Where are all the double reeders?

As most of us know, each symphony orchestra requires (at least) two oboists and two bassoonists. In my town, with 40.000 citizens (Ålesund - Norway), there are no bassoonists and one oboist. (Yes, that's me) Still, there are hundreds of clarinetists. Where have all the double reeders gone?

Are oboists and bassoonists more common in other places? Capitals or big cities? Tell me your experiences!

I will go to Ålesund and play Bassoon for you. How much do you pay?

Double reed instruments are very much a dying breed all over the world, yet there are loads of flute and clarinet players.

Strange, isn't Ålesund a reasonably large town?

Caltech, a university with only 900 undergrads and 1200 grad students, has a perpetual surplus of oboists (never fewer than 5 or so at any given point in the time I was there), and a shortage of clarinetists (never more than 2 at any given time), oddly enough.

The quantity of each type of instrumentist back here is quite balanced.

I just know around 3 oboists (my oboe teacher, another oboe teacher, and myself) around my area (in a town north of Toronto, Canada), and I know practically no bassoonists. ._.

I*ve been playing in orchestras of diffrent difficulti here in Partille-Sweden (33 000 inhabitatnts) for years now, ONCE I've had obeoists playing, once in 5½ years. We have bassons though, in almost evry orchestra (only one in the symhphony orchestra though :glare: )

I play bassoon. The scary thing is, I live in a reasonably suburban/rural area, and one of my closest friends is an avid bassoonist, also. We have two oboeists (spelling?) in our town's small high school. No shortage of clarinets or flutes, though.

I'm an avid bassoonist. There will be 4 of us next year at my college, Drury University in Missouri. I've seen much larger colleges have only 1 or 2 bassoonists. It seems less and less are keeping with the instrument if they start it, and while it's bad for the longevity of the instrument, it's good for me :P

I live in a town of 16,000, and our school, including me, has only had two serious bassoonists in at least 20 years. We start a lot of young bassoonists, but they quit within a year or so. They don't like all the "buttons".

St. John's has 200,000 people in it and I know of one oboeist and one bassoonist.. there, there should be one more bassoonist. :):(

It should be me.

Amen! Bassoon is such a fun instrument... bwahaha. I like playing the low low Bb. It's the foghorn.

Amen! Bassoon is such a fun instrument... bwahaha. I like playing the low low Bb. It's the foghorn.

Try this next time you have two bassoons together. Take the bell from one and put it on top of the other, so you have two bells end to end. You can hit low A, whee.

Oh my goodness... *falls over with delight*

In my little town.................

I am one of only like 3 other true musicians

By true musicians I mean people that actually Study music. Every time I go to a music store and pick up one of the classicals (there's usually only 1 or 2 in the whole store) And when I start to play, everyone in the store looks at me like I'm a weird freak for playing differently.

Anyway, I don't know of any Basoonists or Oboeists in my little town. My neighbor plays clarinet, but the Classical genre of music here is pretty much unheard of to the everyday person.

I have a quick question about Basoon, someone on the forum once said that if you hit the wrong note (or something like that) the basoon lets out a horrible little 'musical fart noise' as I called it

Anybody know what I'm talking about? I'd like to know if it was Basoon or Oboe

If by wrong note you mean wrong fingering, then it depends on the note. Some produce truly wretched sounds if you get them wrong, while others wont play at all. Now, the bassoon can do multiphonic chords with itself, which is awesome, and very fun. I can play a split-octave Gb on my old bassoon, I've yet to see if my new one will do it.

Yeah, well I can make my saxophone make awesome sounds by putting a can in it and playing low C!!

Take that bassoonists.

I wish I could be a bassoonist.

Try blowing raspberries down the bell! Sounds like a didgeridoo!

In my city, Southampton (England), we have a special scheme where every child in about 20 primary schools across the city is given an opportunity to learn an instrument in school. They try to split it equally between the different instruments, and they have mini bassoons called 'faggottini's' which are about 1/3 of the length of a proper bassoon!

I play the bassoon, there are 5 bassoonists in my school (1050 in school altogether- quite small!) and lots of oboists! But we are a specialist music school. There are hundreds of flutes and clarinets! They take over the school concert band!

In my youth orchestra, there are 4 oboes including an english horn, and 4 bassoons including a contrabassoon! It's so cool! They get it hired to them by Southampton Music Service. I'd love to have a go on it!

In my wind band there are 3 bassoons and 2 oboes. I think in the whole city there's about 100 bassoons and 300 oboes! There's 2 bassoon teachers I know of and at least 1 oboe teacher.

So double reeds are definitely making a come back where I live!

This year there will be 4 bassoonists at my college, maybe one of them will play contrabassoon, I don't know yet. It's going to be fun, the two new players are supposed to be amazing. I can't wait to meet them. I hope we can do a bassoon ensemble.

I never really understood this whole thing with double reeds and their crazy reeds.

I don't play a double reed instrument, but I recall my friends who played oboe were always special ordering their reeds from like, a small village east of Guanajuato, Mexico where a young boy with hands agile as a cat would carefully carve and assemble the reeds into a perfect, personalized form and send them once a month in a velvet package wrapped in only the finest recycled platinum-wheat twine. And charge a lot.

I mean, I know that's an exaggeration, but don't you guys have expensive reed bills? Or isn't making them difficult? Just curious.

My reeds are $22 a piece. They can last a single performance, or up to 4 months. Depends on the quality of the cane and the craftsmanship, as well as humidity etc.

geez louise, remind me to never complain about buying a BOX of reeds for $22 again!!

Double reed making is indeed a skill. I have made my own Bassoon reeds for a few years now and that cuts down the raw material cost to about 33 pence per reed. However, the machinery (I have about £2500 worth of reedmaking tools) and time required to make a reed is what gives it the high price.

I enjoy making my reeds though - and it it this coming week that I have my yearly two-week marathon reed making session whilst watching Wimbledon. I hope to make at least a couple of hundred reeds in the next two weeks.

man, with a competent level of skill, the benefit of that has got to WAY outweigh the cost, eventually in effect paying for not just the equipment but for every reed you paid a ton of money for over your entire life! How long did it take you to get good at it?

I took a clarinet reed making master class a couple times but never invested in the equipment to make my own reeds. I never really got to the point that I found it necessary. But I always thought that would be a cool thing to do. Knowing me, though, I probably would have ended up going too far with it and buying a personalized branding iron that said "Giselle" in script so I could mark them and pretend like I used specialty reeds.

Are bassoon reeds a lot different from oboe reeds, besides size?

Are bassoon reeds a lot different from oboe reeds, besides size?

Here:

man, with a competent level of skill, the benefit of that has got to WAY outweigh the cost, eventually in effect paying for not just the equipment but for every reed you paid a ton of money for over your entire life! How long did it take you to get good at it?

I took a clarinet reed making master class a couple times but never invested in the equipment to make my own reeds. I never really got to the point that I found it necessary. But I always thought that would be a cool thing to do. Knowing me, though, I probably would have ended up going too far with it and buying a personalized branding iron that said "Giselle" in script so I could mark them and pretend like I used specialty reeds.

Are bassoon reeds a lot different from oboe reeds, besides size?

They are quite different, yes. And so far as making clarinet reeds goes, I have made one sucessfully - freehand with just a normal reed knife. It had a reasonable tone and stability, but I wouldn't bother making them for myself, as they are not financially worth it considering the amount of time a batch of reeds would take to make!

Bassoon reeds and oboe reeds are quite different, though they work on the same basic principle. The two reeds face each other and are held together by some form of wrap. However, that's where the similiarities end. The shape of the reeds are different - the bassoon reed tapers much more than the oboe reed. Also, the oboe reed requires a 'staple' whereas the bassoon reed doesn't. A staple is a metal (usually brass) tube with cork on the end of it. The cork fits into the oboe, and on the other end of the metal tube is the reed, held on by a very tight binding of thread (usually nylon) and sometimes assisted with some brass wire. The optional brass wire does at least one of two things: helps hold the reed onto the staple and/or maintains the shape of the reed. Finally, the scrape of the oboe and bassoon reeds are quite different.

So yes, the oboe and bassoon reeds are quite different!

WOW!

I am glad I asked all these questions, it has been very enlightening. I feel somewhat powerful with my new knowledge (strangely enough). Thank you. I had no idea that the difference was so great - I have always really liked the bassoon sound but didn/t know much about the instrument itself except that it required a more interesting use of the thumb than as simply a "resting stub." I really appreciate you taking the time to explain all this stuff.'

Yeah, I couldn't justify the clarinet reed equipment. The primary thing that piqued my interest in the process was when they demonstrated a piece of equipment that could mimic any reed you wanted to closely duplicate. The instructor took a reed that I had at the time sort of revered as a magic reed of no faults (I mean, I was practically scraping the mold off of it every time I pulled it out because I refused to rid myself of its perfection :D ) and he showed how to take a decent piece of cane and almost replicate this golden reed. It played fantastically after I finished it! I sort of wish I could do that all the time...but since I don't play seriously these days it's not even worth considering :glare: