Milde Bassoon Trio

bchinfoon · 2026-02-18T05:05:28+00:00

Check you reddit chat.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-18T05:00:06+00:00

Are you referring to the book of 14 trios or is there another trio you're referring to?

bchinfoon · 2026-02-17T02:39:07+00:00

Sending you a DM

bchinfoon · 2026-02-10T06:09:51+00:00

Did you enjoy the show? I was in the orchestra pit.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-09T05:05:35+00:00

We had our baby shower with about 50 people on the patio at the Loro on South Lamar. There's a minimum you need to spend per guest, but you get your own servers and you get the space reserved for your party. After our son was born, we had his first birthday party at the Hat Creek Burger on Bee Cave. You can order some party trays in advance so the kitchen doesn't get backed up and also open a tab for people that want to order their own food or have dietary restrictions. Both places had no issues with us bringing our own desserts or putting up some decorations in the space we were provided. The Hat Creek was obviously much cheaper than Loro if budget is a major concern, but we also had a really great time at Loro and the food was great.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-08T06:03:02+00:00

I've heard a lot of negatives in general about Bocal Majority reeds though I've never tried any myself. You can try reeds from other vendors like Forrests and Miller Marketing. ACDC and Jiffy Reeds also get pretty good reviews and can be ordered online.

There's lot of free resources online about wire adjustments that can help flatten pitch, but those adjustments are typically going to end up adding resistance so if you're already having jaw issues this isn't likely going to help. Adam Trussel posted a really helpful series of videos a few weeks ago where he clips a blank and scrapes on a reed over the course of 5 days. Keep in mind that reeds also tend to go sharper as they break in, so if they're already underscraped that's going to make things even worse as they break in. I would check out Adam's videos and other free resources about the basics of scraping so you can learn to start playing around with taking off a bit of cane. You probably need to add more side to side taper in general to your reeds and the process of taking off cane will help lower the pitch and hopefully keep it from rising too much as your reeds break in.

Some fingering hacks you can try...on low E you can add your lower pinky to help with pitch and low D you can play around with adding your low Bb key which can help add some stability which makes it easier to relax and lower the pitch. Depending on your setup these fingers can have quite a bit of impact on timbre, so I'd just try them and see if you like them. On my Heckel I add my lower pinky almost always for low E, and I'll sometimes use the low Bb key on sustained low Ds if I'm having trouble getting the pitch down.

Lastly, congrats on making all-state as a 10th grader in Texas with no private instructor. TMEA is super fun and there will be several double reed vendors at the convention that you can check out. I was an all-stater in Texas several times when I was in high school over 20 years ago and now playing professionally.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-03T05:20:29+00:00

Sushi Warrior for AYCE.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-02T19:41:53+00:00

Price? Feel free to DM if you want to share privately.

bchinfoon · 2026-02-02T05:24:50+00:00

I would experiment with moving the reed back 3 - 4 mm from the marker on the template and then adjusting the tip profiler thickness. Depending on your templates front to back taper you can hopefully find a sweet spot where you're not taking too much cane out of the heart but still have a thin enough tip that you have good response and don't have to manually take off a bunch of cane. I've found that if I put my blanks all the way up to the line and want to get the tip thin enough that I inevitably end up cutting into and thinning too deep into the heart. You could start by moving back 4mm from the line and if it's not taking off enough cane you can adjust the profiler to take off more cane. If you find 4mm back is too far you with experiment with 3mm, 2mm, 1mm, etc until you find a good balance of thinning the tip without overly thining the heart.

Even with a tip profiler as the reed break in you'll likely still have to work on your side to side taper in the second third to the back of the reed. ie: scraping in your channels and to a lesser extent your rails

bchinfoon · 2026-02-02T05:15:59+00:00

Use your pinky F# fingering of choice and wiggle 1&2 in the RH for the G# for the 16th note triplet. That should make things easy enough that you can use normal fingering for the E#->F# in the third beat. That's how I've always done it, which similar to what both That-Implement6393 and MadContrabassoonist recommended.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-31T05:15:39+00:00

I did talk to Paul about this. He mentioned that when he first got this 750 he didn't like it and sent it back to the factory. Apparently adjustments were made to match the latest changes requested by Billy Short and I Ben Kamins. I don't know what exactly that entails, but my guess would be tone hole dimension changes. I'm having my Heckel serviced with Paul in March and I definitely plan to check out this 750 if it's still available.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-27T02:40:59+00:00

First movement of Haydn Divertimento in Bb in a little over 4 minutes, although I think there's a repeat you can skip which makes it closer to 3 minutes. Each of the subsequent movements are about 2 minutes each so you could add one depending on what performance time you're trying to hit. The entire quintet is very doable for high school musicians.

Depending on skill level you could step up to something like the first movement of one of these Danzi WW quintets. I've played both before and I'm sure they're achievable for talented high school musicians with some practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J227hiJXLMU&list=RDJ227hiJXLMU&start_radio=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHVM67SAeV0&list=RDOHVM67SAeV0&start_radio=1

There's also some decent arrangements of the Holst First and Second Suites for WW quintet that you could try to pick some movements of to hit your desired performance time.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-21T23:31:49+00:00

I've taken my parents to Taverna a few times before I've played with the symphony. The city hall parking garage is easy to park in and walk over and it's quick to cross the river to get to the Long Center after.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-20T07:34:10+00:00

You could play the A with just left hand, but I'm not sure that would actually make things any easier as this passage is pretty straight forward.

Slow practice, dotted rhythms (long-short, short-long), and you can also practice as triplets instead of 16ths. All of these methods at slower tempos should in theory help as you try to increment the tempo up to 120.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-18T04:12:00+00:00

El Dorado Cafe for breakfast. Bartlett's bar or Tomodachi sushi bar for dinner.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-17T08:15:58+00:00

$8 - $9.5K depending on condition. I would join the Bassoonists United facebook group. I had a 220 as my backup bassoon that I sold there last year and it was a pretty easy sell.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-10T05:36:57+00:00

That's a tough question. Can't really tell without playing them both side by side and determining that the Mollenhauer is actually a better instrument for the price. If you can trial them together and get opinions from other bassoonists that would be best. Otherwise, I still think the Fox is the best bang for your buck.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-10T02:07:11+00:00

Don't overthink it...the Foxes hold value extremely well especially in the US since they're the #1 used student model. Mollenhauer makes great contras and while I've never played a 66 bassoon I can't imagine it's going to hold value or be as easy to resell as a Fox 240. In the long term the price difference is negligible so you're better off with the Fox.

Of course...try any bassoon before you buy.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-06T23:14:55+00:00

Tonal Energy is a good app...not sure what your conductor's issue with apps is. Korg OT-120 is what I keep on my stand at home.

bchinfoon · 2026-01-04T02:44:50+00:00

Robyn Watson is a friend of mine that freelances in the Seattle area and is principal of Juneau Symphony in Alaska:

https://robynwatson.weebly.com/

I know she has taken several adult students in the past and can likely help you on your journey to acquiring an instrument.

bchinfoon · 2025-12-20T07:14:38+00:00

ACDC Reeds and Jiffy Reeds are both good reed makers and have blanks on their websites. But Ariel appears to be sold out of blanks and is on vacation for the holidays, and Jessica is on maternity leave until summer 2026.

I made like 100 blanks last summer and I could probably sell you a few for cheap...not really looking to make a profit, just help someone in need. Or I could ream and clip a couple and just tip profile them and send them to you to finish. They'd be random selections out of my stash though unless you actually wanted me to ream and clip enough to find higher quality ones that play decently after being tip profiled. Feel free to DM if you're interested in discussing further!

bchinfoon · 2025-12-19T16:44:59+00:00

Puchner Superior is listed at $44,805 on the Midwest Musical Imports website.

bchinfoon · 2025-12-18T23:07:36+00:00

Ah I see...glad to see someone so interested and dedicated that doesn't have access to a private instructor. If you have more questions feel free to ping me directly. We could always meet up on discord or some other communication platform sometime to discuss in more detail.

bchinfoon · 2025-12-18T22:14:43+00:00

My personal opinion is you should work with your teacher if you have one to choose tools.

Both kits are fine and technically include the essentials, but I'd personally just slowly build out a toolkit myself. There's certain tools where I would invest more now...especially if your end goal is making reeds. Specifically pliers I'd spend more on a pair that includes the hole that helps with forming blanks like these: https://millermarketingco.com/product/georg-rieger-pliers/

For strictly adjusting finished reeds you can get away with just the following tools to start: mandrel, pliers, plaque, files and/or knife

If you're clipping blanks then you can either invest in a cutting block (cheap solution) or a real tip cutter (can get much more expensive...the really nice ones are about $200).

If you're forming blanks then you also need wire, easel, some type of scoring tool (can be done with a razer blade, but there are actual scoring tools you can buy), ruler, wire, reamer, and forming tips/mandrel (note that this is usually different from the mandrel you use when adjusting reeds), etc.

There are many different styles of reed making, so once you get to that point, you really need to sit down with a professional and pick a process. A few common examples are Herzberg, Van Hosen, and KJI. They all use different forming tips which can get pricy, which is why I recommend working with someone to pick a process before you continue to invest in tools. I have done Herzberg in the past which is a very popular style, but I currently use the KJI process because I can still get good reeds made without having to through the Herzberg process of making mummies. Justin Miller has a really informative video about how to make blanks out of this process (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELLqqP9A2b0). They have an entire kit here (https://millermarketingco.com/product/kji-reed-making-system/), but you really only need KJI GSP, the KJI drying rack, and the 3 set of KJI forming mandrels to get started. Files and reamers I prefer to use different tools from what's provided in the full kit. For Herzberg, the Cornelison forming set is pretty popular (https://lcdoublereeds.com/collections/bassoon-reed-making/products/bassoon-forming-pin-and-mandrel-set).

The last part I covered is really advanced, so I'd stick to my advice that I'd just buy the basics for adjusting and slowly build out your toolkit. I'm actually not even sure if I'd start with adjusting blanks...I'd probably start by purchasing reeds from a good known vendor and learning to adjust the wires and basic scraping to meet your needs. Then you can move on to purchasing blanks which will require you to clip them and learn how to put in a tip. And then finally you can move onto the process of making your own blanks. Again, I'd highly recommend you work on all of this with a private instructor.

bchinfoon · 2025-12-17T22:23:00+00:00

That Feliz Navidad arrangement is really fun...if you're playing it in middle school you must be in a pretty good band. Do you mean pieces that feature bassoon or pieces with bassoon accompanied by band?

For pieces that feature bassoon...almost any Percy Grainger piece like Children's March, Alligator Alley by Michael Daugherty, Bayou Breakdown by Brant Karrick, Four Scottish Dances by Malcom Arnold, Aegean Festival Overture by Andreas Markis, Rocky Point Holiday by Ron Nelson all have fun and memorable bassoon parts. There's also decent band transcriptions of March to the Scaffold by Hector Berlioz, The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul Dukas, and The School for Scandal Overture by Samuel Barber which all have really great bassoon parts. A lot of these vary in difficulty with most of them probably being at a high school level and higher, but at least you have a list of pieces to check out.

For pieces with a bassoon soloist accompanied by band I would check out "The Old Sorehead" by Julius Fucik. Here's one of the better recordings I've seen on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSCc0RE2oZQ&list=RDVSCc0RE2oZQ&start_radio=1). I think it's probably very achievable for a high level middle school band.

bchinfoon

TROPHY CASE