I got a little side-tracked while doing research for an article I am supposed to be writing and came across this article dating from 1884:
"Remarks on Certain Peculiarities in Instruments of the Clarinet Family, together with an Account of Mr. Wm. Rowlett's Experiments with Clarinets Having a Bassoon Reed instead of Their Own"

It describes how Mr Wm. Rowlett set out to prove his theory that clarinets overblow at a 12th whereas oboes and bassons overblow at the octave because "stiff reeds" (like bassoon reeds "rule the column of air") whereas "flexible reeds" (clarinet reeds "are ruled by the column").

The article includes a diagramme of how to adapt a clarinet mouthpiece to take a bassoon reed and he claims that although the tone is "very rough and coarse, like the loud bleat of a calf" it overblows an octave.

He remains puzzled as to why a saxophone which has a "flexible reed" should overblow at the octave

gosh and here was me thinking it was a function of the shape of the bore which determined where an instrument overblows....(conical vs cylindrical)

I'd better hand back my degree in acoustics/diploma with a dissertation on clarinet acoustics/and 60 credits of OU study which included an extended piece on saxophone acoustics. I never even considered that stiff or flexible reeds determined how they overblow. I did consider the dependacy of the harmonic content of clarinet tone on reed strength though.

Some interesting stuff here:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/basics.html

and

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/basics.html#woodwind

A good section on tuning up:

http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/tuning.html (apparently bassoonists only tune up to appease the conductor). Personally I feel pretty much that way about the oboe. It's me that needs adjusting, not it.

Oh and whilst on the subject of tuning, an interesting article about the history of pitch and the use of oboe for giving the reference pitch.

http://www.oboeclassics.com/Burgess.htm

What was quite surprising (to me anyway) about the 1894 article is how much knowledge we take for granted these days.

Wm Rowlett developped his theory about the reeds because he wanted to disprove what appears to have been the most popular theory at the time: that clarinets overblow at a 12th because they are not stopped pipes whereas oboes are. He argued that neither the clarinet nor the oboe can be stopped pipes because they both have air coming out of the bottom.

He began by examining the keywork, thinking that perhaps what he calls the "chalumeau" key held the secret but quickly abandoned this idea, concluding that it just made the overblowing at a 12th easier but that the instrument naturally overblew at the 12th. Since the keywork didn't appear to change things he then looked at the next most obvious difference: the reeds.

The end of the article has something written by another person who is unconvinced by the clarinet overblowing at the octave with a bassoon reed saying that when he tried to replicate the "experiment" he obtained harmonic octaves not "proper" notes. He goes on very tentatively to suggest that perhaps the different form of the bore might play a role but he can provide no proof, it is just an intuition.

Unfortunately I can't post a link to it because it is on a restricted access site.

It's interesting (and dangerous if you don't know better ) to read science books from earlier periods, such as the later C19th. I remember reading a book on spectroscopy in my teens that was written around the 1880s (I was interested in astronomy at the time).

Things such as quantum energy states etc were unknown and so explanations given for emission and absorption spectra were way off the mark, something which I understood by the time I was 16.

If I try to tune and it's obviously out, the conductor sometimes stares at me, and I tend to just look back and shrug, as if silently saying 'It's a bassoon, what can you do?'...

All you need to do is pretend to waggle something then adjust your embouchure appropriately and play again. The conductor (poor deluded fool) will conclude that you have "pulled out the reed" or some such.

I don't even do that
My first attempt is always flat; I let the conductor tell me it's flat and then, without doing anything play it again in tune. The conductor is very impressed by this and thinks that there is some sort of magic going on as I am the only player who can do this

Unfortunately my teacher is considerably less impressed. He maintains (and is no doubt right) that if I took a proper breath to start with and played a nice loud A instead of half-hearted apologetic one, it would be in tune the first time.

I'm still puzzled but this bassoon-reed-in-a-clarinet thing.

Like anacrusis, I thought it was all about the bore.

I know a guy who is trying to design, with a friend, a bassoon mouthpiece that will take a clarinet reed.

A bassoon that's not in the doublereed family sounds like a rather sad development to me!

um... clarinets overblow a 12th because they ARE stopped pipes, and flutes overblow an octave because they are open pipes.
Oboes overblow an octave because the conical bore does something peculiar to the waveform. (spot the physicist)




Sounds like a bass saxophone to me. Or possibly a b**tardised ophicleide or something. Either way, not good!

I read a very interesting paper about 25 years ago which "proved" by using an artificial mouth to play a bassoon that buccal cavity shape/size had no effect on tone production. The authors were honest enough to reference another paper that had used an artificial mouth to play a clarinet that came to the opposite conclusion...

(nb it was a long time ago and I could have mixed the two papers up, but the point was that acoustics is an empirical art far more than it is a science!)

What is the definition of stopped pipes now?

The 1894 article didn't mention flutes at all (because they don't have reeds). The reference "definition" of a stopped pipe for him was an organ pipe (although he didn't really define it, he just assumes everyone knows what he is talking about) and he doesn't say why people should claim that the clarinet is not stopped. He said that both oboe and clarinet were stopped pipes because one end is in your mouth. This was clearly a new idea at the time.

Both oboes and clarinets are stopped pipes - but the oboes conical bore means that it overblows by an octave.

There are all sorts of weird hybrids. The Sarrusophone family are metal conical bore double reed instruments (though some kind hearted soul started sticking single reed mouthpieces on them). Similar is the Rothphone.

Then there has been a single reed sax fingering oboe. Oboe? Isn't it a wooden soprano sax?


One which is open to the atmosphere at one end only (e.g. clarinet, oboe). An open pipe is open at both ends (e.g. flute).

When I saw this thread I thought someone was going to put a video of themselves on here, playing a clarinet with a bassoon reed.

I couldn't get it strapped to the mouthpiece