Best books about bassoons according to redditors
We found 5 Reddit comments discussing the best books about bassoons. We ranked the 4 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 5 Reddit comments discussing the best books about bassoons. We ranked the 4 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
tl;dr - see bolded sections.
Welcome! It sounds like you match the profile of a lot of amateur/hobbyist bassoonists. You should absolutely keep playing if you want to. (One of us! One of us!)
If you're going to college for something else, it would be totally normal for a non-music-major to still hang out around the bassoon studio, audit some studio classes, take lessons, play in the lower-ranked ensembles, and so on. The universities I attended had 1-credit lessons for non-majors and loaner instruments as well. It's less money than a lot of college students spend on other hobbies, and it's an arts elective credit. If your school has loaners, that puts off the purchase decision another 4 years or so. (At which point, well, everybody has their own pick for best "value" bassoon. I'd say Renard 41 on eBay if you're on the tightest of budgets. Other folks disagree.)
A plastic Yamaha isn't terrible, but Jones reeds often are. You should probably find a teacher sooner (not later) and take a couple lessons - they might even be a student at the university you plan to attend. Any halfway competent teacher will help you find a reliable source of cheaper-but-hopefully-not-crappy reeds, which will make your Senior year... better. They'll also provide a "sanity check" to make sure you don't have any bad habits that are making it harder for you unnecessarily.
If money is a concern, intermittent lessons are enough, if you actually do what the teacher tells you to do. Get this book, bring it to your first lesson, and have the teacher help you develop a practice schedule. (Not unlike a training schedule for weight-lifting. Your trainer will help teach your proper form, but most of the work is on your own and consistency is key.)
Since you sound pretty self-motivated, I'd say get a copy of the Weissenborn method book too, to work through on your own, and learn those scale etudes. :-)
Good luck.
It's double reed, so try not to bring everything you've learned on sax / clarinet and apply it to bassoon, you might bring some wrong ideas. Always have an open mind.
This (or the original edition) is basically the defacto bible of learning bassoon. It's the book to get if you only ever get one book. Looking at the price on Amazon... pretty cheap for being the bible, if you ask me!
A very helpful book for reed making - The Bassoon Reed Manual: Lou Skinner's Theories and Techniques