

It isn’t like you will be spending weeks and weeks on end trying to learn how to control your breathing for that first note. That being said, it would only take a day or so of practice to be able to make a decent sound with the oboe. With the oboe, you really need to have a lot more control over your breathing in order to make something fairly decent sounding. It probably won’t be a very good sound, but it is certainly going to sound musical. In the early days, you really will find it easier to get a sound to come out of the bassoon. It is easier to make a sound with the bassoon.The oboe is easier to learn fingering patterns.We think the best way to look at it is as such: A lot of this will probably be rooted in the fact that they learned one instrument first, or often do not understand the other. It seems everybody has their own opinion about which instrument is going to be easier to play. Some may even offer the service themselves. If you are having music lessons, then we have no doubt that there will be some way that your instructor can you point in the direction of places you can rent the instruments.


Read More.īoth of these instruments can be rented fairly easily. If you are buying the same sort of quality for a bassoon, then you will be spending around $4,500. If you are buying a halfway decent oboe for a beginner, then expect to be paying around $2,500. The Priceīassoons are far more expensive than oboes. So, if you want an instrument that you can really play for fun and get really expressive with the music that you play without having a backing band, then this may actually be the route to go down. While the bassoon could work well for solo pieces, we really do feel that the oboe would work even better. The oboe has a sound that is going to stand out against any other instrument. This would almost certainly be one of the focal instruments in a piece. Some people have described the sound as similar to singing. The range is a little bit lower than that of the bassoon, but not by much. Of course, in the right hands, the bassoon can also make a fantastic focal instrument too. You get the feeling that the bassoon would fit best in the background as opposed to being a center stage instrument.Īlthough, it is going to do a pretty good job providing that background sound and will probably be the most prominent instrument in the mix. Not like a base, but a very mellow feeling. We suppose that the best way to describe the bassoon’s sound is having a ‘darker’ sound. It is available in bass clef or tenor clef (you want bass clef if you are new to the instrument. The bassoon is known for having the largest range out of all of the woodwind instruments. Read more about how much a bassoon weighs here. While you could probably hold one of these standing up, it probably isn’t going to be recommended for long periods of time, particularly if you are new to the instrument. You blow in one end through the mouthpiece, the air will travel down one side of the bassoon, hit the u-shape bend, and come out through the soundhole on the opposite side (this will be a bit higher than the mouthpiece). There is a U-shape bend at the bottom of the instrument. Both the oboe and the bassoon look completely different on the look front. This is where we start to get into the differences between the two.

We are merely pointing out the different ways that you will be blowing air into the instrument. In practice, it doesn’t really make that much of a difference. This is essentially a thin metal tube that connects to the bassoon. With a bassoon, there will be a small attachment known as a local. With an oboe, the reed is going to be placed into the instrument’s mouthpiece. Let’s stick with the reed for a second, because there is a huge difference between these two instruments in terms of where that reed is placed. With a trumpet, you would have to modulate the vibration of your lips. This is different to a trumpet (a brass instrument), for instance. There is an exception to this rule in terms of flutes, but we don’t talk about that here since we want to focus on both the bassoon and oboe.īasically, both of these instruments use the vibrations of a reed when you blow into the mouthpiece. It is the vibration of the reed that will resonate sound throughout the instrument. Without getting too much into the technicalities of instrument classifications, the best way you can look at woodwind instruments is that in order to make them work they need to have a reed (a small piece of wood at the mouthpiece). This does not mean that they are made of wood. Let’s start with a nice and simple similarity.īoth the bassoon and oboe are woodwind instruments.
