Category: Tonguing

Practice Reflections: Tonguing the Initial Attack

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned last Monday, this week I’ve been revisiting focusing on my tonguing for much of my routine technique practice.  In particular, I’ve been paying attention to how I tongue the initial attacks after breathing in different registers and listening carefully for the results.

I think one thing that sets off the really great players from the rest of us is they don’t get complacent with any aspect of their technique (or maybe I should say, I personally get complacent from time to time and it holds me back).  In years past I’ve spent lots of trombone practice time working on not bottling up the air with my tongue just before the initial attack.  When I do, the attack is too explosive sounding and doesn’t match the articulation of any subsequent attacks on the same breath.  This was particularly challenging for me in the register above F4, where I would often crack the attack.  These days I no longer usually split those notes on the initial attack (just sometimes, which is still too much), so I figured that I was heading in the right direction here and quit spending time daily on it. Continue reading “Practice Reflections: Tonguing the Initial Attack” →

Tonguing and Accuracy

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

Trombonist and music educator, Dr. Rodney Lancaster, sent me a link to a short essay he wrote on tongue placement and accuracy.  It’s a quick read and offers some suggestions on how to practice tongue placement.  In practicing out of Claude Gordon’s bass clef book Lancaster found that working on his tongue position greatly improved his accuracy.

First, I have to offer a disclaimer.  My knowledge of Gordon’s approach is second hand, I’ve never ready any of his books.  I have closely followed some online discussions about Gordon that included former students of his and watched some players warm up with it, so I think I have the gist of it.  That said, take my comments with a grain of salt (good advice even if I do think I know what I’m talking about).

In my opinion, Gordon’s approach overemphasizes pedal tone practice.  If your pedal tone/false tone embouchure doesn’t match your normal playing embouchure you should definitely spend your time instead working on connecting your high range embouchure down and stay away from a lot of pedals.  Frankly, I think there are better things for trumpet players to practice that do the same thing without risking developing multiple embouchures.  Trombone players in general seem to be better able to play pedals with their normal embouchure (something about the construction of the instruments, perhaps, or maybe the size of the mouthpiece).  However, trombonists sometimes change their embouchure to play pedals in which case I usually recommend they adjust their routine to connect their normal embouchure down, rather than pedal range up.

At any rate, Lancaster’s essay discusses his experience practicing Gordon’s exercises on trombone and using them to work on the position of his tongue inside his mouth.

In tonguing these arpeggios, you will teach yourself where the tongue should be placed on each given note.  For example, one must tongue lower for low notes and higher for a high note.  Having said that, as you practice part two, memorize (subconsciously perhaps) where you had to place the tongue for each given note.  It is a type of muscle memory exercise.

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Questions About Bernoulli’s Principle and Brass Playing

~ wilktone ~ 37 Comments

How does the Bernoulli’s Principle apply to brass playing? I’m not a physicist (almost completely self-taught in that area), so I must acknowledge that this is an area where I just may be way off base. So rather than try explain this in detail, I’m going to simply offer my understanding at this time and ask my readers to help me fill in the gaps and correct any misinformation. I’ve heard contradictory statements about this from sources I trust, so perhaps this is another area where even experts still disagree.

First, what is the Bernoulli Principle? The relevant part for brass playing is that a fluid (or air, in our case) moving with a change in pressure will also be accompanied by a change in speed.  This physical law is often cited (including by me) as the reason why brass players change the level of tongue arch according to the range being played.  The higher the register, the higher in the mouth the tongue will arch, resulting in the air moving through a smaller area inside the mouth.  The general reasoning here is that this results in the air striking the lips with faster speed/higher pressure, making the faster vibrations for the high register easier.

I recently got an email from Darryl who is trying to help me come to grips with why this might be wrong.

The pressure that one can create by lung pressure is the maximum pressure that will exist just before the embouchure, regardless of how one “narrows” the path before the aperture. The total pressure of the air is, at best, exactly the same as the lung pressure. Regardless of the air’s velocity of flow as it approaches the aperture.

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Tonguing For Brass Playing

~ wilktone ~ 10 Comments

Along with breathing and embouchure, tonguing is one of the basic mechanical areas brass players need to regularly practice.  We all learn to speak from a very young age and are used to using our tongue without needing to think about it at all, so manipulation of the tongue while playing a brass instrument is often quite subconscious.  Still, I feel it’s a good idea to understand how brass players’ tongues functions when things are working efficiently and also understand what methods correlate with playing problems.

When I teach tonguing I try to help my students avoid an issue that is one of my tonguing weaknesses, tonguing too hard.  An analogy that works pretty well is to consider the tonguing to be a refining, not defining, feature of the attack.  The moving air creates the pitch, the attack of the tongue is simply shaped by the backstroke of the tongue.

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X-Ray Videos of Brass Players

~ wilktone ~ 1 Comment

The above embedded video from YouTube is an fascinating look at a horn player and a trumpet player performing various types of tonguing in different registers.  There are some interesting things that I noticed watching it.

I’m not sure when this video footage was filmed, but it had to be a while ago (update: John Ericson, from the Horn Matters blog, noted that the footage was taken for Joseph A. Meidt’s 1967 dissertation, A Cinefluorographic Investigation of Oral Adjustments for Various Aspects of Brass Instrument Performance).  These days we have a better understanding of the risks involved in a casual dose of X-ray radiation, so I doubt that a legitimate researcher would be able to go through an Institutional Research Board and get approval for this sort of study.  

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The Effect of the Brass Player’s Oral Cavity On Intonation

~ wilktone ~ 3 Comments

I recently saw a reference to Frank Campos’ book, Trumpet Technique.  In it, Campos tells of a story by Reynold Schilke.

. . . Arnold Jacobs and a tubist from Japan were trying out a new tuba in front of an electronic tuner.  After Jacobs played, the tubist from Japan found he had to pull the tuning slide considerably farther out than Jacobs to play in tune.  Schilke was curious about why the same length instrument would not play in tune for both men.  After some investigation, he determined that Jacob’s oral cavity was much larger than that of the Japanese tubist, and that the vibrating air column created by each player originated within the oral cavity at the back of the throat, rather than at the mouthpiece.  In this case, the air column was longer for Jacobs due to his larger oral cavity and shorter for the Japanese tubist, and this required a change in the length of the instrument to match the tuner.

– Campos, page 85

I located an article here, supposedly handed out by Schilke at brass clinics.  In it he writes,

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