The one adjustment you must not make
Every other woodwind has a joint you slide. Flute players pull the head joint, clarinettists pull the barrel, oboists pull the reed. Point a bassoonist at the equivalent-looking part — the bocal, the curved metal tube the reed sits on — and the answer is no.
The reason is mechanical and specific. The whisper key closes a pad against a small vent hole on the bocal itself. That pad and that hole have to line up. Pull the bocal out to flatten the instrument and the vent moves away from the pad, so the whisper key stops sealing — and the whisper key is what makes the low register speak cleanly and the register slurs work. You will have swapped a few cents of pitch for a genuine response problem, and it is the sort of fault that gets blamed on the reed for weeks.
The first tab is what you will be asked to tune to. The second walks the range, including the low B♭ that needs a long steady note before a tuner will name it. The third is the 440-versus-442 question in audible form.
What actually moves the pitch
Three things do, and it is worth suspecting them in this order — because the order runs from free to expensive.
- Your air and embouchure.Far more of a bassoon’s pitch lives here than on most instruments. A bassoon reed is large and low in resistance, so slow air or a loose embouchure drops the pitch immediately, and taking a little more reed and moving the air faster brings it back. Before changing anything physical, play the note again with real support and watch what the needle does.
- The reed. How far it is pushed onto the bocal — a couple of millimetres matters — plus how it was scraped and how long it has been wet. Reeds go sharp as they dry and flatten as they soak; a reed that was perfect on Tuesday can read ten cents off on Thursday without anyone doing anything wrong.
- The bocal. Not its position, its length. Bocals are numbered, and the number is the length: a 2 is shorter and sharper than a 3, a 1 shorter and sharper again. A player who sits consistently flat against their orchestra changes to a shorter bocal; one who sits consistently sharp goes longer.
That third point is the real answer to “how do I tune a bassoon”. Most professionals own two or three bocals and choose between them for the situation — a shorter one for an ensemble at A=442, a longer one for A=440 — in the same way a string player would choose a different set of strings.
Nothing here transposes
A rare piece of good news among wind instruments: the bassoon is a C instrument, written at concert pitch. The note on your part is the note in the air is the note on the display. If the tuner disagrees with the page, it is telling you something real about the reed or the embouchure — there is no transposition to blame.
The one thing that looks like a transposition and is not: bassoon parts move between bass clef and tenor clef as the line climbs. A clef change relocates the notes on the staff without changing their pitch, so the tuner still agrees with you — it is only the reading that got harder.
440 or 442
This matters more for bassoon than for most instruments, because your response to it is to change hardware rather than to adjust a slide. Many European orchestras play at A=442 rather than 440 — around 8 cents sharp — and some higher still.
Set the reference pitch in this tuner’s settings to the standard your group actually uses before you conclude anything about your reed. A perfectly good reed and a perfectly good bocal will read consistently flat against a 440 dial if the ensemble around you lives at 442, and no amount of scraping will fix a mismatch that is really a settings problem.
Using the dial on a reed, not just on a note
The most useful thing a tuner does for a bassoonist is not tuning at all — it is testing reeds. Play the same passage, the same three or four notes across the range, on each reed with the dial running, and write down what happens. A reed that is centred at A3 but 20 cents sharp at E4 tells you something specific about its scrape. A reed that starts centred and climbs over five minutes tells you it is drying out too fast.
That is a different use from “am I in tune right now”, and it is where the instrument’s real intonation problems get solved. For the other double reed in the section, the oboe tuner covers the same reed-first logic from the other end of the range; the clarinet and saxophone tuners cover the single-reed instruments where the joint really can be pulled.
What the needle can and cannot settle
The dial measures equal temperament against a fixed reference, which is the right tool for setting up an instrument and diagnosing a reed. It is the wrong tool for the thing bassoonists actually spend their time on, which is sitting inside a wind chord.
The bassoon frequently holds the root or the fifth under a woodwind chord, and a chord locks when its third is pulled below where equal temperament puts it. That means the correct note in an ensemble is sometimes not the centred one. Set the instrument with the dial, then listen — our guide to cents explains why the two answers differ by a predictable amount.
Frequently asked questions
Can I tune a bassoon by pulling the bocal out?
No — and this is the one piece of advice that transfers from every other woodwind and must not be applied here. On a flute you pull the head joint, on a clarinet the barrel, on an oboe the reed. On a bassoon the bocal has to stay seated, because the whisper key’s pad closes against a vent hole on the bocal itself. Pull the bocal out and that vent no longer lines up with its pad, so the whisper key stops sealing and your low register and register slurs go wrong — you will have traded a small pitch problem for a much larger response problem.
So what actually changes a bassoon’s pitch?
Three things, in the order you should suspect them. The reed: how it is scraped, how ripe it is, and how far it is pushed onto the bocal. Your embouchure and air: how much reed is in the mouth and how fast the air is moving, which is a far larger effect on bassoon than on most instruments. And the bocal: a different one, of a different length. Bocals are numbered by length — a higher number is longer and therefore flatter — so a player who is consistently sharp or flat against the ensemble changes bocal rather than changing where it sits.
What do the numbers on my bocal mean?
Length, and therefore pitch. A bocal marked 2 is shorter than one marked 3, so it plays sharper; a 1 is shorter and sharper again. Makers also vary the taper and the metal, which changes response and colour, but for tuning the number is the part that matters. Most bassoonists own at least two and choose between them for the situation: a shorter bocal for an ensemble that runs at A=442, a longer one for A=440 or for a reed that has gone sharp as it dried out.
Does a bassoon transpose?
No. The bassoon is a C instrument and its parts are written at concert pitch, so what the tuner names is what your part says — one of the few wind instruments where that is true. It reads in bass clef, moving to tenor clef for the upper register, but a clef change is not a transposition: the notes are the same pitches written on a different set of lines. If your tuner disagrees with your part, the problem is the reed or the embouchure, not a transposition you have forgotten.
My tuner says I am flat but the reed feels fine. What now?
Check the air before the equipment. A bassoon reed is large and low-resistance compared with an oboe reed, and it goes flat readily under slow air or a loose embouchure — so a reading that says flat very often means “blow faster and take slightly more reed”, not “buy something”. Test it by playing the same note deliberately with more support: if the pitch comes up to centre, the reed is fine and you have found a technique issue. If it does not, look at the reed next, and only then consider a shorter bocal.