Texas Bandmasters Association
Bandmasters Review • December 2013
14
Halt! Please Step Away from the
Bassoon!
All too often, I encounter the
following situation in lessons: a
talented young bassoonist performs
a solo or etude fairly well from a
technical standpoint, but there are
too many pitch and tone quality
issues throughout the entire work
for it to be truly satisfactory. In
their pursuit for note accuracy,
they let their air and embouchure
fundamentals fall by the wayside.
Usually at this point, I work
with the individual away from the
instrument for a bit in front of a
mirror. Without the cumbersome
instrument in the way, we are
able to focus on exactly how the
embouchure, air, and reed are
interacting. One of the keys to a
full, rich bassoon sound is to rely
heavily on air support and to use an
embouchure that is only as firm as
necessary, and this focus can greatly
improve many common pitch and
tone quality issues. Everything that
is done to the reed directly affects
what comes out of the instrument,
so it is important to occasionally
isolate that element.
What follows are some of the
areas I like to address using just
the reed and the reed+bocal. And
for the purposes of this article,
any notes referenced are numbered
according to middle C as C4.
Breathing
One relatively easy way to make
an immediate, positive impact
on the sounds coming out of the
bassoon is to focus on the air that
first enters the lungs. If you form
the word “how” as you breathe in, it
accomplishes several things at once:
it brings the corners of the mouth
in to help form the embouchure, it
opens and relaxes the throat which
leads to a fuller sound, and a large
amount of air can be inhaled within
a relatively short amount of time. In
addition, you can encourage deep,
full breaths by focusing on filling
up the bottom of the lungs first,
and by letting the lungs expand
primarily in horizontal directions
(front-to-back, and side-to-side).
Too much upward expansion while
breathing in may lead to shallow
breaths and tension in the neck and
shoulders.
It is also recommended to use a
top-lip reference point on the reed.
Leaving the top lip on the reed and
dropping the lower jaw to breathe
helps keep the airway relaxed and
open, the pitch low, and the tone
full. Take care that the jaw is not
forced down, as that may lead to
severe jaw issues later in life.
Embouchure
Because of the lack of a hard
mouthpiece, the bassoon reed
requires an embouchure that
has equal, steady pressure all the
way around the reed, with the
corners pulled in towards each
other. A good reference point for
the position of the corners is to
keep them roughly in line with the
incisors (the “vampire” teeth). This
type of embouchure helps keep
the tip of the reed open and evens
out the pitch and tone quality
inconsistencies throughout the
different registers of the bassoon.
Dr. Nathan Koch