 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: poopsie
Date: 2004-11-05 02:34
I am trying to play some sixteenth notes up to speed and my tongue is not moving fast enough. Is there something that I can do to help improve my speed and keep it up for a substantial amount of time?
thanks!
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Author: William
Date: 2004-11-05 15:13
Slow, methodical practice with gradually increasing tempi is essential to developing a controlled and steady tongue action precisley cordinated with your finger motion(s). The tongue is a muscle that must be conditioned and trained for optimum performance, much like any athletic event. So, start slow--with a metronome--and gradually, over many weeks (months, even years), increase your tempo a bit at a time. Consistant, relentless practice is the answer--there is no short-cut.
However, we are all born with a "speed limit" when it comes to tonguing or muscular action in general. Some people are simply gifted with the ability of rapid repeat (my own terminology), wheither it be multiple boxing combinations, "moves" on the football field pr basketball court, swinging a baseball bat at the "right" pitch or tonguing a series of fast notes, scale-wise or repeated. The ability to smoothly trill any note is also an example of muscular "rapid repeat". And this--I believe--is an ability that one is born with and not one that can be achieved through experiance. Therefore, after you have achieved perfect technical cordination between you fingers and your tongues action--and you have developed a smooth, controlled tongue action that will produce a clean articulation--you will soon discover what your own personal "speed limit" is. And it is doubtful that you will ever be able to exceed it, even with a lifetime of playing experiance.
We are all familiar with performers who simply seem to be "born" musicians that have found it easy to do what we consider to be "hard" from the moment they picked up their instruments. And I think that these gifted individuals are specifically born with the right combination of motor reflex skills (physical aptitudes) needed for instrument manipulative skills--tonguing and fingering--and the basic innate love (motivation) of the sounds of music. And I have often wondered if someone could do a doctoral level thesis with the objective to develop a test for young people that might/would help indentify those gifted individuals so that they could be encouraged to pursue a musical career--or to simply help insure that they become envolved with music as an artistic lifetime enrichment. Of course, apptitude for success in anything is contingent upon motivation for action. Consequently, one of the major goals of public education is to help the young student discover which activities they are most interested (motivated) towards and give them the opportunities to develop skills in those areas of interest. There may be pre-test that could be developed that would could detect the physical aptiude (rapid reflex-??) for musical performance and such a test might be a legitiment screening instrument for encouraging those gifted individuals with some exposure to musical performance--and possibily, even which instrument the student would realize most success with. Example, if you ahould score low in "rapid reflex" , then might be wise to choose an instrument that does not require rapid single tonguing or complex technical note combinations--trombone or tuba, anyone??
Bottom line (finally!!): "Appitude for Pysical Rapid Reflex in Predicting Levels of Future Musical Performance" as a Doctoral Thesis, anyone?? Might be fun--and, at least, relevent to this thread on speed of tongue.
Just a thought...........good speed tonguing, everyone.
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Author: MTitus
Date: 2004-11-05 20:28
I would just like to add a funny tidbit... your tongue is more than likely moving faster than your fingers are, it happens to me ALL the time.
When you tongue, only use the tip of your tongue, don't smush it all on the reed because then you just waste precious time.
But as always, start slow on the tempo, and speed it up (I like to go up in incraments of 3).
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2004-11-05 20:54
William - Tonguing speed can be increased. From the technique of tonguing to the muscle speed itself it can be increased.
What you wrote is like saying that running speed can't be increased
it can - and I've done it with a mass amount of students.
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Author: anson
Date: 2004-11-05 21:34
I think William was implying that one shouldn't overkill the practicing when trying to articulate faster. Dont stress about it. It is not the most important thing. Yes, I agree speed can be increased, but not by milestones so don't expect miracles to happen. You wont just wake up one day being able to articulate the Beethoven 4 passage, if you cant almost do it already. Practice your tonguing with the Kell Staccato Studies. They are somewhat varied and interesting on a musical level. To lighten up your tongue stroke, dont focus on the action of the tongue, but the sounds you are producing. If you let the tone guide you , you should develop a naturally light tongue stroke.
Also if you are experiencing the articulation problems in an actual piece of music, I advise putting the music away and practice patterns with those notes, (Galamian; ?sp?). It should help you a bunch.
Hope this helps.
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Author: RCJ
Date: 2004-11-05 22:25
William did not say tounging speed cannot be increased. He said each person would have their own personal speed limit. I agree.
David, do you think everyone could run as fast as Carl Lewis if they would just practice enough?
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Author: DavidBlumberg
Date: 2004-11-05 22:56
"Therefore, after you have achieved perfect technical cordination between you fingers and your tongues action--and you have developed a smooth, controlled tongue action that will produce a clean articulation--you will soon discover what your own personal "speed limit" is. And it is doubtful that you will ever be able to exceed it, even with a lifetime of playing experiance. "
That's what he wrote. But didn't add the hours, days, months and possibly years of hard work after to increase the speed if needed.
Yes, of course different players have natural tongue speeds and quickness of increasing it but what I'm saying is that if a player works hard at increasing their tonguing it will get faster.
Same for Running! Yes, players do have different aptitudes and abilities regardless of work but the work can get the player to do the task at their optimum.
But it doesn't come quickly, it comes with literally years of hard work.
Yes we all do have our limits, but it takes time to develop to get to find out what they actually are.
Also, the way that the task is executed can be changed and the tongue can become quicker if the new method is easier for the player.
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Author: hartt
Date: 2004-11-06 02:01
There are numerous threads that have addressed tonguing. So, do a search and look for the article by Ken Shaw (Ken,hope you don't mind). It's a very comprehensive & detailed analysis .
Also, search in topics under Sherman Frielander's Corner (here on the BB). He has an article specific to the fingers operating faster than the tongue and a method for overcoming it.
I don't know how to get the site to show as a clickable blue link but you can copy/paste this and go from there.
[ http://clarinet.cc/archives/cat_tonguing_embouchure_and_breathing.html - GBK ]
regards
dennis
(:o)
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