French Bassoon For Sale

by Kris on June 5, 2015June 5, 2015

I am selling my French Bassoon! I have had this bassoon for a few years now and have had so many adventures with it. But in the last year I haven’t really played on it and I have decided to find it a new home. This bassoon has been dated to 1940 but unfortunately bears no makers mark or serial number. The bell shape looks like the Selmer French Bassoons at that time. I am including the bocal that it came with and the music lyre base that was attached to the bell (although I took it off)

You can find the listing for this bassoon on eBay:

www.ebay.com/itm/1940s-French-Bassoon

Downsizing Bassoon Collection

by Kris on May 31, 2015May 31, 2015

I have started to develop a bit of a bassoon collection and I don’t get to play some of them.

My high school bassoon is usually rented out to students, but it has been sitting in my closet for the last year. So I’m going to sell it! It’s up on eBay if anyone is interested. This is a King Symphony Bassoon made by Schreiber in Germany and stamped by King, the America instrument manufacturer.

Contrabassoons of the World!

by Kris on April 12, 2015April 12, 2015

It’s so amazing that we live in the age of youtube and world wide web! We are able to hear what different players sound like all over the world, the differing styles and tones of certain players. Contrabassoon is especially interesting because I don’t think that contrabassoon tone is uniform throughout most cities! Thanks to players uploading footage and interviews we are able to hear from a wind section that we wouldn’t normally have access to. These are a few clips featuring players around the world.

Amrei Liebold, Orchestre de Paris

Luke Whitehead, Philharmonia Orchestra

Dominic Morgan, London Symphony Orchestra

Lewis Lipnick, National Symphony Orchestra

Jaap de Vries, Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra

Gregg Henegar, Boston Symphony Orchestra

King Bassoon Reeds

by Kris on April 1, 2015April 1, 2015

I have just started working with a new batch of cane and it is very high quality. This is cane that was cut 2 years ago and is on the harder side. It seems more middle of the road and has been great with the Fox 2 shape for bassoon and Reiger K1 on contrabassoon. If you are interested in some reeds head over to King Bassoon Reeds or email me if you are interested in cane.

Contraforte Range

by Kris on March 11, 2015March 13, 2015

The usable range of the Contraforte is from A0-C5. This is an improvement on the contrabassoon range by a few steps. Although I know some very talented contra players that can play almost as high as any contraforte. Im mostly posting this so that composers are able to hear the timbre change of the different registers.

The Contraforte does not have a dependable high D but it is possible. Here I play the opening bassoon solo from Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, at actually pitch. I used an extremely thick reed with a lot of resistance.

Hindemith Sonata

by Kris on March 3, 2015March 3, 2015

Hindemith wrote such a wealth of music for solo instruments that almost every player in the orchestra has a piece. Hindemith wrote Sonatas for flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba, violin, viola, cello, bass, harp and even wrote for rare instruments like heckelphone. Double reed players particularly like Hindemith because so few works for solo were written for us during the early 20th century, and his are so idiomatic.

: Hindemith Playing Bassoon, 1940

The Hindemith Bassoon Sonata is a college bassoon recital ringer. It is harmonically interesting without being too taxing (for the bassoon player)

Hindemith’s music was banned from performance in Germany in 1936 and so he relocated to Switzerland. And in 1938 he wrote the oboe sonata and bassoon sonata.

The following year, still in Switzerland, he composed the clarinet sonata, trumpet sonata, harp sonata, french horn sonata, a viola sonata and a violin sonata.

Paul Hindemith died in 1963; in the last decade of his life he completed the tuba sonata, string bass sonata, organ concerto and sonata for four horns

Plastic Fantastic!

by Kris on February 24, 2015February 24, 2015

There is a new wave of music products that is aimed, not to be the very best, but to be accessible and affordable. There have been plastic woodwind instruments for many decades, and they are a more cost effective and durable choice for young players.

Now there is a new wave of plastic instruments that are lower quality and don’t try to compete with the real wooden instruments. These instruments are mostly made in Asia, and are mostly made from injection mold plastic.

Pbone and Ptrumpet

Tiger Brass

Nuvo

Vibrato Sax

Contrabass Instruments

by Kris on February 24, 2015February 24, 2015

Contrabass versions exist for almost every instrument now. Most of the newer instruments are scarcely written for and are mainly used in new music. There are a few newer companies making wind instruments that can go lower and lower. Eppelsheim makes my contraforte, as well as a very well received contrabass clarinet, tubax, and contrabass sax. Hogenhuis is popular making contrabass flutes.

Contrabass Recorders

Contrabass Flute

Contrabass Clarinet – Eppelsheim

Contrabass Saxophone

Subcontrabass Tuba

Octobass

Green Reed!?

by Kris on February 17, 2015February 17, 2015

I tried an experiment last week involving a Green Reed for Contraforte. I just harvested some cane in early January and decided to try to immediately make a reed out of it instead of letting it dry. And this is what turned out! I regular reed that sounded and acted like any other reed but it was fresh green cane and didnt need to be soaked in water before I played on it. The texture was similar to a very hard piece of cane so I had to make this thinner than I would normally. After a few days it started to dry out and warp and is now is playing very sharp. Next I’m going to try this on regular bassoon.

I would suggest trying it to all of the cane harvesters out there!

Practicing Difficult Passages

by Kris on February 4, 2015February 4, 2015

Sometimes as professional players we hit road blocks in our repertoire. As good as we think we are, and as prepared as we may be, there will always be a passage lurking out there which will require some work. So much of being a bassoon player is about playing in an appropriate and handsome way and blending with an orchestra. I have recently chosen a piece of music for an upcoming recital that is pushing my limits, I will be playing the Franck Cello Sonata on Contraforte. The recital is in about three months and I have in working on this piece for the last three weeks. At this point all of the “fun music” has been rehearsed as much as it needs to be and the technical passages now need to be “woodshed.”

Franck Cello Sonata (I had to repair some of the slurs)

I chose the Franck Cello Sonata because it really shows off the upper register of the Contraforte. I’m finding that I’m able to play extreme high note passages in an easier way than on the bassoon. This passage that I selected is one that I am finding to be particularly difficult to get up to tempo. It is getting better each day, but I think it is only due to switching up my practice techniques and thinking about the note groupings in new ways.

For this passage the beginning of measure 4 is a tricky spot, mostly this has to do with the fingering system on the Contraforte. These are the ways that I use to practice it:

These are the ways that I first use to learn a difficult spot of music. If after a few days the passage is still unplayable then I use a few different rhythms to add in. As a side note, I find practicing to be stressful. By micromanaging difficult passages like this, one can create “baby steps” that are achievable everyday. These rhythm studies are a way of taking the notes out of musical context and playing them as a mechanical technical exercise.

This second set of excercises is designed to focus on the notes. These help me when I am having trouble concentrating, or am practicing in the morning and still half asleep. Playing staccato isolated notes is a memorization technique. The sixteenth slurred pattern isolates the finger movement between the notes, I try to have “lightening fast” fingers. Play the note full length and then move to the next fingering as fast and efficiently as possible.