Bassoon as a double

ByBret Pimentel

Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

I’d like to say up front that I really love the bassoon. I do.

The bassoon was the last of the major woodwinds that I added to my arsenal. Looking at it from a strictly pragmatic standpoint, I think that was the right choice for me, and would be for most doublers. Let’s face it: when it comes down to time and money, for woodwind doublers, the bassoon demands a lot of both and doesn’t always return a lot of either.

Bassoons are tremendously expensive. A really playable intermediate-level instrument, used, might cost $5000. Compare this to maybe $500 for a clarinet of similar quality. And the bassoons played by top professionals might run more than $30,000. Sure, a serious violin can cost several times that amount, but then again you can double on a high-quality flute, oboe, clarinet, and a saxophone or two all for less than the cost of a true professional bassoon.

The bassoon presents some unique challenges to the woodwind player. Its keywork is labyrinthine, its tone and pitch are highly flexible, it uses bass and tenor clefs (all the other woodwinds use treble only), and it uses fussy and delicate double reeds (though not so fussy and delicate as oboe reeds). None of these challenges is insurmountable, but they are significant.

And the gig situation for bassoon doublers is relatively bleak. Single reeds and flute are the bread and butter of most doublers, and a good oboe/EH specialist with decent single reeds can be in high demand, too. For the bassoonist, the best bet is to become a low reeds specialist, with excellent bassoon, bass clarinet, and baritone saxophone skills. Note that these again are all seriously expensive instruments. And if you do a lot of your playing at smaller venues, like I do, then the low reed book is usually the first thing to get cut when the budget or orchestra pit are too small to accommodate a full woodwind section.

Are there reasons to play the bassoon as a woodwind doubler? Absolutely. It’s a deeply rewarding instrument to play (if not so much in the monetary sense); it has a rich repertoire, a huge sonic range, and a noble history. And if you are committed enough to learn to play it really well, you may find that you are in demand after all, perhaps not so much for doubling gigs but simply as a serious bassoonist. There are a lot of really fine flutists and saxophonists out there, and bassoonists of equivalent skill are a relatively rare breed.

I’d like to offer a few words of advice to (1) woodwind doublers who are considering picking up the bassoon, and to (2) fine bassoonists who are thinking about getting into woodwind doubling.

  1. For woodwind doublers
    • Don’t scrimp too much, but don’t take out a second mortgage either (yet). You don’t need a pre-war Heckel like the players in a top orchestra. At least not at this point. But you do need an instrument that plays in tune and with consistent tone without undue effort. The 200-series instruments by Fox are excellent, and may be all the bassoon you will ever need. They cost maybe twice as much new as a pro-level clarinet or saxophone.
    • Get some lessons. Even if it’s just a few. The bassoon is a different animal than the other woodwinds. There are some secrets you will need to learn before you will sound like the real thing. Fingering the bassoon is more art than science.
    • Get a good reed source. If you took the previous tip seriously, then you’re already set. The best way to get reeds (other than learning, painstakingly, to make your own) is to buy them face-to-face from a real live bassoonist. By “best,” I mean you will get reeds that are adjusted for your climate, embouchure, and instrument, and probably cheaper than ordering from a reedmaker on the Internet. Mass-produced reeds from your neighborhood music store are a waste of money for someone who already has an ear for pitch and tone.
    • Don’t skip the basics. The big Weissenborn book is a good place to start. Really practice all the “easy” stuff at the beginning. Then maybe jump over to Oubradous for some serious scale and arpeggio work, and then come back to the Weissenborn book to play the Milde studies. The bassoon’s technique is just too complicated and nuanced to jump into gigs with a fingering chart and a hopeful expression.
  2. For bassoonists
    • Your quickest and easiest way to improve your employability through doubling is as a bassoon specialist with strong bass clarinet and baritone saxophone. I would suggest buying a high-quality student model clarinet and alto saxophone and taking a serious approach to learning them (lessons, practice time, etc.) while you save your pennies for a nice baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. A good intermediate-level baritone saxophone like the Yamaha 50-series will serve you well. If you’re going to be serious about low reeds, spring for a low A instrument. There are also decent intermediate bass clarinets to be had, but no good tried-and-true intermediate models with range to low C, so you may need to bite the bullet and get a really professional-level bass clarinet.
    • If you are independently wealthy and enjoy heavy lifting, consider ultimately expanding to bass saxophone and the contrabass clarinets, and tie up every low reeds gig for miles around. Or if your budget and trunk space are a little tighter, you can keep working on clarinet and higher saxophones, and eventually add flute and piccolo.
    • Become a jazz lover. In woodwind doubling situations, you will need to be prepared to play at least a semi-convincing Broadway-jazz style on single reeds. Most bassoonists don’t have real background in that stuff; do some serious listening or maybe take a few lessons with a local saxophonist to pick up some of the nuances of articulation and inflection.

Good luck!

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    A lot of the questions people have about woodwind playing center on tone: how can I get a better tone? a darker tone? a tone like _____’s? There’s not a lot of clarity on this, for a few reasons:

    • Firstly, of course, “good” tone is subjective, and trying to communicate clearly about tone in more dispassionate terms is problematic due to inconsistent vocabulary.
    • Tone is made from a recipe of factors, so it’s hard to isolate individual ones. Will adding another egg improve your cake? Depends on what else is in it. Will a certain warm-up exercise or piece of equipment have a specific effect on your tone? Depends on what other equipment and playing techniques you are using.
    • Much of what affects tone is difficult or impossible to observe and measure.

    Let’s look at the physical factors that influence tone:

    • Yes, of course, equipment. It’s axiomatic in woodwind playing that your equipment does affect your tone, but not as much as you affect your tone. Still, your particular combination of headjoint, reed, mouthpiece, ligature, barrel, bocal, instrument, and various other parts and accessories does influence in some way the sound that you make. Equipment of good design and construction, and within typical parameters, will contribute to an essentially characteristic tone quality. (By characteristic I mean easily identifiable as a specific instrument by someone with a musically-educated ear.)
    • Basic woodwind-playing techniques, including most notably breath support, voicing, and embouchure. Assuming these are well-trained, they also contribute to a characteristic tone quality.
    • Some subtle aspects of those woodwind-playing techniques that are hard to pin down. These small things determine how the tone fits into the larger world of characteristic tone qualities, usually described poorly in vague terms like “good” or “pure” or “rich” or “buttery” or “vocal.” For example, an oboist’s embouchure puts different pressures on different parts of the reed. Those pressures can be adjusted very subtly using the small and flexible muscles of the embouchure, but most oboists probably aren’t very aware of exactly what adjustments they are making (though they may know what it feels like). Most are also not very capable of passing that wisdom (i.e. a feeling) along to a student or colleague. Some of them can be described in too-general terms (“bring the corners of your mouth in more”), or can be evoked with spotty accuracy through metaphor or through tone exercises.
    photo, Tom Page
    photo, Tom Page

    So, how do you ever develop a tone that is characteristic, personal, and beautiful?

    • Use appropriate equipment.
    • Employ solid fundamental woodwind-playing techniques.
    • Listen frequently, widely, and at length to good music, particularly on your instrument, to develop a tone concept—an aural impression of your ideal tone. In early stages, that might be based on how deeply you have absorbed the sound of a favorite musician, perhaps your teacher. In later stages, it might be a sort of composite of your favorite aspects of many tones that you have internalized, perhaps even things that inspired you about a performance on an instrument other than your own (or a voice). Ultimately, it might be a tone that you have never heard before, but which you can imagine.

    Here’s why tone concept is so crucial:

    All those subtleties of woodwind technique that affect tone, the ones that are so hard to understand and communicate? You can find them with patient and dedicated practice, if you know what you are listening for. As you have already discovered, your tone tends to change from day to day. This inconsistency can be a problem, but can also be a way of stumbling, even subconsciously, onto something positive. (When it’s a conscious process, your thought might be, “when I hold my embouchure this way, I get a sound that is more _____.”) Additionally, a clear tone concept may aid you in intuitively pursuing it; you already use the muscles of breathing, voicing, and embouchure to intuitively produce a huge and subtly-differentiated set of speech sounds, and for most of those you would be hard-pressed to explain how you make them. If you get comfortable and familiar enough with your instrument through years of practice, you can begin to tap into that intuitive control, but again: only if you know what sound you want to make.

    An ideal tone is a lifelong pursuit—invest in yours by listening and practicing daily.

  • 10 ways to strengthen your embouchure right now!

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    1. You don’t need a “strong” embouchure, you need a relaxed embouchure.
    2. Embouchure “strength” is a myth. Stop biting and pinching.
    3. Your embouchure is made up of little facial muscles, which are good at subtle, expressive movements, like for facial expressions and language (or for nuanced variations in woodwind dynamics and tone color). They aren’t good at feats of strength or endurance.
    4. Your abdominal muscles, on the other hand, are very good at strength and endurance. You use them all day long and they probably never feel tired unless you are doing sit-ups or something. Instead of straining with your embouchure, let breath support do the work.
    5. You should probably check on your voicing, too. I mean, you could bite your clarinet up to pitch instead, but it’s painful and causes lots of other problems.
    6. You know that thing where you play a reed instrument and you get a blister or callus from your teeth on your lower lip? Good news, you don’t need a dental appliance or some kind of tape. You just need to relax your embouchure. Try it! Now you can practice for hours without fatigue or blood, and sound better doing it.
    7. Ever try to play in one of the upper registers of the flute, and get an undertone or some dirtiness/growliness in your attacks? The key to clear, beautiful transitions into the upper register is a relaxed and flexible embouchure.
    8. We can argue about whether your jaw is part of your embouchure. Nah, never mind, I have better things to do. But in any case it should be open, creating space for the soft tissues of your lip and facial muscles to make the aperture. Go ahead and unclench. By the way, opening up your jaw is what people really mean when they tell clarinetists (mostly) to do weird things with their chins.
    9. I know, somebody taught you in your formative years about the vital importance of a brutishly muscular embouchure. Take a deep, cleansing breath. Everything is going to be fine.
    10. Go practice.

  • Sidney Bechet’s “Summertime”

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    Sidney Bechet may be jazz’s most unfairly forgotten genius.

    Once the favorite son of his native New Orleans, as well as his many adopted European hometowns, Bechet’s recordings are now too often overlooked. Bechet, born in 1897, was a true virtuoso of the clarinet, and played a major part in establishing the instrument’s role in Dixieland and early jazz. His pioneering use of the soprano saxophone set a precedent that would come to fruition in a later generation of saxophonists. Bechet’s penchant for unusual instruments is documented in a few surviving recordings on the bass saxophone and the sarrusophone, instruments as nearly obsolete in Bechet’s day as in our own.

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  • Practicing and breathing

    ByBret Pimentel

    When I play woodwind instruments in a stress situation, such as a performance (or, back in my student days, a lesson), one of the first things affected is my breathing.

    Maybe you have had this experience. The performance begins, and the breathing seems somehow off. You find yourself breathing in awkward or unaccustomed places, ending up either short of breath or too full of stale air. You end up skipping notes or whole measures of music to reset your breathing and get back on track, but panic has already set in and things spiral.

    Most of our favorite practice tips and tricks are about finger technique or articulation or tone, and are meant to help ensure solid performance even when the stress kicks in. But sometimes we forget to practice breathing. Don’t let your performances be derailed by panicky breathing—practice the breaths just like you practice the notes.

    photo, jean-daniel pauget
    photo, jean-daniel pauget

    Make breaths part of the process from day one. Don’t assume they will fall into place once you have learned the notes—by the time that is done, you may have unwittingly “practiced” breaths in less-than-ideal spots. Make thoughtful breathing decisions the first time you practice a new étude or repertoire piece, and mark them in. Create a habit of breathing only at the places you have marked.

    You are hopefully starting your practice of the piece below tempo, so your breathing needs may change as you approach performance tempo. That’s okay—you can always change the markings as your tempo and interpretation progress. Be flexible about moving breath marks around, but disciplined about observing them.

    This approach makes your chosen breaths habitual, so hopefully they are less likely to change when you are nervous or distracted. It also creates a mindset of breathing purposefully, rather than winging it.

    It’s worth pointing out, too, that controlled breathing can actually reduce your body’s stress response, so practicing deliberate, relaxed breathing can help prevent the panic-breathing spiral.

    Breathe easy!

  • Preparing for a multiple woodwinds recital

    ByBret Pimentel

    Disclosure: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, at no cost to you.

    For over a decade, all of my solo recital performances have been on multiple woodwind instruments. Last month I performed (twice) a recital program with pieces played on flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and three saxophones. Here are some of the things I do to prepare.

    multiple-woodwinds-recital_mini

    • Practice the physical changes. I opened my program with an oboe piece, and followed that with a flute piece with a delicate entrance. As the recital approached, I made sure to follow each oboe practice session by practicing that flute entrance, to be sure I could do it under those conditions. Something that didn’t work very well: after the oboe, flute, and bassoon pieces, my hands and jaw tended to be a little tense for clarinet playing. If I were preparing this recital again, I would bump the clarinet to the end of my practice sessions to work on playing relaxed even when fatigued.
    • Practice the mental changes. If I can put myself into the right place mentally for the instrument I’m about to play, my physical technique seems to fall into place. Sometimes I will do some rotating warmups—play, for instance, some scales on one instrument, and then immediately play them on another, and another. That gives me a chance to practice shifting mental gears. Once I have my program order set, I also make liberal use of Post-it Notes to give myself reminders between pieces: “take a moment to relax embouchure,” “keep breath support strong in low register,” “clear moisture from octave vent.”
    • Make thorough checklists. With seven instruments on my most recent recital, I surely would have forgotten something—a bassoon seat strap, a case of clarinet reeds, a piece of sheet music. I made a detailed list and used it to set up for a dress rehearsal. Sure enough, there were a few things that hadn’t made it onto the list, and I was able to retrieve those items and add them to the list before the first public performance. When I traveled a few hours for another performance, I was confident that I had everything I needed.
    • Use good stands. Good ones are sturdy and make it easy to set down or pick up an instrument without fuss. Since I played flute, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon on the first half without leaving the stage, having some good stands kept things moving smoothly and let me stay focused.
    • Do thorough warmups. As the performance approaches, it’s tempting to practice in panic mode, and skip over things like warmups. I always play much better if I do my warmups faithfully all the way up to the day of the performance. I find that if I warm up slowly and thoroughly on each instrument before the performance (this might take a few hours with multiple instruments! I usually do it in the morning), then I’m able to switch between them more easily.

    Break a leg!

  • |

    Not good

    ByBret Pimentel

    I like to use a Socratic-ish method in my private lessons, and ask my students questions. It means that I have this conversation several times per day:

    [Student plays.]

    Me: How did that sound to you?

    Student: Not good.

    Me: What didn’t you like about it?

    Student: It didn’t sound good.

    Me: What aspect of it didn’t sound good to you? The tone? the pitch? the phrasing? the articulation?

    Student: Um, I guess the articulation?

    Me: What didn’t you like about the articulation?

    Student: It wasn’t good?

    It’s an ongoing battle to get my students to listen more deeply than that. Was the articulation “not good” because it started with air noise instead of tone? Because it was accompanied by an unwanted percussive sound? Was the articulation technique perfect but you failed to follow the composer’s markings? Or was it something else?

    Photo, David Bailey
    Photo, David Bailey

    Often the “not good” is a combination of factors, but if my students can identify even one of them, then they can immediately start working in a focused way to improve it. If it’s just “not good,” then they tend to just play it again from the beginning without any clear approach to making it sound better, and repeat until frustrated.

    Part of my job is to help them identify and verbalize the desirable and undesirable phenomena in their playing, and to teach them the techniques for manipulating the variables involved (breath support, voicing, embouchure, finger technique, and tongue technique, to name the most obvious ones). But it’s up to them to take that information and run with it. For my students to become independently-functional musicians, they need to learn to listen critically to themselves and troubleshoot.

    For yourself and for your students, don’t be satisfied with bland value judgments (it sounded “good” or “bad”). Be factual and descriptive about what you hear, and tackle problems in a methodical way. Practice smart!

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