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Re: Which is the default: tonguing, or slurring?

Author: vboboe
Date: 2008-03-24 19:45

... carry your air along steadily between the notes to produce legato with tonguing, avoid stopping and starting your air between notes (except at rest marks)

the oboe lends itself very easily to producing crisp staccato, but it takes a lot more work to produce gently tongued legato (and truthfully, it takes quite a bit of work to reduce thwacky and crackly staccato to just sweetly crisp staccato)

for practice purposes try this -- these many repeats are progressively -- warmup, shape-up, sound-off and sounding good

1st time, warmup, play YDD without tonguing at all, to ensure you've got steady air, just precisely move the fingers, no finger blurps (heh heh) and evaluate what you think of that sound overall

2nd repeat, shape-up, keep the same steady air, the same precision fingering, and very lightly tongue all the notes, well coordinated with fingers (heh heh) and evaluate ditto

3rd repeat, sound-off, 'sing the song in your head' and play it cantabile (like you'd expressively sing it) then pencil-mark your copy with the appropriate articulations and dynamics you used to get that singing effect (geez! is vboboe for real?!)

4th repeat, et al, slavishly follow your markings, does it sound good to you?
If not, adjust and refine it until it satisfies your own sense of musicianship

When it does, practice it over and over, same thing over and over again, until you don't need your cue markings any more :-)

After all that work, be psychologically prepared for another musician to shred your interpretation to pieces and feed your self-esteem to the dogs

PS You don't have to be another Jimmie Cagney

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