Paul Hanson did another excellent recording using the Little-Jake. The pickup won’t make you play like him, but you can at least get these sounds like him. :-p
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The The adagio movement 2nd bassoon part of the violin concerto is almost always on every audition for any position, principal or not. Part of the key to playing this right is making a musical partner with the oboe. Even having played this in concert I still find that I don’t have the oboe part in my head well enough, so I made a score rendition of the 2nd bassoon part along with the oboe solo. Probably handy for oboe players too, to see what is happening underneath with harmonic implications.
So here it is: Brahms Violin Concerto Excerpt with oboe
We’ve determined the Little Jake works great on tenor saxophone. It only requires a modification to the mouthpiece, where a hole is drilled and a threaded tap made. The ideal place is likely in the neck area, but this only requires an extra mouthpiece (and a ligature that won’t get in the way).
The sound was very promising. When I had Brandon Wozniak test this on his saxophone when we turned the amp on it was just like increasing the volume on the instrument. The tone was very transparent, it was even difficult to tell it was on except that it was unnaturally loud. Effects worked very well too.
I’ll modify your mouthpiece for free if you send it to me when ordering a Little-Jake. I would say this would be fine on Alto sax or larger, and I can only do this on plastic or hard rubber mouthpieces (not metal). Soprano sax mouthpieces are probably too small – the ligature would get in the way if there’s even a good acoustic place for it. For soprano sax modifying the neck is still probably the only option.
I had Eric Anderson at Midwest Musical Imports custom design and build this mechanism for a Wolf bocal that I have. The idea was to create a key that opens a pinhole drilled in the bocal, operated by the right hand, and have the entire mechanism completely independent of the rest of the bassoon.
Now we have a completed blank, we need to make it fit the mandrel by reaming, make the collar nice, then finally scrape on the blade. You’ll also find out that I’m a big cheater here.
Picking up where my previous post leaves off, we now have a piece of cane folded over and the tube made round. We still have to seal the tube up and create a fulcrum to maintain the tip opening by beveling and putting on the wires. Then we wrap the turban and seal with Duco cement.
Thought I’d do a pictorial on how I make bassoon reeds. Here’s part one, which entails the part I do when the cane is wet the first time. The next post will be after the cane is dried the first time. These two steps are my method of forming the tube and how I bevel, wire, and wrap the reed. Working on the blade is a more complicated bit, and I use equipment that most people don’t have. Anyway, that’ll be in another post. We start with Gouged, Shaped, and Profiled cane.
Since there’s really only one way to effectively use any given kind of gouger, shaper, and profiler, it’s silly for me to go through that process. Plus, I don’t do it anyway. I buy cane that’s been processed up to that point by the manufacturer. There are pros and cons to doing it this way. For me, I’d rather pay a little more to not have to do that work, although I wouldn’t mind having more control over the shape. Since I use a tip profiler I don’t care to have control over the profile at all, so that step is irrelevant to me.
So, step one:
Finishing up the last bits of depositing my thesis. Here’s the final version on scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48614271/Elements-of-Jazz-in-Bassoon-Solo-Repertoire
Yay!
Scribd is kinda lame. Nevermind. I’ll just host it locally.
http://trentjacobs.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/thesis.pdf
In sad news The Magnetrons broke up. Boo…. Oh well.
So I passed my final exam pending some revisions of my paper. The recital went without a(ny real) hitch!
I will be posting my dissertation on Scribd and a link to it here once I have deposited it to the U. I expect to be done in a couple weeks at most.
I will be presenting my dissertation on Elements of Jazz in Bassoon Repertoire in final defense on Tuesday, November 30 at 9am in the music building at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sitting committee members are Timothy McGovern, Gabriel Solis, Philipp Blume and Erik Lund.
On the following Saturday, December 4 at 5pm in Smith hall room 25 I will be presenting works from the paper in a recital. The program is:
Alec Wilder, Sonata No. 2 for Bassoon and Piano
Andre Previn, Sonata for Bassoon and Piano
Bill Douglas, Raga Todi Blues from the Partita for Bassoon and Piano
Jui-Chen Huang, piano
Henry Mancini, Piece for Jazz Bassoon and Orchestra
arr. Trent Jacobs for bassoon and jazz quartet
Robert Branch, Guided Awakenings
Lara Driscoll, piano with the Bassoonarific Band
