I'm going to try answering my own first question, even tho I've only played about 30 min in the past week...YMMV. In the process, I think the 2d and 3d questions answer themselves.
(
Warning: The following may discourage you. That's an entirely different issue. I'm just trying to define the task at hand and explain the difficulty. If I
overexplain it - tough!)
I think the problem with anchor tonguing - the thing you do not want to do - is
stabilize the tip of the tongue at
any point in its motion. Not all the time, not part time, not at all.
Why do we do it? I say it's because the tongue wants a
reference point. It wants to know how fast and far to move based on tactile sensation. But your tongue
needs its own sense of spatial awareness within the mouth. It needs to float free, yet be under complete control - back
and front moving independently
and precisely.
This can only be developed thru
muscular intuition - bypassing the conscious mind by regular, intense repetition. I'm going to use this term in place of "dumb repetition," which I used earlier. It's mindless, yet focused and demanding. It doesn't engage the rational mind - at least not constructively! - yet it is anything but "dumb."
If you have issues with muscular spatial awareness - say you don't always hit the right piano or typewriter key without visual or tactile cues - you are missing something in your hand muscle memory that requires this kind of intense repetitive drill.
Those fingers need to know intuitively where they are at all times.
In the case of the tongue, it's the same principle. It needs to get along
without a tactile reference point. Unless you can control the front 1/4" precisely thru intuitive spatial awareness, it will cost you speed, accuracy, cleanliness of articulation, and clarity of tone.
The above is also true of the back of the tongue - and then some. It has to do all the work in voicing and the back stroke of double-tonguing,
without a tactile reference point to the throat opening.
It's a very thick piece of muscle that seldom feels fine sensations and moves mostly autonomically (in tasks like swallowing). You need to isolate it from the rest of the tongue, give it relatively fine control, and the spatial awareness to use it -
without special exercises. Because unlike the front of the tongue, the back can be trained only by drilling tasks that require it to act
in combination with the front.
Singing or syllable voicing (
oo-aa-ee) doesn't get you there, because the sound isn't coming from your throat when you play sax.
Only the air is. With no feedback from your vocal cords, you need that much more fine control over the air. And it has to come literally
from nowhere - by regular, intense repetition.
There is only one hint, and it's a
"don't." Don't let your tongue loll forward and flatten in the mouth. It may give you a bigger oral cavity and fuller sound, but you'll be using the
middle of the tongue to voice notes - singing style - rather than the back. That means unreliable high notes, trouble leaping octaves, and poor overtones and altissimo. And to make things worse, you'll be biting on the highs, because "drawstring bag lips" can't do it all on their own.