First Bassoon Lesson, Part 3. BDP #27.

<Music: Vivaldi's Bassoon Concerto in E minor>

Well now we're ready to put our bassoon away. Never lay your bassoon down flat. The
bassoon should either be in your hands are in the case. Bassoons are expensive
instruments, even a lesser expensive instrument like this one out of polypropylene
will still be several thousands of dollars in cost. So you want to be sure to take
care of your bassoon very well.

So the first thing I do with the bassoon is that I take the bassoon apart in the
opposite order that I put it together. So the first off comes the bell.  It goes
right in. 

Next I unhook the pin up here and take off the long joint. I am holding it up here
to twist it like this and taking it out and putting it in [the case].

None of the water gets in these two joints, all of  the water gets in the tenor
[wing] joint going down from where the bocal was all the way down into the boot
joint. Often there will be water that collects here so you want to make sure that
you keep this up and down [upright] so it doesn't move the water into any of the
pads. 

At this point then, holding the bassoon in a place that won't damage any of the 
keys, holding the wing joint up here, I pull out the wing joint and I gently set
that in the case. We will swab that out later. 

Then I take out my swabs. This particular case has a couple of swabs. It is very 
important that you use the right swab for the right joint. One swab is bigger than
the other swab.

The bassoon is a conical bore instrument, which means that coming down from the
bocal, coming down from the reed, the bore gets gradually bigger and bigger. You
can see that it is a smaller bore here and as it comes out the other end it is
bigger.

With conical more instruments it's best to swab from big to small. This swab has a
little chain at the end. 

Drop it down. Shaking it will get it around the boot joint.

It then comes out the other end like this. I pull the swab gently through the
instrument.

OK, that joint then goes here.

Last of all, I take that the swap for the tenor joint. I again go for the biggest
hole first. The biggest hole is at the opposite end from the bocal.  I drop down
the swab making sure the swab end is free and I gently pull that through the
bassoon and put it back in the case. 

The swabs then can be folded up and then stowed away and the other elements stowed
away in the case as well.

And there we are.

Thank you for viewing this video. If you're interested in more information, I've
written an article titled "Teaching the Beginning Bassoonist." This is available on
the website of the International Double Reed Society.

You can get the information on this article, the link on this article as well as
other information by visiting the web site www.2reed.net. Thank you. 

<Music: Vivaldi's Bassoon Concerto, "La Notte">