 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Karel
Date: 1999-02-26 11:29
I would like to learn good slap tongue. I already start but it didnt work. So if you have some good advices, please share it with me. Thanks
Karel
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Author: Kevin Bowman
Date: 1999-02-26 20:13
In my opinion, there's no such thing as a "good" slap tongue. It is usually an undesirable effect. However, there are some instances where the effect is called for and I'll describe it here but I want it to be know that I in no way advocate "slap tonguing" as a normal practice.
Slap tongue is pretty easy to do - especially on instruments with larger reeds. In fact it is probably the most common tonguing problem among beginning tenor sax players. To slap tongue, simply use "too much" of the tongue on the reed. It "helps" to have a soft tongue, too (as opposed to rigid). The idea is to use enough of the tongue, flat on the reed, to cause a temporary suction seal between the tongue and the reed. Then when you pull your tongue off the reed, the reed tries to stick to your tongue until it can't flex anymore. When the reed finally come "unstuck" from your tongue, it undergoes a violent, chaotic, oscillation - beyond what it would normally do -
which comes out sounding like a "pop" on the attack. It might also help to have LESS breath support so the vibrating air column has less dampening effect on the distorted reed vibration (making the "pop" part of the sound longer).
I'll state my disclaimer here again:
Slap tongue is NOT a normal technique - it is a trick to be used sparingly (maybe in jazz improvisation?). I would never "teach" a student to do this unless he/she already had a very good command of conventional tonguing techniques.
Kevin Bowman
Clarinet anmd Saxophone Instructor,
Rochester Conservatory of Music, Rochester, MI
and
Saxophones, Clarinet, and Keys,
B-Side Blues Project
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Author: Lelia
Date: 1999-02-27 22:03
Kevin Bowman wrote:
-------------------------------
In my opinion, there's no such thing as a "good" slap tongue. It is usually an undesirable effect. [snip] Slap tongue is NOT a normal technique - it is a trick to be used sparingly (maybe in jazz improvisation?). I would never "teach" a student to do this unless he/she already had a very good command of conventional tonguing techniques.
Kevin Bowman
Clarinet anmd Saxophone Instructor,
Rochester Conservatory of Music, Rochester, MI
and
Saxophones, Clarinet, and Keys,
B-Side Blues Project
As an amateur musician, I'm not qualified to dispute what techniques are normal or desireable, but I hear jazz sax players use a fair amount of slap-tongueing and I like the way it sounds if it's used in moderation, for color. FWIW, I think this technique sounds better (and is easier to do) on sax than clarinet, and sounds better on the larger saxes than on the smaller ones. (On some bass saxes -- not including mine, fortunately! -- slap is the only way to get the lowest two notes out of the horn at all.) For a good example of slap and some of the other exotic techniques (including double tongueing and flutter tongueing that can just about sand-blast the paint off a radiator), listen to almost anything recorded by baritone sax player Hamiett Bluiett. He played with Mingus in the 1960s and recently joined with three other bari players as The Bluiett Baritone Saxophone Group.
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