Teaching

I am a senior in highschool and I am the only bassoon player. I found a freshmen who wanted to play bassoon so now I am giving her lessons. Her first lesson is monday. So far all she knows is how to make a sound so what kind of thing should I start out with. She already knows rhythms because she plays flute. Oh and what books should I suggest she buy to help her learn

Wow, sounds like quite an undertaking. The "Standard of Excellence" series of music books is a pretty good series to start on. They are a bit slow if you already know how to read and play music, but they do have many simple recognizable songs that are good to learn on. Not very technical but not bad to start out with. I'd also get the student started on the "Weissenborn Practical Method for Bassoon." It progresses rather fast in some areas but it is the best book for bassoon I've ever seen. It has simple duets and teaches from the basic stuff to very complex things. Other than that, scale and tongue exercises can easily be taken from many beggining trombone books and adapted well for the bassoon. Good luck!

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Oh, and to start out with I'd do a history of the intrument, cover how to handle and care for the bassoon, work on getting the proper posture, and teach her the B flat scale, and pretty quickly start teaching her everything you know about reeds (they were by far my biggest problem when I stated bassoon). Might be a bit much, but its some ideas to work with. Hope its helpfull!

'Learn as you play bassoon' Boosey & Hawkes

Grammaticaly incorrect title, but that's the only incorrect part

Its good-it gets you from not knowing how to play to (American standard I think) 3rd grade.

I started on flute too, cool!
If she already knows how to fart properly, and already knows rhythms from the flute, she'll pick it up no problem. Just teach her a few notes, just from like F down to G. Then give her a few little pieces to learn with beginner books you can get so she gets used to reading in bass clef and stuff. Then just add notes when you feel she's ready.
I'm not too fond of the standard of excellence books, I think they'd be ok when teaching a complete beginner but if you can already read music then it's a bit patronising. I started on a Team Woodwind book. Any will do really, do they make abracadabra bassoon? Just get her playing tunes quite quickly otherwise she'll get fed up.
Let us know how the teaching goes.

oh and btw - i kinda disagree with doublereed about teaching her about reeds just yet. I've always found that beginners will play on any reed, and as you get better you just get pickier. As long as she gets reed help when she needs it, i think you should wait a while. Or just teach her the very basics, how to open or close a reed. Anymore than that and she might get daunted and start thinking "omg the bassoon is so complicated, lets give up". I sometimes think I was crazy to tack up such a complicated instrument, so you don't want to make her think that until she's a developed enough passion for the bassoon to not care too much.

Being told the massive complexity of reeds would be pretty scary thing to hear, and your right that store bought reeds will work fine for the first while. I just know that I knew almost nothing about reeds for the first three years I was playing and had a horrid time trying to understand my reeds and would have appriciated learning about them earlier than I did. You probably would want to make sure the student has a real interest and is hooked on the instrument before doing to much with reeds. Also, I wouldn't start for a while on actually how to make reeds, I was thinking a little bit more on the lines of how to fix up and make sure a storebought reed will be good.

Being told the massive complexity of reeds would be pretty scary thing to hear, and your right that store bought reeds will work fine for the first while. I just know that I knew almost nothing about reeds for the first three years I was playing and had a horrid time trying to understand my reeds and would have appriciated learning about them earlier than I did. You probably would want to make sure the student has a real interest and is hooked on the instrument before doing to much with reeds. Also, I wouldn't start for a while on actually how to make reeds, I was thinking a little bit more on the lines of how to fix up and make sure a storebought reed will be good.

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sorry about double post!

Obviously, if a beginner finds their reed too closed up, then you demonstrate how to open it up for them, and eventually it would be beneficial to teach them about reeds. But I think you should wait until they're about grade 5 standard (dunno how the grade system works in the US) before teaching them anything more than they really need to know.

As for that double post... we should banish you from the forum for that :p

Why does everyone hate weissenborn
What did he do? :'(

Because he wrote studies, and everyone who writes studies should be shot (even if they are beneficial :p)