What Does the Greatbassoon Sound Like in an Ensemble?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 14 гру 2022
- Herein lies a short bassoon chorale from my Symphony 3 where the Greatbassoon plays the lowest part. Each note was recorded separately, so there is some roughness, but it does give a good idea of the sound of the instrument. Thanks to Marc Sansalvador on 2nd Bassoon.
As it is, I like how much the greatbassoon blends with the bassoons. It has that edge to the timbre that the bassoon has in its lowest notes that the contrabassoon lacks.
i personally think (i know, no one asked lol) that it would be a mistake to try and darken the sound much more. i think, with its brightness, it will more easily stick out in orchestral settings, and i personally wish that contra bassoon/bassoon color would stick out more at times in those kinds of settings. now i think darkening it a *bit* would be beneficial for blending purposes outside of the bassoon section, but it already sounds very good when its blending with other bassoons. personally, i think it will be an AMAZING instrument to duet with bass oboe, and if you want, i would be happy to make a small arrangement including a bass oboe for you to demo on UA-cam (that is, if you have access to such an instrument). but i just want to say that this is INCREDIBLE and nothing less. i understand its a WIP, but it already is sounding really amazing. good work and i cant wait to hear it when its finally finished.
As an arranger who can never get enough of the low reeds this sounds like it would be a fantastic addition to the low reeds section. I would be curious to hear what a bassoon quartet would sound like with 2 bassoons, 1 Greatbassoon, and 1 contrabassoon. Something I noticed while reading and listening through the chorale is that you can read the Greatbassoon part on a Bb Contrabass Clarinet. If you add three sharps to the key signature a Contrabass Clarinet player can play the part no problem similar to how a Bari Sax player can play a Tuba part by just adding three sharps to the key.
The volume of the recording is quite low, but, I'm pleasantly surprised at how different the greatbassoon sounds from a contrabassoon, as the greatbassoon comes across as quite a bit brighter than what a contra would sound like in the same context, correct? Is that one of the goals of distinguishing the gb from a contra?
As for the volume, UA-cam is partly to blame for that. The other part is it is marked pp. I'm not fully sure what the final goal for tone color is. Part of the experiment is figuring out what the instruments naturally wants to do - that part is unpredictable. Right now, everything is tending brighter than what the final version will be (pads will help dampen some of the higher partials).
Sounds lovely on everything other than the low E. that note in particular just sounds like a jackhammer.
Oddly, the tone color in person is much different. It's actually the softest note of all of them played.
@@BretNewtonComposer how peculiar. recording equipment does weird things to sound. also, we're talking about the same note, the lowest note on the great bassoon, right?
@@somebody9033 Yes, written A1
@@BretNewtonComposer did you have the mic right next to the bell or on the bell?
@@somebody9033 the mic was about 4 feet away
I'm intrigued by the sound, but it also feels like the quartet is quite unbalanced in dynamics (and possibly like the tone colours haven't quite come through properly). Very interested to see how differently that passage of music will sound in the end!