Can I get REAL advice on speeding up single tonguing?

[tbdana]

My single tongue is slow as molasses. 16th notes at 100 beats per minute is pretty much top speed for me. And that sucks. As a result I've had to slow down my double- and doodle-tongue to 100 bpm, which is well below where it's efficient and proper technique.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Something, obviously. I try different tongue placements. I try a metronome that increases a little each day. Nothing I've tried has given me tangible results. I'm envious of guys who single-tongue like speed demons. I'd like to AT LEAST be able to do 16th notes at 120-130 bpm, minimum.

For those of you who can do that and who didn't just fall into it naturally, what help can you give me, and what expectations are realistic? I'm so terribly envious of guys like Andy Martin who can single tongue as fast as I double-tongue. Help me get there, please!

Is there an exercise, a technique, or a teacher who can get me where I want to go?

[Burgerbob]

I do this.

[tbdana]

Thanks, Aidan. So I set the bottom value to a beat I can already do? Or do I set an aspirational tempo?

And when you do this, where is the tip of your tongue?

[Burgerbob]

I start the quick one at 148, I think I end at 128? His tempos are crazy.

Dunno... depends on the horn and the range.

[Finetales]

One of my professors in undergrad had/has an incredibly slow single tongue, as in like...no faster than 16ths at q=80 slow. What he did instead of slave away at trying to improve that was just to get so good at double tonguing that you could never tell he wasn't single tonguing even at the slowest tempos. Worked well enough for him to have a long professional orchestral career! So you could always take that route as well.

When I first worked my single tongue up, I used the scale studies in the Arban book rather than any actual tonguing exercises. Then I just did the classic incremental tempo increases until I couldn't go any further. I do the same thing when brushing up on either single or double tonguing.

For sustained tonguing endurance, I play all the articulation exercises in a row attacca, which is recommended in the notes in the Alessi/Bowman edition of the Arban.

[tbdana]

One of my professors in undergrad had/has an incredibly slow single tongue, as in like...no faster than 16ths at q=80 slow. What he did instead of slave away at trying to improve that was just to get so good at double tonguing that you could never tell he wasn't single tonguing even at the slowest tempos. Worked well enough for him to have a long professional orchestral career! So you could always take that route as well.

Yeah, that's what I have been doing for forever. But it's a crutch, and single-tonguing is a weakness for me. I like to improve my weak areas.

[LeTromboniste]

Your mileage may vary of course, but when building up comfort or speed for any type of tonguing, I find that one of the best things I can do is say that tonguing pattern away from the horn, over and over again, for 15-20 minutes or more at a time, as many times a day as I can remember to do. While doing chores. While riding my bike or walking to get around (I guess you could do that while driving). Just silently tonguing while I'm going about my day. I started doing that when I first started studying sackbut and learned that my default tonguing should be tere tere, which at first felt completely foreign and I just couldn't play it fast without my tongue tripping over itself, and just couldn't get the hang of it on the instrument (even though I could speak it). I started silently saying tere tere tere tere......... for my full 25-minute walk home from campus every night after I was done practicing, trying to also increase speed, and within just a few days I could now begin to really actually use it on the instrument. Continuing to do it away from the instrument and as a more mindless task while walking, or doing whatever, then just helps make it more and more comfortable, flexible and natural. When I learned doodle tonguing a few years later I again first tried to work it out on the instrument and it was really slow progress. Then I finally remembered to try the same method, just repeatedly say it while away from the instruments, and progress went from very slow to very quick, it started becoming comfortable and possible to use while playing. I also find that tonguing on a single note while playing long tones with a practice mute has really helped me increase the maximum speed and flexibility of any of the tonguings I use.


Then, I also would recommend in any case to learn this tere tere style of "double" tonguing, which for the first 300+ years of our instruments history, was the standard (I found it as a definition of double tonguing and described as the "main way to articulate on the trombone" as late as 1830, although by then other methods do instruct to use our familiar modern double tonguing). This tere tere* is extremely useful, and I simply cannot understand why it's not part of modern brass pedagogy, because it is just so versatile and flexible. It can be made to sound very even if wanted, but one can also exaggerate its natural strong-weak pairing when needed for musical reasons and have more variety of articulation (which frankly the brass world could use). It can be played very straight rhythmically, but it also naturally encourages rhythmic flexibility, much like doodle does. You can invert the pattern as needed, putting the te off the beat and re on the beat, which fits really well on swing 8ths. Once you've got the hang of it, it mixes very well together with single, and you can seamlessly go in and out of that pattern. It can be made to be very pointed, but with a slight change to dere dere, it effortlessly gives a very smooth fast legato tonguing. It also pairs together with doodle very well, unlike normal modern double. And one big advantage it has, with regards to your needs specifically, is that you can slow it down infinitely without ever losing efficiency or running into any problem; it doesn't require a minimum speed to function well the way modern double or doodle do – you could even use it on half notes or whole notes if you wanted for phrasing reasons. So it is extremely well suited to bridge the gap between single and doodle.The only things, for me, that modern taka taka does better, are extremely marked fast articulations (which is what I still use modern double for), and the fact that it has a good, built-in triple version in takata or tataka. My tere tere is just as fast, if not faster, than my modern double, but I haven't been able to make a fast triple version of it work (terete terete or tetere tetere). Instead if I need such a fast triple, I either use a variation of doodle (te-dl-le te-dl-le), or standard modern triple.

*the R in this style articulation is a single rolled R. Think Spanish for 3, “tres" without the final S and with an extra vowel inserted between the T and R. If you can't roll your Rs, a close approximation is to let your tongue do what it would when pronouncing tene tene, but without nasalizing.

[GabrielRice]

Dana, I really think one aspect of this is age. I'm about to turn 56, and my single tongue speed has slowed in the last 10 years or so. I don't consider multiple tonguing a crutch, but I do I practice the single every day (I never used to have to isolate it, could just play whatever music I needed to play and it would keep the tongue speed in shape) and it's a little better, but still...there are things I used to be able to do that I don't foresee coming back.

The other side of it is that my multiple tongue is better than it was when I could single tongue much faster, to the point that I can slip a T-K into a string of single tongues notes pretty seamlessly to help keep me from falling behind. In the audition excerpt from William Tell, for example, I can mostly single tongue it but insert one multiple pair that helps keep it moving, and listeners generally can't tell when I did it.

[Savio]

I have the opposite problem, fast single tongue but problem with double and triple tongue. Strange? My wife gave the advice to kiss her more. But serious, I never thought much about how I use the tongue. Maybe I should. Following this tread…
Leif

[Savio]

Some trouble with the connection to the Forum these days? Had to wait a long time to connect?

[AndrewMeronek]

The engineer in me suggests an idea that there may be some tongue exercises that are interesting in terms of maintaining strength as we age, not just for tromboning.

Aaaaand . . . apparently yes this is a thing.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/ ... -exercises

[Crazy4Tbone86]

Dana,

My journey with single tonguing has been a rocky road as well. When I was younger, my single-tongued sixteenth notes maxed out at about 122-124 bpm. Meanwhile I had peers who could single tongue easily into the 140s bpm.

Now that I am 62, my maximum rate is down to about 108-110 bpm, but I can raise it to about 116 with a lot of patience and practice. Even if I am able to tongue at 114-116 consistently in my practice, I usually default double tonguing at anything about circa 106 bpm or higher because it is much less stressful.

I think rapid tonguing might be a genetic thing. My theory is that it might be connected to other speech-related tongue functions. I cannot roll my “r”s while saying Spanish words. I have also NEVER been able to flutter tongue (I always growl when the music calls for flutter tonguing). Here’s the interesting point……I know several other wind musicians who are not able to roll their “r”s and not able to flutter tongue. Almost all of these musicians struggle to single tongue quickly.

I have observed a few exceptions to this, so my theory is not foolproof. My suspicions are that rapid tonguing and those speech-related tongue functions could be related. This leads me to my question…..Dana, are you able to roll your “r”s and or flutter tongue?

[Wilktone]

Hi, Dana.

My single tongue is slow as molasses. 16th notes at 100 beats per minute is pretty much top speed for me.

Is that really that slow? I can get up to almost 120, not quite.

I do think that we can all improve our single (and multiple) tonguing speed, but there's probably some element of genetics or something else that simply means some folks are going to be faster than others.

What he did instead of slave away at trying to improve that was just to get so good at double tonguing that you could never tell he wasn't single tonguing even at the slowest tempos.

This is my suggestion as well.

Yeah, that's what I have been doing for forever. But it's a crutch, and single-tonguing is a weakness for me

Is that really a crutch? Double tonguing slowly won't hurt your playing in any way. If you can double tongue cleanly enough at slower tempos that it's impossible to tell whether it's single or double, who cares? I don't mean that it's a bad idea to work to improve the speed of your single tonguing, but I don't think it's worth spending too much time on something that you already have a good workaround with.

My two cents, at least.

Dave

[GabrielRice]

To add to the assertion that double tonguing is not a crutch, I've been using a very soft legato double tongue more and more. Very useful.

[Doug Elliott]

If there's a way to improve single tonguing speed, I'm all for it. But I gave up on that a long time ago. And I also gave up on doodle, I just can't do it.

[Wilktone]

Then, I also would recommend in any case to learn this tere tere style of "double" tonguing, which for the first 300+ years of our instruments history, was the standard (I found it as a definition of double tonguing and described as the "main way to articulate on the trombone" as late as 1830, although by then other methods do instruct to use our familiar modern double tonguing).

...

*the R in this style articulation is a single rolled R. Think Spanish for 3, “tres" without the final S and with an extra vowel inserted between the T and R. If you can't roll your Rs, a close approximation is to let your tongue do what it would when pronouncing tene tene, but without nasalizing.

I started to play around with this style of multiple tonguing today. It took me a bit to figure out the tongue position for the "re" syllable and then when I started to think about it as if almost, but not quite, rolling the "r" it started to click. It's not very far off of what I do for doodle tonguing, so I understand how it could pair very well with doodle.

Maybe also a good alternative or intro to doodle tonguing for players who have trouble with doodle tonguing.

Thanks for sharing.

Dave

[LeTromboniste]

It's not very far off of what I do for doodle tonguing, so I understand how it could pair very well with doodle.

Yes, happens pretty much at the same place as doodle for me, very similar tongue stroke as where the dl starts in doodle, but with the front of the tongue just brushing there and going back into the cavity instead of staying there and pressing against the alveola.

The Italian methods from the 16th and 17th century actually give doodle as lere lere lere or even lerlerler, so clearly for them too, it that re in tere tere was closely related to doodle.

[JTeagarden]

I have always assumed that the upper limit on tongue speed is how fast you can tongue off of the horn without vibrating your lips, and that that's just a kind of natural limiting factor, and something by itself you cannot make any faster.

I just tested, even not playing, I cannot do any better accuratey and consistently and for more than a few measures than 16th notes at 110 bpm, so I assume I cannot aspire to more than this on the horn.

The difference between this outer limit and what you can do on the horn is a matter of how you tongue while playing, and the response of your embouchure.

[Wilktone]

I happened to pull out a routine to practice today that had me thinking about one additional factor - the tongue backstroke.

It's really the backstroke of the tongue that creates the articulation. And the further back the backstroke of the tongue is the more it has to travel back forward for the next articulation. If you notice that your tongue is coming quite back in your mouth after every single tongue, try making the backstroke shorter.

That's one of those things that I think most of us end up learning intuitively, but it might be helpful to put some conscious focus on it sometimes.

Dave

[Kbiggs]

I happened to pull out a routine to practice today that had me thinking about one additional factor - the tongue backstroke.

It's really the backstroke of the tongue that creates the articulation. And the further back the backstroke of the tongue is the more it has to travel back forward for the next articulation. If you notice that your tongue is coming quite back in your mouth after every single tongue, try making the backstroke shorter.

That's one of those things that I think most of us end up learning intuitively, but it might be helpful to put some conscious focus on it sometimes.

Dave

Thank you for putting this succinctly. Let me see if I can muddy this up…

The backstroke of the tongue allows for the release of air, which makes the lips vibrate, which then produces the sound. The sound is the distal result of the backstroke of the tongue, not the proximal result of the consonant.

When the tongue is in the consonant position—“tah, tuh, toh, tee, etc.” “dah,” “lah,” “nah,” or when multiple tonguing “kah, kuh, koh, kee, etc.” “gah,” etc.—the airstream is temporarily blocked. When the tongue separates from the palate, it allows air to flow past the tongue and teeth, and then through the lips. The air passing through the lips creates a vibration, which is when we hear a pitch.

It’s like a pinhole in a pipe. When the hole is plugged, no fluid goes through. When the hole is opened, fluid passes through the pinhole.

[tbdana]

I happened to pull out a routine to practice today that had me thinking about one additional factor - the tongue backstroke.

It's really the backstroke of the tongue that creates the articulation. And the further back the backstroke of the tongue is the more it has to travel back forward for the next articulation. If you notice that your tongue is coming quite back in your mouth after every single tongue, try making the backstroke shorter.

That's one of those things that I think most of us end up learning intuitively, but it might be helpful to put some conscious focus on it sometimes.

Dave

Dave, this was actually great advice for me. After reading this I tried moving back the point of where my tongue meets the palate, and it instantly sped up my single-tonguing a little bit.

But I'm afraid Kenneth overwhelmed my two brain cells and confused me. LOL!

[AndrewMeronek]

I happened to pull out a routine to practice today that had me thinking about one additional factor - the tongue backstroke.

And I don't think it's always a "back" stroke. It can be a "down" stroke for some people.

I remember a trumpet instructor I had a while ago talk about how his articulation method is basically peeling the tongue off the hard palette, starting tip first. And he sounded fantastic doing it.

[Doug Elliott]

Yes, I specifically worked on mine to be a down stroke, which is shorter and cleaner. Not faster in my case, however.

[tbdana]

Down stroke for me, too.

[LeTromboniste]

I think it's also mostly a downstroke for me, but also ever so slightly back, especially when paired. Which I think is part of what makes that tere tere I discussed above really fast and efficient: tongue is moving backwards a bit already from the te, the front of the top of the tongue (not the tip) flicks up and back against the alveola to create the re, with a very momentary seal released immediately as the tongue continues backwards. The tongue only has to move forward again to seal against the upper teeth for the next te. It's not really possible to do that R alone and hold a static seal like with T or K. The re can only really happen dynamically, in wake of the te, in roughly the continuation of the same movement, in the middle of a backwards flick. Really almost like two articulations in a single motion of the tongue.

[Doug Elliott]

I do the "tere tere" sometimes in certain circumstances, but it doesn't work for me in a general sense.

[Bassbone11]

I'm not sure what we mean by down and upstroke, but I have always thought as tere as back and forth if that means anything