Bassoon FAQ's

Cleaning a bassoon requires you to focus on two joints: the wing and the boot. You can use separately sold wing joint and boot joint swabs for that. These microfibre cloths are a good way to get rid of any built-up dirt, grim, or even spit on the instrument. If you have a plastic instrument, cleaning is not much of a problem as with a wooden one, because the wood will suffer damage if you don’t clean it out. 

We’re going to focus on a wooden bassoon for this one, because that’s the standard. Taking care of a bassoon starts and ends with swabbing it clean after every performance or practice session. Like any other woodwind instrument, a bassoon’s biggest enemy is built-up moisture and dirt, which can cause the wood to rot if not kept in check. Make sure to soak all that moisture up before you keep it in its case, which should be stored in a place away from temperature and humidity extremes. And lastly, to prevent stiff joints, always have a vial of cork grease at hand to lubricate and loosen them up. Specialist bassoon care kits are readily available.

Tuning a bassoon requires adjustments on the bocal. If you want to seek out higher pitches, you can switch to a longer bocal. Or you can pull the bocal out from the tenor joint a little for a similar effect. In order to do this correctly, however, you must make sure that the pianissimo tone hole on the bocal stays within reach of the whisper keypad. And lastly, reaching lower pitches requires you to do the opposite: switch to a shorter bocal or push it as far as possible into the tenor joint.