I made my first print­able blank chart for mod­ern bas­soon, as a con­ve­nient way to quick­ly and leg­i­bly make note of an eas­i­er way to pro­duce a par­tic­u­lar trill, spe­cial fin­ger­ings for har­mon­ics or mul­ti­phon­ics, or a new alter­nate fin­ger­ing I’ve learned from a col­league. From there, I added blank charts for con­tra­bas­soon and mul­ti­ple kinds of Baroque bas­soon. Then over the years, as I’ve explored var­i­ous new-to-me his­tor­i­cal bas­soons and oth­er instru­ments, I’ve made ver­sions to fit some of those instru­ments, as well.

On all of them, the staves are com­plete­ly emp­ty so that you can write notes in any clef. The fin­ger­ing dia­grams them­selves are either from or derived from Bret Pimentel’s excellent  Fingering Diagram Builder.

Modern Bassoon Family

German Bassoon

A basic pro­fes­sion­al key­work dia­gram for what we think of as the “reg­u­lar” bas­soon (Püchner, Fox, Heckel, etc.), with­out extra trill keys or alternates

Contrabassoon

A fair­ly mid­dle-of-the-road key­work set-up

French Bassoon

Basic mod­ern pro­fes­sion­al Buffet-style keywork

Historical Bassoons

Dulcian

For your basic 2‑keyed dulcian/curtal

4‑key Baroque

This is for a basic 4‑keyed Baroque bas­soon (low B‑flat, low D, F, A‑flat)

5‑key Baroque (LT)

For Baroque bas­soons with an E‑flat key for the left thumb

5‑key Baroque (L4)

For Baroque bas­soons with an E‑flat key for the left lit­tle finger

7‑Key Classical (Grenser)

Modeled on my Cronin Grenser, which has two wing keys

7‑key Classical (Ozi)

Based on the “Basson mod­erne” from Etienne Ozi’s 1787 Nouvelle méth­ode de basson

9‑key Romantic (Küffner)

Based on the fin­ger­ing chart from Joseph Küffner’s 1829 Principes élé­men­taires de la musique et gamme de basson…

13-key Romantic (Savary)

This is for a par­tic­u­lar 1843 bas­soon by Jean-Nicolas Savary that may have orig­i­nal­ly had anoth­er key or two

18-key Romantic (Almenräder)

Based on the fin­ger­ing chart from Carl Almenräder’s 1843 Die Kunst des Fagottblasens oder Vollständige the­o­retisch prak­tis­che Fagottschule

19-key Romantic (Buffet)

I made this for my Buffet, which was made in 1925, but has anti­quat­ed key­work that’s more like an instru­ment from the late 19th century

20-key Romantic (Bourdeau)

Very sim­i­lar to the 19-key Buffet chart above, this match­es the key­work on an undat­ed fin­ger­ing chart by Eugène Bourdeau

Miscellaneous Instruments

2‑key Serpent

The ser­pent is an ear­ly wind instru­ment with a brass-style cup mouth­piece and sim­ple wood­wind-style open-holed fingering.

Octavin

The octavin is an obscure late 19th cen­tu­ry sin­gle-reed instru­ment that sounds like a cross between an oboe and a sopra­no sax­o­phone, and looks vague­ly like the boot joint of a bassoon.