The specifics of how I form blanks

First things first- I turn on my 7" digital TV purchased from CVS.  I don't exactly watch the TV- I listen and maybe glance at it now and then.  Dr. Phil provides the perfect backdrop for reedmaking; however, if there's nothing good on TV, I listen to operatic, symphonic or chamber music.

Prior to soaking, I sand the back of the dry cane (the non-bark side) with 320 grit sandpaper until it is as smooth as glass.  Then I soak the cane in water for at least 2 hours.  Then, with a pencil, I bisect the stick of cane across the exact center:

I use that line to center the cane on the shaper: 

 

A dime is the perfect screwdriver for the set screws on the shaper, which make an indentation of a circle at the center on the ends of the cane.  Those circles fit into raised circles on the profiler barrel, as you'll see later.

 I shape the cane with an exacto knife:

                                                        


When I take the cane off the profiler, the circle left by the set screw is visible.  It may be helpful to click on the photo below for a better view:

 The circle indented in the cane fits onto the raised circle on the profiler barrel:

 I use the profiler blade to cut a line on each end of the cane at the top of the collar:

I remove the barrel from the profiler in order to remove the top layer of bark with a knife, using the lines I just made as a border. This step preserves the profiler blade, so that I don't have to sharpen it as often:

 

Machine profiling comes next:

 

Here's the shaped and profiled piece of cane:

Next I score the bark using a scoring tool from Miller Marketing:

 

 I fold it over a knife (at the fold in the center created by the profiler) and place the end of a ruler at the fold. At 2 5/16 “ I mark the cane with a pencil to show the line where I’ll be cutting a small amount off each end of the cane:

Next I cut off each end (cutting on the line marked with pencil) with pruners:

Then I fold the reed, line up the edges, and apply a top wire at exactly 1″ from the bottom of the reed. I wrap string around the reed from the top wire down:

The next step may be foreign to many reed makers. I use a tool called parallel pliers (very, very difficult to find) to nudge open the wrapped tube:

Next I insert the forming mandrel, being careful not to twist the reed:

Then I unwrap the string at the very bottom of the reed to make room to add a temporary wire at the bottom of the tube to ensure roundness. I wrap this wire around the tube 3 times rather than the usual 2 times:

Ideally, I allow the blank to dry for at least 2 weeks. Once I remove the reed from the forming mandrel, I insert the reeds onto brass mandrel tips from Christlieb to ensure the proper shape of the tube.

After at least 2 weeks, I remove both wires from the dry blank:

Then I bevel using a sanding block made by Norman Herzberg.  Each end of the cane is sanded around 25 strokes or so- whatever it takes to make the ends of the reed halves meet perfectly.  The sanding takes place at the ends of the bark, from the bottom to 3/8" up:

Before beveling:  

After beveling:

 

 
Then I fold the reed and tie dry string around the bottom half of the tube (bark):

I apply the middle wire at 5/16' below the top wire (I can see the marks where the top wqire was placed:

Then I apply the bottom wire at 3/16" from the bottom of the reed, and the top wire at 1" from the bottom:

 

Next I apply Duco Cement along the edges of both sides from the middle wire down to the bottom to ensure that the binding never becomes loose:

I then wrap the reed with 100% cotton #3 size crochet thread, available at places like JoAnn Fabrics and Michael's Crafts:

 After wrapping, I cover the binding with Duco Cement and allow it to dry overnight: 

 

Next I mark the 2 1/8" line at the top of the reed:

Reaming is next, followed by smoothing the inside of the tube with a rat tale file if needed.  I use the holding mandrel on the right below to tell when I've reamed enough- when the reed fits down to the black line, I'm finished with reaming:

Then, after soaking the reed in water,  I cut the tip with a guillotine, at the pencil line I drew at 2 1/8":

 Then the tip is finished with a Reiger tip profiler:

Using a knife, I cut the corners at a 45 degree angle:

Sometimes, at this point the reed is finished.  Often it's necessary to refine, though, with a file, knife or sandpaper, removing cane in the area shaded below:

My finished reeds measure 2 1/8″ from top to bottom. The blade is 1 1/16″ long from the top of the collar to the tip, and the collar measures 1/16″. The bottom wire is 3/16″ from the bottom of the tube.  The top wire is 1″ from the bottom, and the middle wire is 5/16″ below the top wire.

Bassoon students often buy their cane already shaped and profiled so that the amount of work required to make the blanks is greatly reduced.

Vibrato

My vibrato history is odd, to say the least. During high school, my teacher didn’t believe in allowing kids to either use vibrato or play the Mozart Bassoon Concerto. (He was old school, for sure.) As a result of the vibrato ban, I developed a hangup about it. At the Eastman School of Music, I stood out as the freshman bassoonist with no vibrato. I can only imagine what Mr. Van Hoesen was thinking regarding his decision to accept me as a student! He begged for vibrato, but it just wouldn’t happen.

Then one day, Mr. Van Hoesen decided to try something unorthodox. He brought in a machine which measured air pressure. When its tube was inserted into a bassoonist’s mouth, the meter displayed any change in air pressure while the bassoonist played.

That machine changed my life. Instantly, I had vibrato, and it was pretty decent from the very start. I don’t know if that machine has worked miracles on any other students since then, but I do know that Mr. Van Hoesen asked me to help a couple of other students with their vibrato! His idea to use that machine on me was a stroke of genius.

Mr. Van Hoesen always encouraged his students to listen to recordings and live performances of the great singers, string players and pianists. That’s how we learned musicianship, including rubato and vibrato. He insisted that we take note of the way the vibrato changed according to the phrase.

One thing that I’ve noticed about vibrato from a bassoonist’s standpoint is that not only does each note on the bassoon vibrate differently, but some bassoons are more vibrato-friendly than others. In fact, I use vibrato as an important factor when evaluating an intrument. One bassoon which I liked in every other way ended up not being right for me because it was vibrato-resistant!

My new Heckel allows me to match the vibrato from note to note, without any notes sounding either too wild or too inflexible. It reminds me of the French basson in that regard.  I have always thought that the French basson lent itself to a very easy, natural vibrato.  Just listen to any recording of the great Maurice Allard! 

I practice vibrato by turning on the metronome to 60 and vibrating on long tones at either 4 or 5 pulsations per beat throughout the range. (I read an article recently which stated that vibrato sounds best at 4-6 pulsations per minute- any slower sounds wobbly. There was also speculation that pop singers' vibrato varies more in amplitude, whereas classical singers' vibrato varies more in pitch, and that the ideal classical pitch component varies by no more than a semitone around the main note.)

Inevitably, even when playing on the most agreeable of bassoons, some notes are going to be a bit tougher to control than others. Following the exercise described above, I play long tones with vibrato changing gradually from none to excessive and vise versa, with and without crescendos and decrescendos. It’s a great test of a bassoon and its player, I think, especially if the tuner is also involved!

Recently I discovered a trick that seems to work for students who are beginning to use vibrato (since I don’t have one of Mr. Van Hoesen’s air pressure gauges!): I ask students to produce vibrato on the reed by itself. It is extremely easy to produce vibrato on a reed, and hopefully that sense of ease can be carried over when the bassoon is added. I aim to avoid hangups!

My recording project

One of the first people I met when  I moved to Columbus was Harold Kohn, a chemist who also happened to be a symphony supporter and amateur bassoonist.  He lived a few blocks away and frequently stopped at my house for a chat, sometimes bassoon-related, sometimes not.

One morning my doorbell rang, and I opened the door expecting to find Harold standing there with his impish grin.  Instead, I found a very shaken Trueman Allison (a fellow bassoonist who was also close to Harold).  He  wanted to let me know that Harold was gravely ill. Although I was reluctant to intrude upon the gathering of Harold's family at what sounded like a deathbed vigil, Trueman convinced me that Harold would probably appreciate a visit from me.

I packed up my bassoon and headed for Harold's house.  His wife said he had been unresponsive for quite some time, but we went over to his bed and she asked him if he wanted me to play the bassoon.  We were both surprised that his eyes widened and he nodded his head.  So I played the bassoon next to his bed  while he laid there looking very ethereal.

He died shortly thereafter (which I hope had nothing to do with my playing), and his wife Janet asked me to play the bassoon again at his funeral.  It's fairly rare for a bassoonist to be called upon to play a role in a life passage event, and I was more nervous than I'd been in years.

Harold had been a fan of mine, and he had always thought that I should record a CD.  A few months before he died, Harold had started instructing me on how to bring it about.  So that I wouldn't become overwhelmed, he was giving me one step at a time.  First he had me identify the musicians I wanted to record with; then I asked them if they'd be interested.  Next I made a list of repertoire and ordered the music.

In a conversation with Janet after he died, she told me that she wanted to finish what Harold had started.  He had been planning to fund my recording project, she said, which I hadn't known, and she said she wanted to take over where her late husband had left off.

The Kohns' money had to be turned over to a musical organization in order for it to be available to fund this project.  Janet came up with the idea of having CityMusic Columbus take care of it, and Steve Rosenberg from CityMusic graciously asked me and my supporting musicians to perform on CityMusic's successful chamber music series as part of the deal.  The plan was that we would record shortly before our performance, and the concert would be billed as a CD release event.

I chose the recording engineer based on recommendations from other musicians.  I first became alarmed when we showed up for the recording sessions to find only one microphone, which the engineer placed up above the quartet. We wanted to complete the recording in one session, so we didn't have a lot of time for listening to playback. I listened to the opening of one piece, and it seemed fine, so we assumed there were no problems. Imagine our surprise at the end of the session when we listened to the recording and discovered that the bassoon-the solo instrument- was distant and unclear, while the accompanying strings came through like gangbusters!  Maybe the sound engineer could fix the balance, right? Wrong- there was only one track. That initial snippet that I had heard and approved early on during the session had been a poor choice for checking balance since the bassoon was playing a melody over a delicate pianissimo pizzicato accompaniment.

CityMusic did not approve the release of the funds to pay the recording engineer because of the glaring balance problem, which was a reasonable decision, but we didn't have enough money to pay for another recording session.  For a few days, we didn't know what to do, and the CD release concert was fast approaching.

Finally it became obvious that the only thing we could do would be to record the concert. Rather than carefully recording and editing this once-in-a-lifetime CD, it would be a live recording. (I would have chosen easier repertoire if I had known it would turn out this way!)

The acoustics for the live performance were dead and dry- anything but inspiring!  The temperature in the venue was around 90 degrees because the fan had to be turned off for recording.  I had all I could do to try to keep the pitch down as the temperature soared.  As luck would have it, part of the deal for this particular performance was that I would do a lot of talking to connect with the audience. (I wouldn't have minded doing that if the concert had indeed been our CD release event.) The last thing I felt like doing during a stressful live recording session was providing stand-up comedy between pieces!

When the unedited recording was finally completed, my disappointment with the way things had turned out paled by comparison to the relief of having the ordeal finished.  I can just imagine what Harold, with his dry New York sense of humor, would have had to say about all of this!

Bassoon basics for teachers and young students

1. Breathing: Use abdominal breathing. Practice breathing by lying on your back on the floor with a heavy book on your abdomen. The book should rise when you inhale and sink when you exhale.

2. Sitting position: Sit up straight in the chair, leaning slightly forward with your hips acting as a fulcrum. Your head should be in a natural position, looking straight forward, not looking up or down. Adjust the height of the bassoon so that the reed easily aims straight into your mouth.  Your sitting posture should be the same with or without the bassoon; if you are contorting to accommodate the bassoon, then it's time to readjust.

3. Embouchure: Wrap your lips completely around your teeth. (The teeth never touch the reed.) All pressure on the reed is applied from above. (Never push up on the reed!) If your embouchure is too tight you will constrict the reed, preventing it from vibrating. Your embouchure needs flexibility so that it can loosen for lower notes and tighten for higher notes.

4. Reed placement: Be sure not to place the reed too far into your mouth- generally, aim to insert about half of the blade. More of the reed should be inserted into your mouth for high notes and less for low notes.

5. Sound concept: It’s advisable to listen to recordings of bassoonists to develop a tonal goal. The solo recordings or YouTube videos of Klaus Thunemann, Gustavo Nunez, Judith leClair, Nadina Mackie Jackson, Bernard Garfield and Milan Turkovic are highly recommended.

6. Intonation: One of the most challenging aspects of bassoon playing is intonation. Most notes on the instrument have a lot of pitch flexibility, and bassoonists need help finding the correct pitches.  Electronic tuners and phone apps can be used, and using a keyboard to play the pitches is very helpful as well.

7. Rhythm: Rhythm is a critical aspect of performance, and metronome practice is essential. When sight reading, remember that rhythm is top priority. If the rhythm is right, other flaws can be overlooked, but if the rhythm is flawed, nothing else matters.

8. Musicianship: Musical sense is best learned from listening to lots of performances and recordings of great singers, string players and pianists.

9. Vibrato: When learning vibrato, it’s helpful to practice pulsating (loud-soft-loud-soft, etc.) in a set rhythm on long tones. (Try it on the reed alone first!) For example, with the metronome at 60, pulsate 2 times per beat, and when that becomes reliable, try 3 times per beat, then 4, then 5.  But first make sure that your straight tones are steady!   (Practice long tones with and without crescendos and diminuendos to stabilize your straight tones.)

10. Practicing: Never practice a mistake! If your playing isn’t accurate during a practice session, don’t continue - stop, fix the problem, then proceed.  Fix problems by slowing down!  Find a tempo at which you can play the passage, and become rock solid at that tempo before increasing it. It often helps to make up little customized exercises. For example, you may wish to focus on just one interval at first, and then gradually add more notes one at a time. Applying dotted rhythms or other rhythms is often helpful, and removing all articulation so that you are slurring everything is a great way to ensure accurate finger motion. If the problem persists despite your careful efforts, take a break.

11. Care of instrument: The bassoon should never be laid down. Disassemble it and put it in its case (being sure to swab the boot!) if you don’t have access to a bassoon stand. The bocal should be cleaned once a month, preferably with a bocal swab. Key oil should be applied every few months to each moving part.