Klarinet Archive - Posting 000441.txt from 1997/07

From: rteitelbaum@-----.com (Rob Teitelbaum)
Subj: Tongue Piercing--Seriously
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 13:10:44 -0400

As someone pointed out (sorry, in the ocean of tongue piercing replies I
forget who) that music teachers may soon have to encounter a pierced
tongue. Maybe this won't happen to college professors who teach music
majors, but for those who instruct students at the high school level and
younger who may not be choosing music as a career, tongue piercing is a
very real phenomenon, and I think the question of how to handle this
deserves some serious consideration. I'll omit my personal views on the
subject (being what Jacqueline Eastwood has so aptly termed a "young
fogie" :) and just say that if I were to encounter a student with a
pierced tongue (hopefully with minimal tissue damage and not the kind of
disasters that I've heard of resulting from "back-alley" type piercings),
I would probably try having them use the technique known as
"anchor-tonguing." This is because, like most list members whose
responses I've read, my instinct tells me that having a big hole in one's
tongue might tend to impede one's ability to tongue cleanly. Anchor
tonguing, while probably not the fastest way of tonguing under normal
circumstances, would, it seems to me, minimize the involvement of the
damaged portion of the tongue in the act of tonguing, since motion in
this technique is largely restricted to a frontal portion of the tongue.
Thus, it might be an improvement. Or, maybe I'm completely wrong. But I
think it would be worth a try if the pierced tongue scenario should
arise. Just a thought.

Rob Teitelbaum
rteitelbaum@-----.com