Heavens2kadonka

For the past year, I have been terribly vexed with my tonguing. Just wasnt working right. Its taken me a while, a danged long while in fact, but I think today I finally figured it out.

A:) Positioning of the tongue. I has hitting further up the mouth, towards the ridge, and flicking down for tonguing. A "Thuh" sound. I've moved my tongue actually to behind the front teeth. Lord, it sounds *SO* much better. I may actually be able to call myself a trumpet player.

B:) Air. Because the tongue was so far back, I used the throat to cut off air and push the note out, cutting off air in the process. I keep the air constantly moving, and everything works. Viola.

Now, for discussion time. I was curious if anyone else had or have this problem right now.

And sorry for the rant. One of the few bright spots I've experienced in this dark tunnel I'm travelling through.

Van

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1900 Eb Cornet

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trickg

When I was a freshman and sophomore in high school I used to joke about having a "thunder tongue" - seriously, if I tongued anything, it was HARD. Legatto was not really in my vocabulary at the time.

Then I took steps to fix the problem, but I have never really approached articulation from a technical or mechanical standpoint. I never really thought about the tongue itself or it's position, or how much or how little it was arched. I did think a little bit about how and where the tongue was striking, but it was more along the lines of finding the right sound than it was about the tongue placement itself.

I just started to do LOTS of basic articulation studies and concentrated on the sound, making minor physical adjustments with what I was doing based on that sound. I've lost some of it due to a lack of discipline in my practice, but at one time, my articulation was pretty good due to the focused practice on just articulation. I'm in the process of cleaning it back up now - an easier task than cleaning it up in the first place due to muscle memory.

Good luck with it and just keep after it - the more you do it the better it will get. Just focus and listen and the minor adjustments that need to happen to clean it up will happen.

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Patrick Gleason
email me at: trickg1@hotmail.com

"What we do in life echoes in eternity"
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