Real recorded bassoon notes on a piano keyboard: click, touch or type, and the bassoon answers. The bassoon is the bass of the woodwinds, as able to sound comic as mournful. Free, nothing to install, with note names, your computer keyboard and a metronome.
Recorded notes, the bassoon's own range, and the keyboard you already know.
Every key plays a recording of a real bassoon: 10 notes from G2 to C5, each key pitched from the nearest one. The bassoon is double-reed woodwind instrument: two cane blades tied together - a double reed - vibrate against each other at the end of a curved metal crook, feeding a wooden tube about 2.5 metres long folded in two.
The keyboard covers D2 to D#5, where the recordings sound natural; a real bassoon plays B-flat 1 to about E5. Use the octave arrows to move, and More keys on a wide screen.
Play short, bouncing notes for a comic march, then long ones in the upper range for the eerie sound that opens The Rite of Spring. The note sounds as long as you hold the key, like a bow or a breath.
Famous bassoon music: Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (the high opening solo); Dukas, The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Prokofiev, Peter and the Wolf: the grandfather; Mozart, Bassoon Concerto. Pick out a melody by ear on the keyboard above.
Click or touch a key. The first note starts the sound; the bassoon recordings for the visible keys load in the background.
A S D F G H J K L play the white keys, W E T Y U O P the black ones (Q and Z on AZERTY). Z and X move an octave (W and X on AZERTY).
Set Labels to C D E or Do Ré Mi to see every note name, or to Keys to see your own keyboard letters.
Turn on the metronome and play along. Then try the same melody on the clarinet or the piano.
| Type | Sampled bassoon, playable on this page, free |
|---|---|
| Family | Woodwinds - double-reed woodwind instrument |
| Samples | 10 recorded notes, G2 to C5 |
| Range here | D2 to D#5 |
| Real range | B-flat 1 to about E5 |
| Notation | Bass clef (tenor clef up high) |
| Controls | Labels, octave arrows, More keys and a metronome |
| Computer keyboard | Ableton layout by key position - QWERTY, AZERTY, QWERTZ |
| Credits | Bassoon samples from tonejs-instruments by Nicholas Brosowsky, CC BY 3.0 - see credits |
| Requirements | Any modern browser with Web Audio - Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari |
Most online instruments are a synthesiser with a picture on top. This one plays recordings of a real bassoon, so the attack, the tone and the decay are the instrument's own. The bassoon is the bass of the woodwinds, as able to sound comic as mournful.
The bassoon grew out of the Renaissance dulcian in the 17th century. Its folded tube puts a very low instrument within reach of the player's hands.
A real bassoon is written in bass clef (tenor clef up high). The keyboard here plays the sounding notes, so a melody you find by ear is the melody you hear. To go further, the free sheet music and chord pages work with any instrument you can read music on.
Yes. Every key plays a recording of a real bassoon - 10 notes from G2 to C5 - pitched to the nearest key. The recordings come from the tonejs-instruments library, under a Creative Commons licence.
Yes. The middle row of letters plays the white keys and the row above it the black keys, by key position, so it works the same on QWERTY, AZERTY and QWERTZ keyboards. Set Labels to Keys to see the letters on the keys.
A bassoon plays B-flat 1 to about E5. On this page the keyboard goes from D2 to D#5, where the recordings sound natural.
Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (the high opening solo); Dukas, The Sorcerer's Apprentice; Prokofiev, Peter and the Wolf: the grandfather; Mozart, Bassoon Concerto.
Yes, free with no account and nothing to install. It runs in any modern browser, on a computer, a tablet or a phone.
The bassoon on this page is free, with no account. GOONS Studio adds a sampled piano, drum machines, synths and a sequencer in the browser - free for 7 days, no card required.
Free on this page, no account. Play the clarinet →