Hey Craig!

My name is Jeremy Tarter. I am a trumpet performance major inm the twin cities and I’m really struggling with tongue position when I articulate. Up until about 3 weeks ago, I thought I just had a slow tongue that needed extensive work, but in one of my lessons, I brought up to my teacher that when I single tongue, I hit my bottom lip, meaning I anchor tongue. So my teacher got me doing a ton of tongue exercises with a new tongue placement, the top of my teeth. He says, “Just like an embouchere change, your tongue will strengthen and get used to tonguing up higher like it should.” Is this the right way to go about it? I have to admit, I feel so much better when I’m playing things in terms of endurance and sound quality because my tongue isn’t getting in the way, however, it is impeccably slow right now and frustrating to practice. Do you have any experiences with this or any ideas as to how much tongue work I should be hammering in everyday? Any imput would be wonderful!

Thanks,
Jeremy

§ One Response to tonguing

• Craig Morris says:

  March 6, 2006 at 5:57 am

  Jeremy,

  I’m sorry it has taken me so long to respond. It has been an extremely busy month for me. Hopefully your articulation issues are all sorted out at this point, and your tongue is fluttering along nicely at this point.

  My view of articulation is fairly straight forward and simplistic. In general, I think a good starting point for where to articulate is at the point in the mouth where you say “T”. For a more percussive attack move the tongue forward and down the teeth. For a softer attack move it back and up toward the gum (or up the gum, as the case may be.)

  It sounds to me like you are getting good advice, and that the tongue speed should likely return on its own. As you are working through this, remember that a large part of good articulation is having a clean and efficient tone production. Without that, articulation will always be a struggle. I hope this helps.. Good luck!

  Craig