About The Book

The goal of this resource is to provide depth and breadth of information in a single, complete, and easily accessible resource. There are dozens of websites and videos that offer excellent tips and suggestions for playing the bassoon. Unfortunately, music teachers don’t have the luxury of time to visit all of these sites looking for much needed information. It is my hope that this volume will empower more teachers to confidently promote the bassoon and recruit more students to play the bassoon in their ensembles.

This book began as a course pack I developed for Bassoon Techniques, a course I have taught every semester since joining the faculty at SUNY Potsdam’s Crane School of Music in the fall of 2006. The course is required for all band track music education majors and covers the fundamentals of teaching and playing the bassoon. The class is made up of a mix of woodwind, brass, and percussion students with an occasional string, piano, or vocal student. The class is capped at 12 so that students do not have to share instruments.

Band track music education majors at Crane take individual courses on each instrument rather than the typical one-size-fits-all woodwind and brass methods courses.  In its current format, Bassoon Techniques, meets twice a week for 7 weeks. I am grateful to have the luxury of just under 12 hours of instruction time dedicated solely to the bassoon. But even 11+ hours is not enough time to cover everything a future teacher needs to know. This book serves as a reminder of the information covered in class as well as an extended resource to cover what we don’t get to during the semester.