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Re: Tongue Position Issues

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2017-01-19 08:06

Richie wrote:

> To me I can't tell a
> difference in articulation, but would it affect tone or my
> airstream?

Again, if the question were, "could it affect...," the answer would be "yes." But as you've asked it, no one here can answer, because we can't hear your tone.

If you're pleased with the way your playing sounds, and this is the way you've been playing for a long period of time, then you can probably leave things as they are. If you've just recently noticed both a change in your tongue position and a deterioration in the sound of your playing, then you have the answer yourself and probably need to find the correction for yourself as well.

In general, most players are most comfortable when their tongue motion when they play mimics the way the tongue moves in speech. We learn to speak long before we're capable of thinking (or over-thinking) about it and it ends up feeling natural. The problem that keeps us as reed players from moving exactly as we do in speaking is that the mouthpiece juts into our mouths and the reed isn't in the same place or at the same angle as the parts of our mouths the tongue contacts (lips, teeth, hard palate, etc.) so we have to accommodate those differences, which can lead to destructive tension. But those accommodations are highly individual. If this off-center approach is an accommodation of long standing for you and your playing is controlled and musical, then it may for you be the best way.

The only way you can tell for sure is to try consciously to change it and see if things get better or worse. The best someone else can do is tell you what changes for the better or the worse as you experiment, obviously based on what he hears, which really disqualifies any of us here.

Karl

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