You will hear a three octave scale on a bassoon followed by a three octave scale of notes that are simple transpositions of the instrument's highest tone. This is how the bassoon would sound if all its tones had the same relative spectrum
High and low tones from a musical instrument normally do not have the same relative spectrum. A low tone on the piano typically contains little energy at the fundamental frequency and has most of its energy at higher harmonics. A high piano tone, however typically has a strong fundamental and weaker overtones. If a single tone from a musical instrument is spectrally analyzed and the resulting spectrum is used as a model for the other tones, one almost always obtains a set of tones that do not seem to come from that instrument. This is demonstrated by a recorded 3-octave diatonic scale played on a bassoon. A similar 3-octave bassoon scale is then synthesized by temporal stretching of the highest tone to obtain the proper pitch for each lower note on the scale. Segments of the steady-state portions are removed to retain the original note lengths. This way the spectra of all tones on the scale identical except for a frequency scale factor. The listener will notice that, except the highest note, the second scale does not sound as played on a bassoon.