Up to now, you probably thought you could never make your own bassoon. So formidable are the obstacles in such a project, that you may have convinced yourself that it is impossible, if not difficult. In fact, it has been my experience that many people who would otherwise love to make their own bassoon, have so sublimated this unconventional desire that they now profess to know nothing of it; they claim they never held such a notion, they maintain the whole idea is preposterous, they pretend they are not interested and would I please go away or they will call the police. Nevertheless, I forgive them. I can recall a time when I, too, was unaware of my own secret desire to build a bassoon.
When an alcoholic wants to stop drinking, he must first admit to himself that he is sick. If he denies this fact, he cannot be helped. So it is with Bassoon-Psychosis (Pardon me, dear reader, if I occasionally inject a medical term into our discussion. I will try to avoid being overly technical, but for those of you who wish to delve further into the medical aspects of bassoonophilia, I recommend Thirty Years with the Philharmonic, or My Life as a Bassoon, by Norman Sedgwick, noted schizophrenic.[1]
People who won't admit they want to make a bassoon have to first be shown why they would be happier with a homemade bassoon. I will enumerate the reasons:
(1)A homemade bassoon is a status symbol. It effectively separates you from the rest of humanity and proclaims your individuality. It makes your neighbors so jealous they could spit.
(2)It is a worthwhile hobby. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment. It is cheaper than bowling and it makes your neighbors jealous.
(3)It is different. When you are through, you don't have a coffee table or a lamp. When you ate finished, you have a bassoon! Think of that! Be sure your neighbors know that, too.
(4)Each time you play your finished bassoon, it will give you a feeling of immense satisfaction to know that you and only you ate responsible for the sound that is causing your neighbors to miss this week's episode of Peyton Place.
Now that you are convinced, I can proceed to the actual instruction.[2] First you must decide whether you want to build the bassoon slowly or quickly. Those of you who want to build it quickly, you go out right now and chop down a maple tree. Go ahead. Meanwhile, those of you that wish to proceed slowly, you go out and find a sunny spot in your back yard and plant a maple seed carefully. There. Put a little water on it ... good, good. Now wait right there. I will come back to you later.[3]
Are you other people back already? You must now bore a hole through the center of your tree then chop the tree into ten-foot sections. Each section will make one bassoon.
Now comes the difficult part. I didn't tell you about this part before, because if I had, you might not have gone out and chopped down the maple tree, right? Psychology, you see.
What you have to do next is to wrap each ten-foot section around a curved object so that it will be bent like a hairpin. Bending a ten-foot tree is a problem, but I might suggest that you soak it in water first, to soften it up.
Once the tree is bent, the rest is easy. Drill some finger-holes in it and put on lots of keys. (It doesn't matter how many; you can't have too many keys on a bassoon.) Just a minute - I hope you haven't gone and put the keys on yet; I forgot to tell you to stain the wood red, and varnish it. I know what some of you are thinking: why color it red? Why not blue? Or chartreuse? The answer is simple: I am the only one who makes different colored bassoons. After all, I must keep my individuality, too, and besides, one of you may be my neighbor someday, and how else will I make you jealous?
To finish off your bassoon, put a white ring on the top and saw the bassoon into sections. A store-bought bassoon usually comes in four or five sections, so that it will fit into a smaller case, but there is no reason for you to stop at merely five parts. It stands to reason that the more parts a bassoon has, the smaller case it will need. So you may wish to continue sawing it up until it fits into whatever size case you have on hand. For example, you may wish to carry your bassoon in the glove compartment of your car. In that case, saw it into 400 pieces. (Volkswagen-owners: 720 pieces.) I once made a bassoon so small that I was unable to find a case small enough to contain it. Applying the same principle to the cases that I applied to the bassoon, I cut the case into 56 pieces which made the case small enough to fit the bassoon.
You will have to make a bocal for your bassoon. The bocal is the curved metal tube which fits on the near end of the instrument. It can be made by boring out an appropriate length of wire coat-hangar, or you may wish to prepare the bore first and then enclose it with metal. Either way, you have the bocal.
In addition, you now have several unused ten-foot sections of maple tree. Don't throw them away.[4] You may one day wish to become a two-bassoon family, or for purposes of impressing your neighbors even more, you may want to make a summer bassoon for your summer home in the mountains. Status knows no bounds.
On Saturday afternoons, you can casually bring out your completed bassoon onto your front porch and wash and wax it. You may want to attach a small raccoon tail to the bocal, for a sporty look. You will, of course, allow your oldest boy the use of the family bassoon during his high school years, providing he promises to observe the posted metronome markings, and signals before each turn (or trill.)
All in all, your bassoon will give you more status than you ever had before, and you will find your life changed by it. Suddenly you become a member of that country club that you always wanted to be in (you remember: the one that accepts "Bassoon-Makers Only; No Clarinet-Makers Need Apply"). And the home of your desires becomes available at last (they wouldn't sell to you before without a homemade bassoon, your family might have lowered property values). Even such a simple event as a vacation trip becomes a memorable experience as you find yourself guided to a "Bassoon-Makers Only" section of a restaurant, you drink from the "Bassoon-Makers" portion of the drinking fountain, and pass undisturbed through doors marked: "Bassoon-Makers, MEN."
Raise high the symbol of our status: our homemade bassoons. Let the sight of all of us, banded together and waving our bassoons wildly, strike fear into the hearts of our opponents. And as they rush upon us, speaking noisily of equal rights and fair treatment, let us join hands amid the attack and resolutely put our bassoons to our mouths and let the resultant sound be our battle cry.
If only I knew how to make a bassoon reed!
[ John Steinmetz of Valencia, California suggested the re-printing of this article over; four years ago, that much time has been required to trace down the author, but we are at last ready. From Mr. Rudoff's letter,
"Reprint permission for "How To Make a Bassoon" is granted .
. . I too think it would be a good idea to make bassoonists aware of how to make
their own instrument. They have, after all, been making their own reeds for
years. To make the test of the bassoon, you just have to cut a little more off
the tree. . . "
[1]Other books of interest: Dr. Bradford Bunter's The Fifty-Minute Bassoon, I Dreamed I Was A Bassoon Mit A Maidenform Bocal, by Sigmund Froider, and Bassoons Say The Darndest Things, by Art Lanklitta. [back]
[2]If you are not convinced, you must have very nice neighbors. However, this article can still serve a useful purpose: give it to them. From what I hear about you, they would love to make a bassoon. [back]
[3]Read the MUSIC JOURNAL issue of October, 1993 for your next instructions. [back]
[4]Some readers may wonder why the maple tree is cut into ten-foot sections when bassoons are only eight feet long. This is because maple trees are taller than other trees. [back]