what it's worth, they probably translated the cover and left the score in whatever language it had been previously published in.
    - mattlutze 11y ago
      I also really liked this recording of Gustavo Nunez's bassoon solo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfg9IIXhcPk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfg9IIXhcPk It's an interesting contrast in how open / mellow he can keep his vowels, and the variety in sound profiles various bassoons themselves have.

riffraff 11y ago

> “At the moment, only about 1% of people on the street can even recognise this instrument,” does this mean "look at this object, and guess what it is", or "recognize this sound" ? I'd expect a lot of people to be familiar with "the sorcerer's apprentice" due to Fantasia (contrabassoon, I believe). On the other hand, I consider myself a normally educated person with no musical culture, and I wouldn't be able to tell the name of most musical instruments.