 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Becky
Date: 1999-10-20 16:29
Hello. please help me!! Does anyone have any advice of how to toung very fast passages with 16th-note runs where the quarter note is 120+? I have several pieces where I must do that but I just can't get my toung to move fast enough. I've already tried using only the tip of my touing on the very tip of the reed. I still can't get it. I'm also taking my toung AWAY from the reed while tounging, puting almost no pressure on the reed and I STILL can't toung fast enough!
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Author: Kevin Bowman
Date: 1999-10-20 19:40
Increasing toungue speed takes time and practice. You cannot do it over night. The tongue is a muscle. You need to develop it. Use a metronome and practice scales with repeated 16th notes at a slower tempo. Increase the tempo until you cannot keep up then back off a couple of notches. Continue practicing at the slightly slower tempo for a few days (or longer) then increase the tempo by _one_ click. Hopefully, your tounge will develop in strength and agility, allowing you to control it at faster tempos. Don't work too fast. Practice tonguing each day, increasing the tempo every few days (or only when you feel you are _really_ comfortable with a given tempo). Remember - slow and steady wins the race.
Oh - also check yourself in a mirror to make sure you are tonguing properly. From your post, it sounds like you know the basics. Make sure there is no jaw or chin movement. Check your throat, too. You should not be able to see any movemement in the mirror when you tongue (well maybe just a _little_, but you should aim to minimize even that).
Kevin Bowman
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Author: Meri
Date: 1999-10-20 20:41
David Pino, in his book, The Clarinet and Clarinet Playing, provides a method of double-tounging (and triple tounging) on the clarinet.
You could also see if there's a teacher where you live that teaches double tounging.
Meri
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Author: Dee
Date: 1999-10-21 00:11
There is a very good chance that your fingers and your tongue are not in proper synchronization. Probably half the people who think they have slow tongues are actually just "out of sync." A lot of times a person thinks their tongue is slow so that causes the subconscious to slow down the finger. Then the tonquing sounds bad and the person thinks it is because the tongue is slow. Then they try to tongue faster and the problem gets worse.
Try these approaches.
1. Don't worry about the tongue. Just go ahead and tongue. Set the tongue in motion at the right speed and forget it. Concentrate on moving the fingers fast enough. Most of us can do this in slurs but we subconsciously slow down when we tongue.
2. Get hold of Daniel Bonade's "Clarinet Compendium". It gives a very explicit exercise for developing proper synchronization. In brief, the exercise is worked slowly at first. What you do is tongue the first note (make it staccato though) and immediately move the fingers into position for the next note. Then tongue the second note and do the same. As you get good at it, slowly increase the speed. This way the fingers learn to lead the tongue rather than lagging behind it.
Once I started paying attention to what I was doing, I found that my tongue was faster than I thought. It was just that my fingers didn't believe it and moved too slowly. Now I pay attention to the finger speed and my tonguing is much improved.
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Author: Kevin Bowman
Date: 1999-10-21 14:31
Good observation, Dee.
Mr. Bonade's method is the one I learned and use today. Excellent advice.
Kevin Bowman
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Author: John
Date: 1999-10-21 15:11
The most important way for me personally to get a fast tongued passage down is to make sure I am playing the 16ths exactly equal. The tongue is plenty accurate and fast, but it never works unless your finger technique is even. Play the passage slowly, slurred and with varied articulation and then speed it up gradually.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 1999-10-22 05:42
Becky. You wrote:
'I've already tried using only the tip of my touing on the very tip of the reed. '
This is totally wrong! Some teachers are teaching wrong things. If you touches the reed like this,it takes time for reed to come back to its original position. You cannot play fast passages by this method. Tongue should be not on the tip but on a little more lower position.
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 1999-10-22 05:46
And use tongue's big part not its tip. Imagine it works like a sheet spring. Fast passage is merely a piece of cake.
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 1999-10-22 12:15
Hiroshi,
Almost all teachers in this country teach "tip to tip", not the middle part of the tounge.
There have been outstanding players who tongue in all sorts of ways; tip-to-tip just happens to be the most common, and unless you do side-to-side, double tonguing is going to be well-nigh impossible without doing tip-to-tip. While double tonguing may not be a requirement for Romantic/classical pieces, it is becoming de rigeur for contemporary pieces (as is multiphonics, quarter tones, etc.).
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Author: Chris Hill
Date: 1999-10-24 05:08
I definitely agree with Mark that "tip on tip" is the cleanest and fastest way for the vast majority of people to tongue.
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Author: Becky
Date: 1999-10-27 21:55
In response to Hiroshi-
Are you talking about "anchor-tounging?" I've tried that too and personally, I find that much more difficult to control. "Tip-to-Tip" sounds cleaner, in my opionion. Thanks anyway.
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