"How large will the subcontrabassoon be?"
October 27, 2017 10:44 PM   Subscribe

Richard Bobo, professional contrabassoonist, aims to build the subcontrabassoon. If you have questions, such as "Didn't they already build one?" (they did not) and "Why do we need a bassoon in the subcontra range?" (church organs, basically), here are some detailed answers. Here is an interview with more answers.

The current status of the project is unclear, but an assembly improvement (warning: Facebook) was posted earlier this month.
posted by solarion (31 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
My guess is it will basically sound like a whale fart. But a melodious one...
posted by jim in austin at 10:56 PM on October 27, 2017 [6 favorites]


I watched this video! I've been composing a piece for contrabassoon. It's a neat instrument.
posted by daisystomper at 11:19 PM on October 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Seredipitously, just today I happened to stumble across this very pleasing comment somewhere online:

I played contrabass clarinet in high school. You'd hit a low note and the jelly in your eyes would vibrate and you couldn't read the music.

I'm willing to bet the same would apply to subcontrabassoon.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:30 PM on October 27, 2017 [16 favorites]


So as someone who isn’t particularly musical- but loves the idea of this, I have a question for more musically talented. You know that silly BRAAAAAAAAAMMM noise that inception started and is now in every movie trailer? That’s a horn right? What would that sound sound like on a subcontrabassoon (or a contrabassoon which actually exists) which is a woodwind?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 12:02 AM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


It is my hope that my subcontrabassoon prototype is but the first of several (“many” would probably be pushing it) subcontrabassoons.
I'm entertained by this mixture of passion and realism...

As a fellow bass-clef person, I adore contrabassoons. In my next life I'm gonna be a bassoonist, I hope. And I like weird instruments in general (anyone know any good alto flute recordings?). Still, this thing will weigh THIRTY-FIVE POUNDS. I'm going to adopt a wait-and-see posture on its popularity for a good while yet.
(Maybe it could have a future in jazz? Eric Dolphy meets Charles Mingus?)
posted by huimangm at 12:42 AM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


how low can you go?
posted by philip-random at 1:05 AM on October 28, 2017


Sub-contrabass recorder
posted by Foosnark at 1:52 AM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


fellow bass-clef person

I went to see that tour that Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, and Victor Wooten did, about 5 or 10 years ago. I thought the best part was the song where Miller played bass clarinet.
posted by thelonius at 2:01 AM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


From the FAQ:
The fact that this means the subcontrabassoon will be able to play one note lower than Leblanc’s octocontrabass clarinet, thus becoming the lowest woodwind instrument ever made, is simply a very fortunate bonus.
posted by Songdog at 3:59 AM on October 28, 2017 [8 favorites]


I am superprosubcontrabassoon.
posted by pracowity at 4:29 AM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


The subcontrabass flute

The list of instruments which go where they should not is large.
posted by blob at 5:07 AM on October 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


The subcontrabassoon is a much more cooperative instrument than the domcontrabassoon.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:07 AM on October 28, 2017 [16 favorites]


Faint of butt wins the internet today.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:00 AM on October 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I can't tell if he's under or opposed to bassoons.

At least it's not a rackett, the bong of early music.
posted by scruss at 7:30 AM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


The subcontrabassoon is a much more cooperative instrument than the domcontrabassoon.

But weren't there hearings into the Irancontrabassoon back in the 80s?

From a footnote on the subcontrabassoon page:

The Austrian firm Bösendorfer and Australian firm Stuart & Sons currently sell pianos capable of playing the entirety of the subcontrabass register; down to C0.

Wow. Here's a sample of the Imperial Bösendorfer being played.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:12 AM on October 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


Your bassoonists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.
posted by orange ball at 8:21 AM on October 28, 2017 [7 favorites]


Relatedly, previously: the octobass.
posted by adamrice at 8:27 AM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


"And now, after a century of waiting..."

Nobody but you has been waiting, Richard. You're the only one.
posted by elsietheeel at 8:43 AM on October 28, 2017


A low, low note rumbles through the skies; and across the planet, century-old crypts crumble and gravestones topple as Those Who Wait emerge from their long sleep...
posted by moonmilk at 8:45 AM on October 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


This Eppelsheim sub contrabass saxophone sounds pretty good.
posted by jouke at 9:18 AM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sub-contrabass recorder

The Friendly Giant could have used that.
posted by pracowity at 11:24 AM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


My name is Richard Bobo and I’ve been waiting my whole life for two things: a manned mission to Mars, and a subcontrabassoon.

I immediately want to hang out with anyone who would sincerely write this sentence.

Nobody but you has been waiting, Richard. You're the only one.

Oh how wrong you are! What's really interesting to about this topic generally--instruments that can clearly play really low notes--is that it was an engineering problem that kept musical ensembles from exceeding a certain size for centuries. Within any set of sounding music--for the human ear to perceive the full pitch spectrum, timbral variety, and other aspects of musical sound--there must be a constant adjustment to amplitude throughout the frequency range, and it's something that performing musicians (and audio engineers) think about constantly.

These adjustments are intended to allow listeners to easily hear a "balanced" sound, meaning that instruments in the high, low, and mid-range frequencies should be about equally clear and present. But if you've ever even tinkered with an equalizer, you've discovered that you need to actually boost the low (bass) sounds, and pull down the volume of the highest frequency sounds, for it all to sound balanced, with equal volume throughout pitches low to high. In an ensemble of acoustic instruments, the players must make this adjustment, and those playing bass instruments have known since childhood that they have to, effectively, play louder to be heard at the same volume as everyone else; conversely, trumpet, violin, flute players know that they have to "listen down" to be able to adjust any volume and be in balance with the ensemble. (In orchestras and bands, we teach kids to think of this as the "pyramid of balance.")

The engineering problem was that we did not invent or develop a bass-register (or contrabass-register) instrument capable of playing loudly enough to balance larger groups of musicians until 1835 or so, with the invention of the tuba. Double basses (the contrabass or string bass) play quite well in the bass and contrabass frequency space, but even if you put 20 of them together, they really can't play very loudly. Bassoons and early contrabassoons and other instruments, similarly, could cover the frequency space but don't scale up very well, for various reasons.

But then: the valved, fully-chromatic tuba, followed pretty closely by a workable (Heckel) design for the contrabassoon, and the floodgates open. Wagner starts creating multi-million dollar spectacles with 100-piece orchestras, Mahler puts 1000 musicians on stage, concert bands appear!, and more. All of us alive today, with our fancy amplification and electronic instruments, have no idea how real the struggle for musicians was, for thousands and thousands of years, until we mastered the technologies to produce and control contrabass and subcontrabass range frequencies, at loud volumes. It truly opens up a new universe of musical possibilities.

So you keep on rocking, Richard Bobo, and I can't wait to hear you play a subcontrabassoon! Any new instrument is a new tool for human creativity, and I'm glad you're trying to add to our toolbox.

(As a quick edit, I should add that the reason we have to make all these adjustments and stuff is pretty simple: physiological response to stimulation. High frequencies vibrate faster than low frequencies, and thus physically stimulate your ear parts more, causing a more robust response (i.e., you will hear high sounds "more easily" and they will seem to be louder than low sounds generally; this is not the case objectively, but instead is yet another legacy of our weird, evolved bodies).
posted by LooseFilter at 3:48 PM on October 28, 2017 [11 favorites]


At one point in my bassoon career I wound up with custody of a borrowed, ancient contrabassoon. It was incredible--the deep rumble you could feel in your hands, the way the giant reeds vibrated against my lips--and really difficult to control the pitch and the volume (especially pianissimo). It seemed like everything was too loud (BLAT!), buzzy or weirdly scrawny. I never mastered it, but I loved it. It was also fun to impersonate a fog horn (low F to low B-flat). Lately, some contrabassoon players have switched to the contraforte, another configuration, which has the same range but is more lyrical and, not incidently, about half the price. Perhaps a subcontraforte is next!
posted by carmicha at 3:52 PM on October 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


(Oh my life for a sarcasm font! Truly I didn't mean it - I played bassoon and trombone in school and all I want for Christmas is a rackett. I'd love to see a subcontrabassoon...and I think Mr. Bobo is adorable.)
posted by elsietheeel at 3:55 PM on October 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was looking at the exploded view, gleefully imagining it disassembling at the rings into something like twenty pieces for transport, and then I read:
Due to the complicated connections between joints I believe it would be best that the subcontrabassoon case store the instrument assembled (à la contrabassoon) rather than disassmbled (à la bassoon).
Booo
posted by ckape at 4:47 PM on October 28, 2017


While we're on the subject of big instruments, here's an amusing piccolo clarinet + contrabass clarinet duet.
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:52 PM on October 28, 2017


  Lately, some contrabassoon players have switched to the contraforte

Ooh, that sounds good: the Henry Skolnick pieces on the Contraforte - Benedikt Eppelsheim Wind Instruments page are amazing.
posted by scruss at 6:43 PM on October 28, 2017


Sub-contrabass recorder

Slight digression, but Slovakian Fujara contrabass recorder/flute has cool overtones.
posted by ovvl at 7:21 PM on October 28, 2017


Faint of butt wins the internet today.

Faint of butt, or just too low for us to hear?
posted by sebastienbailard at 12:56 AM on October 29, 2017


The engineering problem was that we did not invent or develop a bass-register (or contrabass-register) instrument capable of playing loudly enough to balance larger groups of musicians

See also: the first-movement theme in Beethoven's 8th when assigned to the CELLOS against everyone else playing fortissimo, therefore practically inaudible no matter what you do about it. Beethoven, hon, we can't play that loud! You need to go out and get you some trombones already!
posted by huimangm at 1:54 AM on October 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


Lately, some contrabassoon players have switched to the contraforte
I don't like the sound of the contraforte nearly as much. Contrabassoon proper has much more color and personality.
posted by daisystomper at 1:25 PM on October 29, 2017


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