Brains and Membranes

Bassoon Reed Making

by Christopher Millard

Chapter 8 – Dialogue

You must be wondering if I’m ever going to tell you anything of practical value – like how to build blanks, profiling, details of shapes or measurements?

Probably not.  Other people have done this and done it better than I could.  The best book is by my old friend Eric Arbiter, retired bassoonist from the Houston Symphony. It’s called The Way of Cane.  Take a look.

When you’re ready to think about these holistic concepts I’m hear for you…

So, how about a nice easy subject?  Like ‘response’?

Uh-oh….

If you are speaking with someone who absolutely won’t respond, or whose response seems uncooperative, we have a set of internal observations, which lead us to figure out why the conversation is one-sided. For example, is there a physical reason? Are we mumbling, is there hearing impairment, is there too much ambient sound, too much distraction? Perhaps there is a different language, or little shared experience?  Is there a complex emotional barrier?  Are we too aggressive, too timid, overbearing or our relationship poisoned by personal history?   Conversations easily become unbalanced, with one party controlling the evolution and outcome of the interaction.

To communicate effectively, we need to sort out the reasons why dialogues become one-sided.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Then we might start expressing our need for a broader range of expectations…

• Tchaikovsky 6 or Le Sacré are equally cooperative
• Low Bb ff staccato is as immediate as a gentle mid range mp attack
• The reed allows flexibility in tuning with fellow performers
• Our pianissimo maintains some tonal complexity
• Our forte tone remains largely composed of true harmonics and does not become buzzy or harsh

All these comparative reed behaviors seem bound up in ‘response’.  It’s asking a lot of one word.

Let’s back up a bit.  When two people are engaged in a long and committed process of therapy, they work hard to find words and strategies to improve communication through effective dialogue. Maybe we need an equivalent effort to unpack that big umbrella word response?

To start, let’s consider response as a ‘physical’ dialogue between reed and bassoon one we can characterize objectively.   Based on the ideas suggested in previous chapters, may we can organize what we’ve learned about the mechanics of reed valves into two parts:

Input + Output = Responsive dialogue

Let’s take the ‘Physicist’s Viewpoint’ from Chapter 4 and rephrase as a simple conversation.

The reed starts, beginning with a brief stutter and then the words fly – all of the available words!  The bassoon – confused by so much thoughts – responds:

“Reed, too much information!  What are you trying to tell me?  You want Scheherazade?  Right now – with all these closed tone holes – I can only give you an F#.”

From the physicist’s viewpoint, the stutter is that initial engagement of the reed with the bassoon, sending a complex jumble of disorganized frequencies into the bore.  The bassoon responds by taking elements of the reed noise that align with its natural frequencies.  It’s as if the bassoon pays attention to just a few words, reinforces them and sends them back to the reed.  

The air flow starts the conversation – it inputs energy with too much information  The bassoon answers with alternating compression/rarefaction – it’s delivering information to the reed…we’ll call this the bassoon’s output .

Think of this as an exchange of information.  Input information describes the reed’s conversion of air flow from our lungs and the disorganized oscillations that produces. Output information describes the reed’s reaction to the organized pressure variations produced in the bassoon bore. 

It’s a single acoustical partnership with a two-way process, the Yin and Yang of reed making.  

The famous Taoist symbol suggests the interconnectedness and interdependence of opposites – approaching oneness thru duality.  We can use this concept to achieve a holistic way of thinking about designing bassoon reeds.

The mechanical reaction of the reed to the input of air is the more traditional way of characterizing reed ‘response’.  Observing the acoustic reaction to the output of internal pressures in the bore is the more complex way of defining response.  Successful reed making depends on both the mechanical reaction to the air you put into a reed AND to the reed’s phenomenally complex compliance with the pressure variations of the bore.  We can learn to understand what actions with knives, files, abrasives and tubes are primarily designed to increase efficiency of air input and what actions are designed to improve the compliance of acoustical output.

In future chapters I’ll flesh out these deeply interconnected processes – the dialogue between input and output response.

Chapter 9 – The Big Bounce