timothy42b wrote: ↑Thu Oct 22, 2020 2:14 pm
baileyman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 21, 2020 2:54 pm
This is what I used to think. But now I find I can buzz a note with the tongue in an "ee" position, then gliss the tongue to an "ah", and the pitch will follow down with what feels to me like no change in lips. And reverse.
Then I find I can gliss the tongue in the same way, but maintain the pitch. I call this a "stationary gliss". In this case I feel a pretty powerful lip contraction counteracting the tongue movement.
I find this phenomenon endlessly fascinating. It makes for many exercise variations.
And, you can tongue gliss in one direction and lip gliss in the other, and maintain a steady tone.
(just like you can slide vibrato and exactly cancel it with lip vibrato. I don't know of any reason you'd want to but it seems perfectly possible.)
Seriously, what range is your tongue gliss workable in, or easy in?
Exactly. That's the "stationary gliss". I suppose that powerful contraction is a "lip gliss". (And Urbie used to do a combined vibrato, but not to cancel, rather to work in different warble frequencies. Nuts.)
I started out doing octave tongue movements, but then i thought that's a bit much, so lately I have been doing fourths. I warm up with a buzz "ee", fourthwise down to "ah", then back to "ee", then a stationary gliss. Then down a half step, etc, then up a half step till it doesn't work any more.
A favorite exercise right now is to buzz a middle note in "ee", get on the horn, tongue gliss down a fourth to "ah", stationary gliss to "ee", then down a fourth and repeat to the bottom of the horn. Then I repeat up a half step until the top of the horn.
And I have been working my flexies with different vowels. So, a 3 4 partial trill with metronome in quarters going slowly "ee" to "ah" or reverse, 3 to 4 or 4 to 3, then quarter triplets, eighths, triplets, sixteenths, however far the tempo of the day will allow, down a position and reverse everything, down a position reverse again, etc. It's interesting how the different vowels behave. I had thought a good trill needed "ee" but they all work, just a little differently.
Basically I'm trying to develop an independence between "ee-ah" tongue tuning and chop tension tuning, the way pianists work for hand and finger independence. It just seems like it should be useful. And I'm trying to get my high buzz into the piece and then down the horn, which is a challenge.
The range answer is it works everywhere until the buzz quits. I have never been able to get a decent double pedal A (on what I call zero partial), but if I'm on the .5 partial C for instance in "ee" I will do the fourthwise tongue motion aiming for double pedal G, and something happens, but it's not really a note. The vibration feels about right, though. Higher up the fourthwise motion feels smaller. And early on it was like magic to buzz a fairly high note, tongue gliss down, and then tongue gliss BACK UP WITHOUT EFFORT! Holy cow!