What do bassoons sound like

And with a bassoon having such a large range, it is particularly obvious that the loudness of the overtones compared with each other and the fundamental varies across the range, giving the characteristic change in timbre one notices as one plays up the scale from bottom to top. It is also worth mentioning that at least some of the differences in timbre between bassoons will be caused by very small differences in bore diameter from one bassoon to another. In many early bassoons the bore was widened or narrowed at various points to affect the sound in different ways.

A good example of this on the bell joint, where the exterior of the wood bulges out into a ball shape — in early bassoons the interior of the bore would have been hollowed out to match the exterior, impacting the voicing of the bassoon. On modern bassoons, though, the bore is uniformly conical throughout, but we have retained the ball shaped bulge on the bell joint, probably purely for aesthetic purposes.

View bassoons. See all accessories. Back News and Guides. Why does the bassoon sound like a bassoon? April 17th, Previous Article. However, an oboe reed is attached to a short piece of metal, while a bassoon reed consists solely of the reed itself, and is inserted into the long metal tube of the bocal before being used to produce sound. To counteract this, the reed which is the part that produces the sound , is made larger.

It is often thought that the sound of the bassoon is difficult for bassoonists themselves to hear, since the bell is high up at the top of the instrument.

For brass instruments that have no openings through the rest of their structure, the bell is the only place where sound can emerge. However, a woodwind instrument like a bassoon has many tone holes, so sound can escape through any holes that are not being covered at any given time. That said, the very lowest note of a bassoon can be somewhat difficult to hear. Since the bassoon is a tall, slender instrument, the positions of the tone holes are comfortably spaced some distance apart over its full length.

For this reason, with the very lowest tone coming from the bell alone and the note one tone higher coming from tone holes below the bell, sound emerges from farther down the instrument as the pitch becomes higher.

However, after the lowest hole is reached around the tenor joint the point at which the instrument folds back on itself , the pattern reverses and the pitch instead rises as the tone hole positions climb higher. For those performers who sit in front of the bassoon in an orchestra or small ensemble, this can create the eerie sensation of the sound seeming to move around behind them. Curious to hear what the bassoon, basson and contrabassoon sound like?

Check out these audio clips. This posting is excerpted from the Yamaha Musical Instrument Guide. Click here for more information about Yamaha bassoons. All rights reserved. Bassoons can be extremely expressive as solo instruments and their warm vibrato enables them to sound remarkably human, a little like a resonant baritone singer. They are also great for creating punchy rhythmic lines and as bass instruments they help provide support for the whole orchestra. Because of their versatility, bassoons have been used in orchestras for a very long time.

There are a variety of larger and smaller bassoons, but these days the most commonly used additional member of the bassoon family is the contrabassoon which sounds an octave lower than the bassoon. The bassoon is tricky to play; it is one of the only instruments that uses all ten fingers, thumbs included. Keep up to date about online concerts, behind the scenes content and much more. Follow us. Sign up for email updates and be the first to receive stories, films and concert announcements.

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