em·bou·chure [ɑ̃buʃyʁ]:

In Which I Waffle On About The Internet.

There's quite a lot of information on the internet about bassoons. More than you'd imagine. There’s advice about buying an instrument. [N.B. Bassoon prices range from Small Car to Medium Sized House.] There are fingering charts. Lots of them. But they're not very informative if you haven’t got an instrument in front of you. Or attached to you. There’s also a lot of stuff about embouchure. That’s the shape you have to make with your mouth in order to get a sound out of a wind instrument. (from the French: la bouche: mouth. But you knew that of course.) 

The bassoon has a double reed which you need to support with your lips all round, like the spokes of a wheel. So you put your lips as if you were whistling, or blowing someone a kiss. (Insert obligatory Lauren Bacall reference* here.) And then there’s the overbite. Which you must have. Or must not have. Depending what you read. And that’s where it gets complicated. And where I stopped reading contradictory information on the internet and arranged to GO AND GET A BASSOON!








*(You know how to whistle don’t you, Steve. You just put your lips together and ... blow. From the 1944 film To Have And Have Not directed by Howard Hawks, starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Walter Brennan.)