Articulation
by J.M.Jerge
In my opinion, one thing that sets your average player apart from a professional is tone and articulation. And in my mind, they go hand and hand. You can't have good articulation without proper air support and good tone.
The way I learned how to articulate is to picture your airstream as water running through a garden hose at a high velocity. Now take a finger, and run it through the stream quickly. The flow is not affected and remains constant. The only thing is that there is a hole in the stream where there is no water. The same should apply to tonguing.
As for all the people that try to apply sylabols and phonics to tonguing, I don't agree with that method of teaching. In my findings, the majority of the people prefer the "teh" sylabol... but whatever sylabol helps you get the tip of your tongue at the top of your back teeth, and pull back to let the air through, can be your sylabol.
If you don't have a good smooth articulation, which does not affect your intonation, and keeps your tambre solid, then I suggest that you break out your Arban's book and get to work. Those are the things I try to keep in mind when, especially when I'm working a section with a lot of fast tongued runs. You must keep your musicality, in everything you play.
A big mistake that young players make is that they try to learn to double tongue without first mastering the single tongue. I was one of those players, and I've had to work hard to get my single tongue back in to shape. In my Marine band here, we have 2 players that are quite skilled, that don't ever use thier double tongue. They can single tongue everything just as accurately as I can double tongue them, and they may never even learn to double tongue.
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