 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Kyle Jubenville
Date: 2001-10-19 02:39
Ok, I am a college Clarinet player. I use anchored tonguing(I started out on saxophone). I am soo frustrated with my technique and my horrible airy, pinched tone that I am ACTUALLY about ready to give up on the clarinet all together. No one will explain it to me how i SHOULD be tonguing. My professor that gives me private instruction says that there is nothing wrong with it and if it works for you then go with it..well trouble is, is that it has made it very uncomfortable for me to play clarinet now as far as embechoure goes and about ready to switch to Flute. my College band instructor told me to say "thoo" while I am tonguing and that will give me a much better tone and...UHH!! I am just so confused. I have no idea what part of my tongue should be hitting the reed, or if it should hit the reed at all. HELP
I am also using a something Lyre mouthpiece(the one that goes with the V12's) and that has improved my tone quite a bit. but still remains uncomfortable. and I am using 3.5 Rico Grand concert reeds.
Thank you for any imput you can give me
Kyle
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Author: Katie
Date: 2001-10-19 03:26
Here's some help.... it's spelled "tonguing."
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Author: Mark Charette
Date: 2001-10-19 03:37
Excuse me. I just made a comment a few posts below and asked politely that people <b>not</b> go around correcting spelling. If you have something to <b>contribute</b> other than being a human spell checker please post by all means and correct the spelling <b>in your post</b> as you discuss the question. Pointing out spelling errors is counter-productive.
All of us have made typos from time to time.
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Author: clarinet713
Date: 2001-10-19 04:11
I've been through the switch from anchor tonguing, and let me tell you that it is not fun at all! Advice I can offer and you can do with it what you wish: practice practice practice and when you are ready to throw your clarinet out the window, practice some more. It will come only through much practice and patience and time, etc. There is hope and it will happen. There are many good threads about tonguing on this board, why don't you search and see what you come up with? Best of luck!
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Author: willie
Date: 2001-10-19 04:30
Kyle! This is a subject that plagued me for a long time as I learned and then perfected a wrong tonguing technique. It held me back quite a bit. When I did find a good instructor who identified what my problem was, I had problems with tone and such for a while. I sounded worse than ever, till I finally and slowly got my tongue to do it right. Now, I sound much, much better and I have been able to improve in other areas that I was just unable to do in the "old style". Hang in there and work at it. It may be slow at first as you are retraining a muscle (your tongue) to do something strange that it wasn't really designed to do in the first place.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2001-10-19 11:23
Tell your instructor that anchor tonguing is NOT working for you and that you need help changing. If that doesn't do it, find another instructor if at all possible.
Search this bulletin board for past posts as this has been discussed extensively.
Get hold of Daniel Bonade's Clarinet Compendium. It shows the correct tonguing technique and exercises for staccato that would also be useful in practicing proper technique.
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Author: Sarah
Date: 2001-10-19 19:54
Just out of interest, is there a problem with anchor tonguing? does it need to be changed or is it ok to carry on like that? i dont know and just wondered, is it wrong to tongue like that?
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Author: Sneakers
Date: 2001-10-20 03:50
I have learned that keeping the tongue high and back in the mouth and using the syllable "tee" when tonguing will help. You should be tonguing on the tip of the reed and be using only a small area of the tongue.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2001-10-20 12:40
Sarah wrote:
>
> Just out of interest, is there a problem with anchor
> tonguing? does it need to be changed or is it ok to carry on
> like that? i dont know and just wondered, is it wrong to
> tongue like that?
It is not necessarily wrong but typically people find that it limits their tonguing speed and the cleanness of their staccato in comparison to the normally preferred tip to tip method.
However, there are times when it can be useful. I don't remember the piece but we had a section that required very fast legato tonguing. Many of the section members were having difficulty and our section leader demonstrated anchor tonguing and had us try it for that section. In this limited case it seemed to work better for the section. The section leader treated anchor tonguing not as a standard method but an alternate, special application.
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Author: Sheryl
Date: 2001-10-20 18:56
Anchor tonguing does not allow you to tongue quickly or lightly enough for a lot of music. It also makes it virtually impossible to have good tongue position, which greatly affects your overall sound. I anchor tongued for 9 years and just learned how to tongue correctly this past summer. I get a much clearer articulation now, and I also am able to have good tongue position even when not articulating. To re-learn how to tongue, I started by putting just in back of the tip of my tongue to just below the tip of the reed and very slowly legato tonguing low G. It sounded awful at first, but once I was able to do several low G's correctly in a row, I tried legato tonguing up to C and back down. Once I mastered that (several days later), I tried doing an octave G Major scale. Next, I switched to C Major so as to deal with going over the break. (you have to use more air, not more tongue, for the long B and C as they are more resistant notes) A week or so later, I attempted doing the next octave C. It took me several weeks to be able to tongue G above the staff and higher without getting a really awful sound. It was worth it in the long run. I must warn you, though, that you can't simply practice this for awhile each day and then go back to anchor tonguing for "real music." You have to try to incorporate your new tonguing in everything. If at all possible, it's best wait on music with lots of tonguing until you have relearned the correct way. Once you've gotten it, the Kell Staccato Studies book is a good source for annoying yet useful tonguing excercises to build speed. Good luck!
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