Second Bassoon

I have decided to stop doing this 'blog'. But I'll be doing much the same thing on my new web site: www.andrewstowell.com through which you can buy the bassoon reeds that I make. 

Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

I've had an e-mail from someone who says that there's a second bassoon vacancy in an opera/ballet company coming up at the end of the year (not in the UK). There will be auditions and she wants to know what she can expect so that she can start preparing in good time.

1) Make sure you won't need to take your instrument for an overhaul a week before the audition.

2) Make sure you don't hit a reed crisis a week before the audition.

3) If the job is second bassoon and they ask you to play a piece of your own choice, don't choose something whizzing around the very top of the instrument. And choose something that you can play note-perfectly every time. There will be too many other distractions for you to be worrying about your fingers. But, having said that, don't play mechanically. They will be looking for a player who is not only bomb- proof but also a great musician.

4) At the Royal Opera House, here in London, an audition panel these days will very seldom give unprepared sight-reading to a candidate but a fairly long list of excerpts might be sent out. This would normally be sent out at least a month in advance. But if you only get it a few days before the audition, don't whinge about it; it's probably the same for everyone.

5) If you want to get ahead of the competition, find out what repetoire the orchestra has played in the last couple of years, get hold of miniature scores or parts and CD's and see if there's anything nasty they can spring on you. Or you can get CD ROM's of complete orchestral parts put together by http://www.orchmusiclibrary.com/ . There are various alternative outlets (e.g. http://www.forrestsmusic.com/music2.htm )
Don't forget that the excerpts list will have been put together by the principal player(s) putting their heads together over a cup of coffee and, of course, more recently played pieces are going to spring to mind.

6) You might get excerpts from the symphonic repertoire as well as opera and ballet and first bassoon as well as second bassoon passages

7) At the ROH they have a history of asking second bassoon candidates to play the Rite of Spring opening and the top E passage from the Ravel Piano Concerto. I think that's ridiculous, but maybe you should be prepared and have a high note reed and/or crook with you.

8) Likely pieces might include:
Figaro Overture; the opening and the similar bit a little later and also the repeated A natural repeated quavers.
Otello
Siegfried
Rheingold
Walkure
Madam Butterfly (opening and some of the low, quiet passages)
Trovarore (opening of Act 3)
Bartered Bride Overture
Ravel Piano Concerto (fast quavers in the last movement)

 Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

This Youtube clip is amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZjrHBycCKI 

And I found a rather more serious clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDnaxQ4_3vs 

Plus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMhJV5u_OSE on the lighter side.

 Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

I consider a reed to be at the end of its useful life when the wires on the dry reed appear loose because the cane has shrunk back and it needs to be soaked for more than a minute or so for the wires to become tight once more. Or when you need to keep re-wetting in water during a performance. Or when tell-tale notes that tend to be sharp are causing too much trouble. Or when the pitch of the crow of the reed has risen in pitch by a tone (if, say, it started its life off on an E flat and becomes an F).

At this point, the reed should be moved out of active service to join its fellow retired combatants in an old shoe box somewhere at the back of a wardrobe.

There are some methods to keep an old reed going but I regard them all as less than satisfactory.

1) You can scrape the reed to loosen it up.

2) You can dip it in hydrogen peroxide (a bleach). This produces a dramatic fizzing but only limited life extension.

3) Some players use an ultra-sonic water bath. These are used by jewellers and opticians and maybe it does help a bit.

 Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . 

I know this is not a specifically bassoon related topic, but I am really annoyed by listening to background music in public places. There is a link at http://www.pipedown.info/index.php?id=8&cmd=news to a petition against Muzak and televisions in hospitals here in the UK. It only takes a minute or so to sign.

Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

Like many things about reeds, what happens when you 'break in' a new reed is surrounded by a good deal of myth, mystique and arcane mumbojumbo. But what happens is actually quite straightforward.

First, let's see what a reed is made of. Get a piece of gouged (not profiled) cane. Put one end in a glass of water and blow through the cane. You will see a vast number of bubbles coming out of the end. Thus, you can see that cane is made up of hundreds of tiny tubes along its length. When it's growing, the plant uses these tubes to transport water and nutrients to its leafs. These tubes are tiny - I'm guessing, but maybe a twentieth of a millimeter or less in diameter, but they can and do absorb water.

Next, Arundo Donax (the plant that we use for cane) is a species of bamboo and related to crops like sugar cane, so it produces sugars when it is growing. After it has been harvested these sugars turn to starch. (The same thing that happens to sweet corn if left hanging around at the greengrocers).

When you first start to use a new reed, your saliva will have an effect on it. Saliva contains an enzyme which is the first of many chemical attacks on the food we eat. This enzyme is called amylase and converts starch into sugars. (Try this: with a nice clear palette, eat some plain boiled potato and after chewing it for a few seconds see how sweet it tastes. This taste is the sugars created by amylase converting the starch). This process happens to the starch in a new reed and the sugars are then dissolved away. So the cane will change a little after it has been used the first few times.

The other more important thing that happens is that those tiny tubes get clogged up and the reed absorbs less water. This makes it harder (i.e. more resistant). A brand new reed need only be soaked in water for a second or two to work but will, after as little as 10 to 15 minutes, become water-logged. So, never make adjustments to a new reed for longer than this. If you put a dab of nail varnish on the very end of the reed that goes on the crook, water will be absorbed less easily and the reed will blow in more quickly although, conversely, it will be worn out earlier as well. Another way of hastening the blowing in is to wipe the blades between finger and thumb so that some grease from the skin rubs off on to the ends of those tiny tubes thereby hastening the clogging-up process.

Before they are fully blown in, some reeds are prone, in pianissimos, to making that fuzzy 'frying bacon' sound. The only thing that I know of to get rid of this is to apply a tiny amount of grease (lip-salve or cork grease or Vaseline petroleum jelly) to the inside of the reed for the first millimetre or so. Do this very carefully with a plaque. Although this is a useful 'quick-fix', I think that it makes the reed a bit bland and lifeless when it's in its prime and probably shortens its active life. In the same way, if you've used Chapstick or Lipsyl to stop your lips from drying out and chapping, always wipe it off your lips before playing or the longevity of your reed will be drastically compromised.

I've heard that Ron Thorndycraft is retiring from his position as Second Bassoon in the Northern Symphonia. I believe he was the longest serving bassoonist in a full-time UK orchestra. This accolade will now, I think, be held by Brian Wightman at English National Opera. (Brian was killed in a road accident on 15th July 2007; more details at www.andrewstowell.com ).

Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

I've thought about giving this advice before but thought it was a bit obvious. I was carrying my bassoon by the bell when it was one week old. The bell came apart from the rest of the instrument which then landed on a stone floor. All the keys down the front of the instrument were bent and some of the varnish was damaged. Now I hear that one of my fellow socond bassoons in a major London orchestra has done the same. On a concert platform this time; the tenon on the wing joint got broken off. I'm pleased to report that all is now mended though. So, please, never hold your bassoon by the bell joint (or anyone else's!). You never know how tightly that tenon fits.

Please note that this web site is no longer active. It has been replaced with www.andrewstowell.com . Do take a look.

Back in October, I went through how to test your bassoon for air-tightness. Now let's find out how to find where the  leak you probably found is coming from.

Most major leaks are caused by pads that have bacome hard, damaged or unseated (perhaps by the keywork being knocked out of alignment) or not being pressed down far enough (perhaps an adjusting cork needs replacing) or a spring has come adrift.

To work out where a leak is, you can:

1) Instead of sucking when doing a vacuum test, inhale some cigarette smoke and then blow and see where the smoke comes out. Disgusting really!

2) Or you can get a friend to try to  feel for any escaping air as you blow or to try pushing down on each pad as you suck.

3)Make a thin strip of cigarette paper and use this as a 'feeler' round the edge of each pad. It should have equal resistance all round the pad when you pull it out.

4)This next method is rather time consuming, but is quite foolproof. Get hold of a roll of a type of Sellotape called 'Magic Tape' or 'Pressure Sensitive Tape' and stick it over each hole on the joint where the leak is and then press it down firmly with the pad. If you use ordinary Sellotape, you will find that, when you remove it, it might bring some varnish from around the hole with it. If you use Magic Tape (which can be stuck to paper and unpeeled with no damage) and this still happens, the varnish was loose before you started and would have been a source of a leak in any case. Next perform the vacuum test and if it improves it, you'l know that at least one pad will need to be replaced or reseated. Then it's just a matter of removing each bit of Magic Tape in turn to find where the problem lies. Then replace pads as necessary. Pads will last a long time if properly looked after. Most importantly, they should never get wet. But in the real world, pads do get hard or deteriorate.

If all the pads on your instrument are OK, we must look elsewhere for a leak. Check that there no cracks in the instrument. These really only occur in brand new or very old, neglected, instruments. We have at this stage to confront the uncomfortable fact that maple wood (which all German system bassoons are made of (French ones use rosewood)) is porous. This porosity is greatly reduced by oiling the bore(see: http://secondbassoon.blog.com/2006/7/  ) but still we need to close things up as much as we can.

First, if there are any chips in the varnish, repair them. Clear nail varnish is fine. To apply tiny amounts, use a tooth pick. Next, seal up (again with nail varnish) all the  bits of exposed end grain at the ends of each joint. For example, round where the crook fits in.

Then tackle the base of the butt joint. Unless this has already had some leak-proofing treatment or it is a new and well made bassoon, it will leak. To demonstrate this, get a bowl of water a couple of inches deep, take off the metal cap and carefully submerge the u-bend until the water reaches the varnish (don't get the A flat or G holes wet) then close up the joint as you do in the vacuum test and blow. Bubbles will come out. They may come from the cork gasket to the u-bend in wich case first check the screws are tight enough (finger tight plus another eighth of a turn with pliers is about right) and then check that there is a tiny smear of Vaseline petroleum jelly (grease) on the cork and, if necesary, replace the cork. This is a straightforward process but take care to get cork thick enough to be just the right thickness after it's been compressed for a long time. There will probably be a leak from under the metal collar thing through the wood. If the collar thing is actually loose, you'll need to take it to a good repairman but you'll probably be able to stop the leak by melting candle wax (Americans call this paraffin wax, I think) into the join between metal and wood or sealing it with nail varnish (first put some masking tape over the varnish on the surface of the instrument to keep it looking neat) or  doing both.

If your bassoon's air-tightness needs further improvement, you might need to dub microscopic amounts if nail varnish round each pillar that supports the keywork. Finally, rub some beeswax all over the outside of the instrument (but not on the pad seats) with a soft cloth and then polish off. You'll probably need to remove keywork to do this, so do a bit at a time. Don't lose any screws, make sure that each screw goes back where it came from and don't stab yourself with a spring! Can anyone tell me why the springs on a bassoon have such a sharp point on them?

All this is very time consuming, but not highly skilled so, if you're reasonably good at working with your hands, you can save yourself a bill from a repairman and, by spending longer doing it, get a better job done.

A bassoon that has gone through this treatment will transform your playing especially in very quiet or low passages.

In October 2005, I mentioned  http://www.ellistrations.com . They now have a blog http://ellistrations.blogspot.com/ . Whilst not full of deep musicological insight or being aimed at the hardened professional musician, it might bring a smile to your face. And they sell T-shirts etc featuring various instruments http://www.ellistrations.com/Bassoonaticshirt.htm .