Hey everybody. I am doing an assignment for my woodwind class. I need a bassoon player (even if you are just starting) to answer these questions...

I need you to tell me about how you got started on your instrument. Did you play another instrument before or just start on bassoon? What were the difficulties and challenges you had in getting started? And are there any methods you used?

Thanks all. Hope to hear from SOMEBODY soon!

ANG

Hey! I`m Emily, and I`ve played the bassoon for 3 years. I started on clarinet (played it for 2 years), but I got bored with it and switched to bassoon. I had a private teacher, so I didn`t have many difficulties except getting used to a double reed. I hope I helped you! ~Emily :-)

hay hay hay!! im caroline, i started on tenor sax & i just play my friends basson on & off wen she cums over. i hav 2 addmit though. if i wasnt playin sax, tats wat i wood b playin cause the bassoon is a BLAST 2 play!!! lol. hope tat helped. CHOW!!!

I started on flute. One of the main difficulties i had to get over was all the thumb keys and the wide reach of the fingers. i was used to not having to cover a hole, but the bassoon dosent have any keys on the main finger holes. Theres 9 thumb keys on the left hand , but only 3 at a time have to be pressed. Hope I helped. Peace

I played trumpet for 7 years before switching to bassoon, and the main problem I had for the first 2 weeks where just memorizing all of the fingerings.

Ihave been playing the clarinet for 3 years. I switched to the bassoon because I was bored with the clarinet. The main difficulties I had was adjusting to the reed. My private instructor helped with that.

Hi. You are probably not even checking this anymore, but I am bored so i am going to tell you how I got started on the Bassoon. I was playing the Clarinet, and I was first chair for the whole year, when we were all beginners ant my school, and I was doing really well. Then there was a bassoonist that came in and played a little bit, because they were looking for someone from that class to play the bassoon. Anyways I thought that it looked S-W-E-E-T and I REALLY wanted to play it and so I told the director that I wanted to try it out. After school I would go in and try-out, I thought it was great and I wanted to play it so bad I would go in every day and make sure that no one else was any good at it, because I thought I was doing good and I was teaching myself for a short while and then the next yar I played bassoon in the band and it was cool I was first chair all year again and that was good, but then when marching band came around I had to try out for that too, and I was practicing the clarinet harder than the bassoon, because I had forgotten some of the keys and how to read the music because I was used to bass clef. When I picked up my clarinet it all came back, but I didnt have a very good embochoure and so I tried and tried and tried to make my audition tape sound good, so hard that I did good on that one but I did REALLY bad on my bassoon audition so I dropped down to second chair...last. I felt really crappy, so that was hard for me to do, but I did another chair challenge and I am in first chair now again, I would advise to you that if you are going to march, play percussion. dont go back to your other instrument. Of course, during the whole marching season and one whole summmer I went without a bassoon, so it was interesting when I got that back out for the first time. It was actually depressing and it still is. The other day my band teacher said that I was so flat it was unacceptable, and that made me fell pretty bad also and then he said he was worried about my ear...the way I can hear if things are in tune or not and that is one thing that is giving me problems. Tuning by ear. I cant do it, because I am not used to what IN TUNE sounds like. WOW. That was a lot, and it was for nothing... because it is so much later than when you first posted your question thing. But I have been playing the bassoon for about three and a half years now.