YPGTTO: Kingdoms Of Sound Speed Paint Challenge #5 The Woodwind City / The Bassoon District

Speed Paint Challenge #5
The Woodwind City / The Bassoon District

Bassoon: The bassoon is a long pipe, doubled in half, made of wood, with many keys. The bend in the pipe makes it possible for musicians to play it comfortably. If it were straight, the bassoon would be around 9 feet long! Like the oboe, the bassoon uses a double reed, which is fitted into a curved metal mouthpiece. There are 2 to 4 bassoons in an orchestra and they have a similar range to that of the cello. Bassoons usually play lower harmonies, but you will sometimes hear their hollow low notes featured in a melody. You play the bassoon by holding it upright and blowing through the double reed. The air travels down the tube and then makes a u-turn and goes up and out the top.

The bassoon is the lowest sounding member of the woodwind family. The bassoon's double reed gives it a rich, slightly buzzing quality in the lowest notes and a sweet nasal sound higher up. Bassoons can be extremely expressive as solo instruments and their warm vibrato enables them to sound remarkably human, a little like a resonant baritone singer. They are also great for creating punchy rhythmic lines and as bass instruments they help provide support for the whole orchestra.

The bassoon’s timbre is rich in harmonics, which gives it particular color. The differences between the registers are very pronounced, which is one of the instrument’s most striking characteristics: full and sonorous in the lower register, slender, elegant and melodious in the middle and narrow and compressed in the upper register.

In all its registers, the notes of the bassoon – especially staccato notes – are well suited for the performance of humorous, comic effects and the depiction of musical caricatures.

You can listen to the extract (below) as many times as you like. We don't want literal images of the instruments associated with the extracts, but we do want your concept paintings to associate with the shapes, forms, structures, mechanisms, colours, materials and special characteristics of the specific instrument - and the moods evoked by the music extract itself.  

We do want to get a sense of spaces and places - of being 'within' these various districts of our Kingdom Of Sound.

Think of the relationship between the instrument and the extract in the following way: the structure, shapes, mechanisms and movement of the instrument gives you your vocabulary of architectural components, and the music extract gives you the art direction (i.e. the mood, colour palette, composition etc.)

In regards to setting up your speed paints in Photoshop - a few basic rules: can you ensure you're working at the following settings: 2560 pixels x 1440 pixels / 300dpi.

Feel free to go even more panoramic if your vision demands it and feel free to flip between landscape and portrait as your imagination requires. Once you've completed your digital painting(s), can you upload it to your blog entitled YPGTTO Speed Paint Challenge, and include the number and title of the challenge too:  YPGTTO Speed Paint Challenge 5 : The Bassoon District

Please can you keep all your original Speed Paint files safe and sound in a folder, as I'll be collecting them in as an archive of the project at the end of the challenge.

Young Person's Guide To The Orchestra, Op. 34 - Bassoons / Benjamin Britten

Need more inspiration? Visit the original YPGTTO brief here.