Tonguing With Speed

[MHS Sax 4 Life]

First off I wanna say wuzzup to everybody on the site. Second off dis is my first time comin to dis site and I wanna say I like what I see. This is just like Showtimemag.com man. Real Nice :D Anywayz, I wanna ask anybody who can play an alto sax really good, or anybody who can tongue real well. How do you improve your tonguing skills?

[Captain Quack]

Just practice alot on fast paced technical studies. I'm not sure what else to do besides that sorry. :)

[WindMusician81]

I'd agree with the captain, you just need to practice.

Personally, when I was starting to learn to tongue faster, I would take an excercise with a lot of eigth and even sixteenth notes, and I'd start off fairly slowly to get it accurate, then once I had the accuracy down, I'd touch up the metronome a notch or 3 each time I made it through sucessfully. If I failed, I'd start over again.

Speed is not something that I believe you can practice alone. Speed comes from experiance and precision.

Best of luck.

[conntenor]

If people tell you to attack it they're wrong. The tongue should have an up and down motion rather than a back and forth. This helps alot so now I can play those 64th notes. 8)

[MB-913]

WindMusician81, conntenor

When you develop your tonguing speed, will do attack the reed in every note? Or make some articulation (Mixed with legato, slur, attack...etc) ?

1) If need to attack each note, what speed is consider is a fast player (of-course, need to play the notes clear)?

2) If do it in articulation way (mixed with legato , slur,...etc), I wonder how fast a player can do this in a D Chromatic scale?

[conntenor]

You don't attack the reed. Your tongue should move up and down. NOT back and forth.

[Ritchie]

Say t-k t-k t-k, then try t-k-t t-k-t and others. Also read the discussion about double tonguing here: http://saxontheweb.myforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=1829&highlight=double+tonguing

Do do something fast practise slowly. Practise slowly enough to practise with maximum precision (easier said than done)