 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Joel Clifton
Date: 2005-02-16 01:18
I'm taking woodwind method classes at Miami U, and right now I'm playing the bassoon. A few weeks ago I decided it would be fun to try to make a bassoon reed. I know next to nothing about making them, but I enjoy a challenge. I ordered some reed blanks (pre-cut), a mandrel, string and wire from Woodwind Brasswind. Today I recieved the stuff and worked on a reed. Using just the mandrel, a train-flattened dime for a plaque and a sharp kitchen knife and a website with some instructions (Credit where credit is due, http://www.people.vcu.edu/~bhammel/main/bassoon/reeds/index.html), I had a reed made in a few hours. I tried it on the bassoon I've been playing for class, and it WORKS GREAT! I can get up to high D and everything!
I just had to share, I'm excited about it.
I guess someday I'll have to learn to make clarinet reeds.
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"You have to play just right to make dissonant music sound wrong in the right way"
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Author: dummer musiker
Date: 2005-02-16 02:06
Haha, I play bassoon. Ive been dying to learn to make my own reeds. Im really impressed that it plays for you....and plays great for that matter! Those things are impossible...
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats."
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Author: Mark Pinner
Date: 2005-02-16 04:24
Don't get too carried away. The law of averages would tend to suggest that the next 10 won't work. This is always the way when making double reeds. I make my own bassoon reeds and, reluctantly, sell them to other bassoonists. For playability, for me that is, out of every 10 reeds I probably get 3 to 4 that are usable. I like them quite hard, large shape, with a fairly tubby tip. I can always cut in the bottom for low note response. You will get more usable reeds the softer you scrape them and you can almost always elicit good high register response, even high D, by thinning the tip and leaving the back hard. If the reed is short it will play high fairly easily most of the time and Chinese cane, we have a brand here called Montrose, tends to like high.
One of my favourite reed knives is an old barbers cut throat razor which I cut of the handle end and stuck in a file handle. It is great because it is hollow ground and has a slightly curved blade which is better for finishing. In my case I use a small Swiss Army Knife and reed rush. You can use anything that works.
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Author: Joel Clifton
Date: 2005-02-16 13:41
I made another one, and it works great too!
This is fun. I may have to buy a bassoon when I get the money.
Kinda sucks that a student bassoon costs as much as a professional clarinet.
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"You have to play just right to make dissonant music sound wrong in the right way"
Post Edited (2005-02-16 13:43)
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Author: William
Date: 2005-02-16 15:19
It may be interesting to know that our college oboe professor could make a reed that would play--from "scratch"--in less than three minutes. In his spare time between students, he would make reeds and sell them commercially. That is, until the IRS discovered that he had not been claiming the "side business" income and had to pay seven years of double back taxes as a penalty.
After that, his speed was never quite the same.................but he remained a most popular instructor among his students and much respected by his academic peers until his retirement.
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Author: diz
Date: 2005-02-17 00:16
Mark ... have you started making that Contrabassoon yet?
Without music, the world would be grey, very grey.
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