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Re: Overcoming Anchor Tonguing

Author: gwie
Date: 2016-07-25 10:34

I've had three students in the past ten years who came to me with anchor tonguing (with the contact of the reed near the middle of the tongue) and while I would not have changed anything at all had they worked fine, in all three cases while their articulation in fast passages sounded just fine to them close up, farther away in any venue sounded like mush. Video recording in a few different spaces allowed them to compare the results, and prompted them to try learning a different way to articulate. Not to say that they should never anchor tongue...two of them had absolutely beautiful, clean, attacks and those worked for slow movements wonderfully.

A colleague of mine didn't change things until she headed off to graduate school...and in confessing to her new teacher that she could not make heads or tails of the Mendelssohn Scherzo, played it once for him and he knew instantly (!). Changing her from anchor tongue to tip tongue made it possible for her to reach a reasonable tempo in that particular excerpt.

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