Category: Technique

Arm Flapping

Arm flapping is a common mistake among both piano and flute students. Let’s talk about why we flap our arms and ways to fix it.

The Ideal Way to Hold Your Arms

Whenever you play a musical instrument, it should feel like your arms are wet spaghetti noodles that hang between your wrists and your shoulders. Obviously you’re going to move your arms occasionally – we’re human and need to move around or the joints will get stiff. The movements need to be graceful and, ballerina-like, leading with the elbow or wrist.

Arm Flapping on the Flute

Some flutists have a tendency to flap our arms in order to send out our emotions. When our elbows are raised, it changes the shape of our chest cavity enough to create a different tone color which makes it very easy to pull out the emotion of the piece.

The big problem: if you’re flapping your arms or even just holding one or both elbows up for an extended period of time, you’re compressing your wrist and putting extra strain on your shoulders and upper back. Compression + strain = pain.

The other problem: it makes you look ridiculous. I don’t care as much about this problem because I’m not an aesthetic person, but I thought I’d put it out there.

The solution: if you want to emote in a certain section, raise one elbow for 1-2 measures. You’ll create the tone color that you want and then you’ll be able to hold onto it with your embouchure once you lower your arm. Write a reminder in the music to raise your arm here and lower it there. Otherwise, use the ideal way to hold your arms as described above.

Arm Flapping on the Piano

Most pianists flap our arms because we’re flipping our thumb under our hands for more than an interval of a 2nd in order to crawl our fingers across the piano. We don’t realize we’re doing it, we’re just concentrating on getting our thumbs a 3rd or a 4th up the keyboard. Our bodies do funny things when we’re concentrating.

The problem: it puts extra strain on your shoulder and it slows you down just a tad for that one interval.

The solution: Take your thumb and move the tip all the way across your palm. That’s how far you have to move your thumb in order to leap a 4th.

Don’t concentrate on it too much when you’re practicing your piece. Your body needs to do funny things in order to to concentrate. Concentrate on doing this when you’re doing your one-handed arpeggios during warm-ups.

Since arpeggios are fun and easy, it will give you more time to concentrate on your new habit. After you’ve mastered this, your new skill will naturally matriculate into the other aspects of your playing. I talk more about why we do scales, cadences, chords and arpeggios at the beginning of the warm-ups here.

What to Expect

It takes about a month to change a habit. Some people take a week to stop the arm flapping habit, some take a month or two. It depends upon the situation and how long you’ve been doing it. Good luck!

How to Write Your Own Technical Exercises

No one taught me how to write my own technical exercises. It’s something that I figured out on my own by teaching from the technique books that go along with the methods for Faber, Alfred, and Bastien. I know that I’m not the only one who helps their students learn this technique, and I’ve never seen a source that formally teaches how to do it.

Several Philosophies on Technical Exercises

There are lots of different philosophies about how to use technical exercises and whether to use them at all. First let me say that I’m a huge supporter of technical exercises (besides that article, also see here), I’m just presenting some different philosophies around them.

Philosophy #1: You don’t need technical exercises, just repertoire.

The people who feel this way have several reasons for it:

  1. It takes too much practice time away from the repertoire.
  2. It causes pain from repeating a pattern too much with bad form.
  3. The patterns that are taught aren’t necessarily found in music that they play.
  4. They’re boring.

Philosophy #2: Use a technical studies book.

These people know that, while these technical studies might not necessarily come up in the repertoire that they’re currently working on, they’ll eventually come across the patterns that are taught in the book. They religiously practice them daily as part of their warm-ups and excel because of it.

Philosophy #3: Write your own Technical Exercises.

Some of these people agree with the people in Philosophy #1, but have seen the results from the people in philosophy #2. Some of these people were entrenched in philosophy #2 and discovered that they could write their own technical exercises, and started doing that occasionally.

The Steps to Write Your Own Technical Exercises

Step 1: Identify the problem.

You’re playing along, sightreading your new piece, and, BAM! A tough section hits you straight in the eyes.

This is Mozart’s Concerto #1 for flute. The circled section is what we’ll be working with today.

Step 1: Divide the notes by 3 or 5, overlapping.

In this instance, I chose to divide them up by 3. This makes the technical study easier.

If you want to divide it up by 5, there will be less studies. It’ll be a little bit harder, but you’ll learn it faster.

Divide up the notes by 3, overlapping.
This is a division by 3, overlapping. We want it to overlap so we can transition better between ideas.

Step 2: Write out the first study.

Make the first section into repeating 16th notes so that each note gets the chance to be first on the beat.

The section marked 1 goes with the first section in the above picture.

Step 3: Repeat Step 2 for each note division.

Step 4: Play it.

If you run through the whole thing once (with repeats), you might be able to play the excerpt correctly. If not, keep practicing at it. You can even decide to practice a different section per day five times while playing the rest of it once.

You may have to change up the rhythms to get it into your fingers, but you’ve done the lion’s share of the work just by writing it out.

Why Writing Your Own Technical Exercise Works

The important factor in this exercise is that each note gets a chance to be the first on the beat. Your brain automatically gives preference to the first note of the beat and accents it. You’re changing the accent of the pattern, therefore evening things out in your head.

Another factor is that as you write out the notes, your subconscious mind sees patterns that it didn’t see when you first read through the section.

The final factor is that you’re using your creative energy to write something, so your subconscious deems it as important. To your subconscious, writing your own is more relevant to your practice than a technical exercise that some dead guy thought might be helpful a long time ago.

Final Note:

Once you’ve written your own technical exercises a few times, you can start doing it in your head rather than on paper. It won’t be as powerful for the subconscious mind, but it’ll save you 5 minutes.

Scales Don’t Take as Long as You Think

Scales really don’t take that long to practice. I never really thought about that until I hopped on Facebook the other day. The following quote was the first thing that came up. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

Tip of the Day: “If you play scales in 16ths at a metronome marking of 96, you can play all the major and melodic minor scales in about two minutes. Little time to practice is no excuse for not practicing scales every day.” Patricia George, Flute Talk Magazine, April 2009.

My first thought was, “YES!!!! You tell ’em!” My opinion on scales is here.

Then I thought about my personal practice. Unless I’m using my 5-minute warm-up, I just run through a page or two from a scale book every day. I don’t usually run through all of the scales, just the one the book is focusing on for that page (a lot of times I’ll sync that up with the key signature that I’m playing in for my repertoire). That’s a lot more time than 2 minutes.

Those exercises in the scale books are there to even out your fingers so you can play your runs evenly. They do that through different rhythms and articulations. Most of the scale exercises go through all the church modes, not just Major or minor. That way you can begin and end on a different note of the scale and not get thrown off in your repertoire.

In other words, running through all your scales, major and minor, from memory is kind of like mopping. It keeps everything clean, it doesn’t take as much time as you think, and it’s important.

Running through a page or two of a scale book is kind of like scrubbing grout with a toothbrush. It’s not feasable to do the whole floor, but the section that you run through is gleaming. This is why we think that scales can take a long time.

Both things are important. It may or may not be necessary for you to run all your scales every day, but it might be smart to do so once every week or two. If you’re going to rehearsals, you’re (hopefully) running through your scales beforehand during your 5-minute warm-up.

I’m not going to rehearsals right now, so I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start running all my scales once a week just to keep things clean. It might be on a day that I’m a little pressed for time because practicing scales like this doesn’t take long. Once rehearsals start back up, I won’t have to worry about it anymore.

How to Play with Emotion

Being able to play with emotion is necessary. Being able to fake it is necessary, too. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good skill to know.

Some days you just can’t access that particular emotion, so you need to fake it. Sometimes you haven’t been through enough life to bring the idea across. These are good examples of learning the mechanics behind playing with emotion and learning how to do it on demand.

I’ll talk today about playing with emotion for real and how to fake it. I’ll also talk about how to put emotion into the most bland things in order to make them sparkle.

How to Play with Emotion for Real

Before you start playing, take a minute to bring up old memories or current situations that make you feel the way that this music is trying to emote. Holding that picture in your mind, begin playing the piece.

Allow the part of your mind that holds memories to wander as you play. The piece will hold you in the emotion(s) that the composer wants you to feel. You’ll feel the emotions ebbing and flowing through your body, out your instrument, and into the air.

When you hit the last chord, you will feel free, like everything that your memories were working through were resolved with that last resolution in the last chord.

Notice I only said to allow part of your mind to wander. You still need to concentrate on the notes.

How to Fake Play with Emotion

You’re having a hard time conveying the emotion in this piece. Maybe you haven’t gone through enough in your life so you can’t access those emotions. This is a good thing – it means you have had a good life.

Maybe you’re not an emotional person so you can’t access those emotions. Don’t beat yourself up over that. It’s just not how you’re built. Usually those who are in your boat, though, are really good at following directions. Here they are, step-by-step.

I find that I have to teach 3rd and 4th graders how to fake play with emotion because they just can’t access their emotions on demand, but they’re starting to get into music that requires it.

Step 1: Analyze

Take a moment to analyze each phrase. Each phrase has a sunshine moment. This is usually where the melody goes up, but it can be other things. You get to decide where the sunshine moment is in each phrase because you’re the artist. Draw a sun over each sunshine moment.

Step 2: Dynamics

The piece will crescendo to each sunshine moment and diminuendo away from it. If there are a ton of dynamics already written into the music, these dynamics will be very slight. Same with if it was written before the Romantic Era.

If it’s a piece that doesn’t have much written in there, and it was written after the Classical Era, let her rip. Bring your own dynamics out.

Step 3: Rubato

General rule: Crescendo = faster. Diminuendo = slower.

Rubato should only be used after the Classical Era.

Keep it in good taste, though. It’s all supposed to equal out to the same amount of time in the end.

Adding Emotion to the Mundane and Boring Music

Wait, I’m admitting there are boring things to play? Yup. They’re called scales and technical studies. Sometimes etudes, too.

Scales are a necessary evil – I go into that more here. Technical studies might be even more boring than scales, but they’re also necessary. I go into that more here.

I’ve heard it said that if you don’t play everything musically, then you’re wasting your time. How do you play scales and technical studies musically? Add emotion. You can even make a game of it. Make a list of emotions and alternate between them while you’re practicing your warm-ups.

If you’re having a hard time playing warm-ups with emotion, try faking it, using my directions. It will give you good practice for having to fake your emotions with other pieces.

Conclusion

It’s a wonderful experience to play your instrument with emotion, but sometimes we have to develop that skill. It’s good to have a step-by-step plan to add emotion to anything. It helps with your overall musicianship and adds some sparkle to your music.

The Inside-Out Practice Technique

The Inside-Out is a practice technique that I came up with, myself. If someone else came up with it before 2016, then I’m not aware of it. I use it as a secondary practice technique – a safety net, if you will. Hopefully it will help you just as much.

When to Use the Inside-Out Practice Technique

One example of when to use the Inside-Out practice technique is if you tried practicing backwards and you didn’t learn it as well as you wished. You know that your brain needs to spend more time in puzzle mode, but practicing backwards again would just be tedious.

Another example is when there are two lines of 16th notes coming up. You see them, and you hope you can play them. You get to that section, and you fall apart. It wasn’t that you weren’t prepared to play it, you may have even gotten the first couple of notes from that section, but you were so overwhelmed by it that your eyes didn’t know what to do with it.

How to Use the Inside-Out Practice Technique

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using this method.

Step 1: Find the Middle.

It could be the middle page, measure, or note. Count through to find it. Don’t estimate because as you’re counting, your subconscious mind is reading the notes.

What about if it’s an even number? Let’s say you’re going by measure, and there are 8 measures in the scary section. If the last measure looks harder than the first measure, then #5 is the middle. If the first measure looks harder, then #4 is the middle. That way the harder end of the section is played twice.

Step 2: Play Only the Middle.

This is as simple as it sounds. Only play the middle page, measure, or note. See? It’s not that scary.

Step 3: Add On, etc.

In this step, you add the note/measure/page on either side of the middle and play it. You keep doing that until you get to both ends.

My Experience

For myself, I use the Inside-Out practice technique when practicing backwards wasn’t quite enough. I know that I need to practice the whole thing backwards again, but if I do, it would be really frustrating for me.

When I’m teaching, I use it in these situations:

  1. The student needs help practicing and they already know how to practice backwards.
  2. The student’s eyes glaze over when sight-reading a new piece as they crash and burn (overload).
  3. I assign to alternate between practicing backwards and inside-out, every other day, for the week. I usually do this after they’ve gotten the bones of the piece down, but need to spend more focused time with it.

Conclusion

The Inside-Out practice technique is a unique tool for your toolbox. For me personally, I use it as a secondary technique. It’s my safety net for when my favorite doesn’t work as well as normal. Some respond to it better than practicing backwards and use it as their favorite practice technique. How about you?

Learning a Large Amount of Music By the Deadline

We get over-scheduled so easily. It’s hard to judge our limits. Sometimes we need a plan to dig ourselves out and learn a large amount of music quickly.

I’ve gotten this question a few times in the past week or so, but not necessarily from students. The people have over-committed and need to learn a large amount of music in a specified time period. I looked at the time period and it’s definitely doable, but they can’t find a way through it.

It’s recital season, competition season, and musical season. What that means is that there’s a ton of stuff going on in the spring. Because of this, quite a few musicians get extra music to play for their activities, their friends’ activities, and maybe even get some extra gigs.

Whoohoo! Extra opportunities to play!

Sometimes this means that we accept too many opportunities to play and we have more to practice than we can handle. Here’s a plan to dig out of that hole.

Step 1: Make a plan

Here’s an old joke that doubles as an adage: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The adage portion of that joke means that if you have too much to do, make a plan.

This doesn’t have to be a formal plan, it can be a process inside your head. Here’s an example.

  1. Practice twice a day (either morning and night or afternoon and evening).
  2. Play through all pieces during each practice session.
  3. Focus on one piece per session, putting extra focus on a different page or section per day.

It’s important to note – if you’re practicing twice a day, you don’t have to practice warm-ups and technique at both practice sessions. Once a day is fine for those exercises.

Step 2: Follow Your Plan

Figure out how to fit your practice times into your schedule. Keep a practice journal to keep yourself honest or stack your books in such a way that you know where you are in your process.

Not every day is going to be perfect, and that’s fine. Don’t beat yourself up for it. We’re human. Life happens. If you miss one of your scheduled practice sessions this week, it’s not the end of the world. Don’t miss more than a quarter of your practice sessions per week.

Step 3: Help Your Plan Along

There are several things you can do to help your plan along. Here are a few, I hope you can come up with more.

Take naps between practice sessions. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the naps help your body produce myelin which coats the new synapses you’re making by learning the new pieces of music. There’s more information on myelin here.

Work out every day. The article I just referenced in the last paragraph stated that working out also helps the body create myelin. It also increases blood flow to the brain, making it work more efficiently.

Use practice techniques. I go into this more in-depth here. Practice techniques different ways to work around your mind blocks. When I’m teaching them to kids, I tell them that they work like magic.

Watch your technique. You don’t want pain to sideline you while you’re doing all this extra work. Proper technique reduces tension which also reduces pain.

Take stretching breaks. I wrote in this article about how your brain only works optimally for 20 minutes at a time. Because of this, it’s a good idea to set the timer for 20 minutes and make sure you stretch in between your 20 minute sessions. This practice is actually prescribed to me by my doctor and I can really tell a difference when I forget to set a timer.

Conclusion

We get over-scheduled so easily. It’s hard to say no. It’s also hard to judge your limits. Sometimes we need a plan to dig ourselves out and learn that large amount of music that we promised we’d learn.

The end goal of this plan is to learn from our mistakes. This isn’t information to help you make your situation worse. It’s information to get you through a tough time so you can make better choices in the future.

Back Breathing: A Tutorial

This is the final article in the series about breath. The other two articles are here and here. This is a very advanced breathing technique. It creates the most amount of resonance possible in the body, therefore making your sound better. It also increases the amount of air available to you.

How Do You Back Breathe?

Fill up your lungs to about 80% full. When you breathe out, keep your rib cage expanded. This will create a reserve of air that you try not to use. Try to keep your stomach muscles as relaxed as possible.

You know you’re doing it right when you bend over and feel your lower back expanding and contracting with your breath.

While exhaling, if you need to use the reserve air because it’s a particularly long passage, feel free to use it. Try not to use the reserve for every breath.

What If I Can’t Get It?

I learned this technique through reading a book. It said, “If you don’t understand how to do it from my description, talk to a singer.” That’s a common phrase when you read flute literature.

When I talked to a singer, she said to imagine the bottom half of your rib cage as a barrel that you’re holding around your midsection. It’s as full as you can get it and you shouldn’t let the barrel collapse.

An Odd Way to Practice Back Breathing

This breathing technique is hard until you get the hang of it. I practiced it while I was driving, doing tone work, etc, but I was holding too much tension in my shoulders and my stomach.

Enter marathon training. I tried breathing in this way while I was running and it worked! I was able to keep everything relaxed (because a 10-mile training run is exhausting) and my pace increased by a minute per mile! This was because I was using so much more air.

I was able to incorporate this kind of breathing into my flute practice within a week after my breakthrough while running.

How Should I Use Back Breathing?

You need to master the first two breathing methods first. After that, this should be your primary way of breathing while playing the flute. You can incorporate J breathing into back breathing if you wish – meaning, do both at the same time.

This form of breathing gives your sound more resonance because you’re allowing enough space for the organs in your rib cage to have a deeper vibration than normal.

Another plus is it helps you play longer without taking a breath.

Conclusion

Please don’t attempt this form of breathing until you’re fluent in belly breathing and J breathing. I didn’t learn it until after college, myself, but I could conceivably see someone learning it towards the end of high school at the earliest.

This form of breathing is very advanced, so don’t be upset if you don’t get it right away. It took me a whole year to figure it out.

When you do figure out how to back breathe, your sound will be better and you’ll be able to play longer between breaths. What’s not to love about that?

Improv – Baroque Style

It’s the time of year when you start getting more gigs. People like to have live Christmas music played at events and as ambiance. It’s not December yet, but starting in October, everyone wants to fill up their December calendar. They might just call you. It’s a great time to be a musician.

Simple Music

One nice thing about all these gigs is that the music is usually relatively simple. You don’t have to practice much to get them to performance level, which is nice, because there can be a large volume.

Sometimes, though, you want to play something a little harder than what’s available. That’s when it’s good to know how to add some sparkle to the pieces, the way the people of the Baroque period did it – with ornamentation.

Ornamentation

It’s rather ironic that we can decorate Christmas music with ornaments just like we would a Christmas tree. On a tree, ornaments make everything sparkle and look impressive. In music, you can use ornaments to change the feel of the music, making it sound more impressive and fancy. You can use the musical ornaments to emphasize notes (that usually go with words) or just to create a cool ending to a phrase.

The steps below show how to do this on paper. After about a year, you’ll be able to do parts of this without having to write it down.

Step 1

Look at the music and pay attention to the phrase endings – the cadences, to be musically correct. Compare the phrase endings with this list – grace notes, trills, grupettos (turns), mordents, arpeggios, and glissandos.

Step 2

Add ornaments to the phrase endings in the following order:

  1. Grupettos
  2. Mordents
  3. Grace Notes
  4. Trills
  5. Glissandos (For melodies, leaps of a 5th or more, better on a wind instrument, sometimes sounds cheesy on a piano.)
  6. Arpeggios (For block chords, arpeggiate them, piano only.)

I have this order for a reason. I start with the hardest thing to add and move to the easiest thing to add. I only add one ornament per phrase ending and I don’t add an ornament to every single phrase ending. Just the ones that jump out at me.

Step 3

There’s a very important note in each phrase. One of my old teachers called it the sunshine note. It’s the emotional apex of the phrase. If it’s a longer note, add a mordent or a grace note to it.

If there’s a word that you really want to highlight, add a grace note or mordent to that note, too.

Jean-Pierre Rampal once said that a grace note is like a flower pot on a window sill. What notes or words need a flower pot?

Step 4

Play through your new ideas. Did you overdo it? If there are some phrases where there’s more than one ornament, pay extra attention. Does it sound good? You may have to pick and choose what you want to subtract and you may want to add something here or there.

Becoming Fluent

After you’ve done this for a year or two, you won’t have to plan your ornaments ahead of time. You’ll just intuitively know where to add them. Your brain will go through this 4-step process, but it will happen in an instant without you realizing it.

In your head, you’ll go through the list in Step 2 backwards. Easiest first. You’ll find yourself just adding the glissandos or arpeggiating chords without thinking about it. A month or two later, you’ll add a trill, grace note, or mordent without thinking about it. Grupettos might take an extra year or two to be able to add without planning ahead of time.

Practicing This Skill When It’s Not The Holidays

If you know you’ll be doing a lot of Christmas gigs, it’s a good idea to practice the steps above until you can do them intuitively, even in June. If you’re like me and don’t want to play Christmas music in the summer, find a hymnal (not an affiliate link) or a folk song book (affiliate link). Look in thrift stores for folk song books. I find them for a dollar at thrift stores all the time.

You can do this once or twice a week instead of tone work, as described in “Other Options” here.

Listen

Another good tool to learn how to do this is to listen to symphonic metal bands, such as Trans-Siberian Orchestra or Epica. The lead guitars do this kind of improv all the time. By listening to it, you’ll be able to simplify it in your head and do it more naturally.

Conclusion

If you do the steps listed above, listen to examples, and practice at it all year around, you’ll find yourself doing this process intuitively. You’ll have a bunch of fun doing it and it will help you stay in the moment during your easier gigs.

Implied Accents

This week, the subject of implied accents has come up 5 different times in 5 different ways with 5 different students. I felt that if I was being asked about it this much, it needs to be told on a broader scale. By the way, if you have a question you would like me to answer about music, feel free to contact me. I can feature your question in an article.

So, let’s learn some music theory!

If you can’t tell, I love music theory, which is a good way to put people to sleep at parties. If you like talk about music theory, we should totally hang out. 🙂

What Is an Implied Accent?

An implied accent is an accent that the composer assumes you already know because of music theory and common performance rules. Sometimes they’re also called imaginary accents. Here are the two major implied accents:

  1. Time Signature Accents
  2. Slur Accents

Time Signature Accents

There are accents in each measure based on the time signature. I will list the most common time signatures below. I didn’t officially learn about these until I took percussion pedagogy class in college, but I subconsciously knew about them before that. Implied accents aren’t always taught by the teacher. Most teachers expect you to pick up on this information naturally.

  1. 2/2 or 2/4 – The accent is on beat one. This is one reason why 2/2 is usually used for marches – the right foot is dominant when you’re marching along.
  2. 3/4 – The accent is on beat one.
  3. 4/4 – The accents are on beats one and three, with the accent on three being weaker. This is very evident in rock music, where the bass drum is on 1 and 3 and the snare is on 2 and 4. A higher sound is weaker in our subconscious minds. This is also why we clap on 2 and 4.
  4. “Fast” 6/8 – Fast 6/8 is compound time, so there are two beats per measure. This would fall under the same rules as 2/2 or 2/4, where beat one gets the accent.
  5. “Slow” 6/8 – Slow 6/8 is simple time, and you’re counting all 6 beats. The accent depends on the situation. Where are the slurs? What format are the arpeggios? Sometimes the accent is on 1 with sub-accents on 3 and 5. Sometimes the accent is on beat 1 with a sub-accent on 4. The accent pattern will be the same for the entire piece.

The Slur Accent

Whenever there’s a two-note slur, the first note should be louder than the second note (Trevor Wye explains this in his omnibus book.) This has been common practice since the Baroque period, and is still considered common practice today. The first note of the two-note slur is part of the melody and the second note is part of the harmony.

Going Off-Topic into Slurs in the Baroque Period

Original Baroque music generally didn’t have slurs marked. The slurs were up to the performer. The beginning note of any slur, whether it was two notes or larger, was considered the melody and the rest of the slur was considered harmony. This is also information I read in Trevor Wye’s Omnibus.

If you have an edited piece of music from which you’re working, the slurs are already marked. These can be changed if you wish, but you may decide that the editor is a very smart person who did their research and what they chose is the best for the piece.

If you’re working from unedited music, you get to decide if and when you want to add slurs to change up the melody. It calls for extra analyzation, but it can be fun. Baroque music was all about the improv.

Conclusion

Thank you for following me off-the-path into the land of Baroque slurs. They’re not technically part of this subject but they’re related enough that I thought it would be worthwhile to mention them.

I hope this information helps you interpret your repertoire better in the future. I also hope this article clears up any mysteries that have cropped up around this subject. So much of learning music is one-on-one, teacher to student, and sometimes things are taught in a way that doesn’t make you realize there’s a rule about certain subjects. I’m all about clarity.

The Basics of Tonguing

There are two common problems with tonguing – one for beginners and another for late-intermediate students. For the beginners, the lesson book says to say, “tu,” in order to tongue. That’s not always clear to everyone, especially the over-thinkers.

For the late-intermediate students, they find their tone fuzzing out here and there whenever they’re doing a lot of tonguing. Here’s an explanation that will help.

Everyone’s Anatomy is Slightly Different

Based on your personal anatomy, you might want to place your tongue in a different place in your mouth than someone else would for their tonguing. Everyone is different. You need to find the optimal place for your tone and ease of playing. It’s all about your personal choices and needs.

What Not To Do

There are three things that won’t work with anyone’s anatomy. They’re glottal tonguing, tongue curling, and the “TH” tongue.

The first incorrect tonguing technique is to do what’s called a glottal tongue. This is when you bring up the back of the tongue to make a seal at the back of the mouth. This a correct technique for double-tonguing, but not single tonguing. The back of the tongue doesn’t work as fast as the front of the tongue, so you’re holding yourself back by doing the glottal tongue. It also makes the mouth smaller at the beginning and the end of the note, which can fuzz out the tone.

Another incorrect tonguing technique is to curl your tongue back into your mouth. At the beginning of the note, the tongue blocks the airflow through the mouth and fuzzes out the tone as the tongue comes back down. Also, it’s a lot of extra work for the tongue, so it makes tonguing go slower.

The final incorrect tonguing technique is to do the “TH” tongue. This is to place the tongue at the bottom of the front teeth, creating a “th” sound. This creates a sloppy articulation sound and makes it impossible to make a nice, crisp staccato.

Unfortunately, your teacher can’t look inside your mouth to make sure you’re not doing these things. You may be so good at your preferred tonguing technique that your teacher can’t hear that you’re doing it incorrectly. This is why I made this short list of what not to do. I’ve encountered each of these issues over the years.

How to Find your Optimal Tonguing Spot

Step 1: Brace the sides of your tongue against your top molars. This seals the airflow to go forward, through the embouchure.

Step 2: Feel the roof of your mouth with your tongue. There will be a flat portion right behind the teeth, then it will curve up into a bowl shape.

Step 3: Place the tip of your tongue where the flat part meets the bowl. Play four quarter notes in a row, tonguing at that point.

Step 4: Place the tip of your tongue slightly forward from the point in step 3. Play four quarter notes. Is the tone better? How does it feel?

Step 5: Keep going forward, bit-by-bit, comparing your tone and feel with each spot, all the way so that your tongue goes between the lips (Marcel Moyse liked that spot for playing Bach).

Step 6: Choose which spot sounds and feels the best, and use it. The sound is more important than the feel. If it feels awkward, you’ll get used to it.

If you’re having a hard time doing the above steps, start with step one and two, then skip to tonguing between the lips as described in step 5, and go backwards through the different points in your mouth that are described in the steps.

Your first time going through this process, you may want to have someone listen to you and help you decide what sounds good. It’s a good idea to have an extra set of ears sometimes.

When to Do This

For a beginner, this process is for the over-thinkers of the world. Musicians tend to be just that, so it’s pretty common to go through this process with new musicians.

It’s also pretty common to go through this process in late high school or early college, as the first step to perfect your tonguing technique. If you went through this process as a beginner, you’ll still want to do it when it comes up later on in high school or college. Your embouchure has matured and your tonguing spot may have changed.

Conclusion

After I used this process (I was in the older category), there were a few spots that worked well for me because they provided different sounds and still had a good tone. It’s good to have options, and it’s also good to have a favorite spot – something automatic and reliable.

Work on your favorite spot first. Make it automatic and reliable. Use articulation studies and tongued scales. You can expand from there. It will serve you well.