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

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.