hdswriter

Clarke and Gordon both were of the opinion that the tip of the tongue should never rise above the lower teeth when tonguing. Is this still the prevailing sentiment amongst educators?

For a player who strikes the upper part of the top teeth, is it possible to develop tonguing to a high degree in the classical arena?

Thank you for your time.

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Vulgano Brother

Yes!










Oh, did you want some reasons? Well, first off, Clarke and Gordon were virtuoso players, specialists, and pretty unique individuals. Secondly, there is no hard-and-fast rule regarding tonguing and tongue position, and even if there were, someone would pop up who can play beautifully wrong. When we focus on musical results rather than mechanical technique we are much less likely to turn into basket cases, and find out what works for us.

Have fun!

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brem

How can one makea "t" sound without touching the roof of the mouth?!

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Eeviac

T .... hmm.... I make the T sound by touching my upper palate behind the top teeth.....

hdswriter

I appreciate the responses. It's been a topic that has come up recently and I have received conflicting information, oddly enough and I simply wanted to get some opinions and reasons for them. Some educators are very passionate about the position of the tongue being were they feel it should be, which is were Clarke said it should be.

I am personally getting excellent results with my current tongue position and have been very reluctant to try and adopt this phylosophy. I can't say it is something that I'm willing to dive into. However, that being said, I am very determined to develop my playing and my expectations are very high. Tonguing is, of course, a huge part of that.

Thank you again for your time.

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TropicLightning

Hum...then what about double or triple tongueing. I was taught to make a too-kuu or too-kuu-kuu sound and never really gave it a whole lot of thought of the mechanics...just to produce the effect.

hdswriter

The original question had to do with the "very tip" of the tongue striking the upper back portion of the top teeth (my playing) as apposed to the tip staying down and behind the bottom teeth and the area of the tongue that is, say, 1/2 inch or so from the tip striking just behind the top teeth on the roof of the mouth (Clarke and Gordon). I had thought by refering to Clarke and Gordon that most people would know what I was referring to. My apologies for not being clear. I hope this makes more sense.

Edit: The Clarke method seems to be very similar to anchor tonguing that is used by many reed players.

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oj

Clarke never said "how to tongue" in his books, like "this is the right way". He talks about it and also said that he used a special type ("My own method is rather unique").

Here from "Characteristic Studies"
More here: Herbert L. Clarke: Characteristic Studies

Ole

Patric_Bernard

I think this is your problem. Clark often used the TCE set when he played, which is tounge forward past the teeth and touching the bottom and top lip. It is a very difficult concept to switch to unless you are taught this way. For most players however, we use the tounge behind the teeth method.

to attack we simply break the hermetic seal that we form with our tounge, and the air rushes out all at once for a strong attack. The easiest, and i think best way to describe the motion of your tounge would to be, say the word/syllable DAH. once you have the air flowing, you keep your tounge nice and flat and out of the way of any air streams until you need some type of effect like a bend or a shake. But for long tones, just keep it out of the way, and tounge again with Dah. Your airstream will always be constant, just interupted by your tounge.

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oj

How do you know this?

Here is part of the letter that Clarke wrote to Fred Elias (both were old men at that time)

So you still want to increase your range of the cornet, especially at your age. Well, there is a trick I used to practice when traveling with Sousa, when my lips did not seem to respond after being up all night with local town bands and playing my usual solos the next day. You know the condition, eh? Well, by producing this "Stunt" carefully, knowing just how to get each interval correctly from high " C " up, I have often reached two octaves above " G " in the top space of the scale... sometimes higher.

He clearly say that he used this as a "trick" or "stunt" when he was tired. He never mention it in his books.

Patric, to go from there to claiming that Clarke often used TCE is a bit "over board"!

Ole