My tongue is never like you describe. My tongue when relaxed is never in contact with the roof of my mouth.

I tried your method, and my tongue and throat tensed up. This may work for some folks, but it made me sound awful.

From all I've heard about Allard, he taught the individual and didn't make too many generalizations.

 

The only time my tongue touches the roof of my mouth is when I'm swallowing.
I always play with a 'relaxed' tongue and throat. Even on clarinet. I sound better that way.

 

Are you guys talking about when your mouth is closed or open? Cuz when my mouth's closed, I have to make an effort to get my tongue off the roof of my mouth. I play the way garyjones described it, and I teach all my students to play that way. It's a real pain to get the hang of it at first, and the high tongue position amplifies every mistake you make, but once you've got it down, the tone is great!

 

I have a normal sized tongue in a small mouth. I can't play that way. If the back of my tongue is high, then I get a small, bright sound, with a tendency to jump to the next higher harmonic.

 

create a seal between you tongue and your upper teeth so your mouth is cut in half by your tongue.

now hold your hand in front of you mouth and blow a little onto your hand to get the feel of it.

No air can come out of my mouth if I do that, only my nose

now play like that and never play not like that.

I prefer not to play the saxophone with my nose, or be told by people how to never not to play, thank you very much.

 

I prefer not to play the saxophone with my nose, or be told by people how to never not to play, thank you very much.

I have no interest in what anybody does or doesn't do.
I was just conveying information as told to me in case people were interested. I could have changed the information to make it seem like something you just do sometimes but that would have been a distortion of the original very simple and very powerfull lesson.
the deal was that as a student of this method you held your tongue in this position all the time. just like you never played a note without first invisioning fully the pitch and tone and volume. you never played a note without proper embouchure and tongue position or without proper total body relaxation and breathing and posture.

 

Now if you were to press the sides of your tongue out to touch your lower teeth...
Nah,still too much tension in the tongue and throat, makes tonguing difficult.

 

just thought i'd post about this for people to read. i read too much here about mouth position and never about tongue so here it goes. this can improve your playing by leaps and bounds.

think about how when you are at rest your tongue is along the roof of your mouth. relax and let your tongue hug the roof of your mouth.

now draw the sides of you tongue ouward so your tongue comes in contact with all of your upper teeth accept the front.

create a seal between you tongue and your upper teeth so your mouth is cut in half by your tongue.

now hold your hand in front of you mouth and blow a little onto your hand to get the feel of it.

now play like that and never play not like that.

What ????!!!!

 

You don't touch the tip of your tongue to your front teeth. You create a thin air passage that speeds up your airflow through your mouth and points it directly into the mouthpiece. I find that this adds a lot "backbone" to my sound, for lack of a better concise descriptor. To make this work, you have to fine-tune which part of your tongue is raised up, or you will get the wrong harmonic as happens to Hak. That's the drawback of this style of playing.

You guys who are finding tension in this tongue position must be misunderstanding the premise. It's really hard to explain, so I run into this problem with almost every student. It's also a counter-intuitive feel for playing at first, so it's hard to get it right. I'm not sure how successful an online description will be at describing it versus a teacher who can tweak you as you try it out, but the way I usually start describing it is by comparing it to the syllable "eee," or maybe the hissing of a cat, produced by a high central tongue position. You don't produce the "eee" sound with your mouth, but rather by holding your tongue in a high but relaxed position that pushes the sides against the molars on the top of your mouth.

In fact, it takes much less tension from the embouchure to play this way since the air speed is so fast, but it's hard for folks to raise the tongue at first without also biting into the reed. Phil Barone's tone-production posts cover this idea in greater detail, so I'd advise anyone who's interested to check those out.


P.S. There are certainly other methods for creating a good tone that work for many people, but this one produces the result I like for me. I also think an unsolicited mandate on the "right" way to play the horn is a good way to turn people off of whatever good information you've posted, particularly when there is such a wide range of ways to get the job done!

 

You don't touch the tip of your tongue to your front teeth. You create a thin air passage that speeds up your airflow through your mouth and points it directly into the mouthpiece. I find that this adds a lot "backbone" to my sound, for lack of a better concise descriptor. To make this work, you have to fine-tune which part of your tongue is raised up, or you will get the wrong harmonic as happens to Hak. That's the drawback of this style of playing.

You guys who are finding tension in this tongue position must be misunderstanding the premise. It's really hard to explain, so I run into this problem with almost every student. It's also a counter-intuitive feel for playing at first, so it's hard to get it right. I'm not sure how successful an online description will be at describing it versus a teacher who can tweak you as you try it out, but the way I usually start describing it is by comparing it to the syllable "eee," or maybe the hissing of a cat, produced by a high central tongue position. You don't produce the "eee" sound with your mouth, but rather by holding your tongue in a high but relaxed position that pushes the sides against the molars on the top of your mouth.

In fact, it takes much less tension from the embouchure to play this way since the air speed is so fast, but it's hard for folks to raise the tongue at first without also biting into the reed. Phil Barone's tone-production posts cover this idea in greater detail, so I'd advise anyone who's interested to check those out.

P.S. There are certainly other methods for creating a good tone that work for many people, but this one produces the result I like for me. I also think an unsolicited mandate on the "right" way to play the horn is a good way to turn people off of whatever good information you've posted, particularly when there is such a wide range of ways to get the job done!

My tongue has to be quite forward in my mouth for the back part to touch my molars. If you pull your tongue back and keep the tip low, it will fold, and the middle of the tongue raises. Not to an 'EEE', more like 'uhh'. For me the 'EEE' position is too close to the 'K' position.

It may be just different paths to the same place.

 

This is an important topic, in my view. I have posted on it before--here are a few:

Ferron and Voicing
Airstream speed
Low-register voicing
Sinta's 'F-trick'

In the end, it is hard to describe what happens inside the oral cavity. However, I've studied a number of videos filmed inside the mouths of woodwind performers, including saxophonists, while playing. In each case, the tongue and throat positions moved with registral changes (even when players imagined that they did not), and the tongue position is generally a high arch in the back, a sort of 'ski jump' shape down to the tip of the tongue.

I've found that especially in the high register, getting students to use a 'Day' or 'Dee' syllable corrects many of the problems created by 'DaH' tonguing, in which the voicing immediately drops, slowing air speed, and obstructing the airstream by having the back of the tongue drop into the throat.

If something else that you do (or believe that you do) is working for you, that's great, but it is a discussion worth having.

 

just thought i'd post about this for people to read. i read too much here about mouth position and never about tongue so here it goes. this can improve your playing by leaps and bounds.

think about how when you are at rest your tongue is along the roof of your mouth. relax and let your tongue hug the roof of your mouth.

now draw the sides of you tongue ouward so your tongue comes in contact with all of your upper teeth accept the front.

create a seal between you tongue and your upper teeth so your mouth is cut in half by your tongue.

now hold your hand in front of you mouth and blow a little onto your hand to get the feel of it.

now play like that and never play not like that.

Did you actually study with Joe Allard?

 

I'm sure this is meant as a put down of some kind... an implication I'm out to lunch or just blowing crap out my ***. I will explain even though it will be thought of as a lie.

No, My teacher was George Lowry. At the time I studied with him he was a graduate student of Joes at Juliard so the information was second hand but from one of the best students of joes and one of the best clasical alto players in the country. There were only about 60 saxophone students ever to graduate from juliard. Goerge unfortunately died an untimely death and I only studied with him for a year. The foundation he gave me in that one year tranformed the way i play and also the way i think about music in general. It's hard to explain but the method is almost spiritual. Or rather IS spiritual. It's about creating a link between your soul and the physical world of sound. I wish it was easier to put into words and share but some of the things are easy like tongue position. I try to share some of the basic concepts here but because the concepts seem so strange and different I am usually met with people calling me an idiot. This thread would have gone the same way accept DanPerezSax stepped in to save it.
when the basic physical stuff is met with such resistance it makes the more deep concepts absolutely impossible to share. But not being able to share the ideas is not really my loss is it? every day of my life i live it.

 

I play and teach the way Gary and Dan are describing. No one taught it to me but that is how I ended up playing. I ran into a player last week and he said he studied with Joe Allard for a few years and he said EVERY lesson was about tongue position, starting the notes, ending the notes and sound. As he described what Joe taught about tongue position I realized that is what I do and teach also. The way I've been teaching it is that you say "eee". You should feel your tongue touching you top molars on the sides. Now keep that 'eee" tongue position but when you open your mouth to put the mouthpiece in let the front part of your tongue drop down with your jaw.(mine also pulls back slightly) Make sure you keep the back in that high position. Varying the tongue from this position really messes with the sound in cool ways. When I'm playing my tongue is moving a lot to shape the sound but it's always staying close to the above position.

 

Steve's description makes the most sense to me.

I just attended a master class with Bob Sheppard at BandSource (just outside Chicago) and he talked at length about this. The "eeee" sound puts everything right there.

Bob talked a lot about using air speed to get the pitch of higher notes to come into tune.

 

If you pull your tongue back, and keep the tip low, your tongue has to arch, especially when you introduce the mouthpiece to push the tip of your tongue back. For an 'EEE' sound, more of the front potion of your tongue has to raise.

If I have the front portion in that position, it constricts my sound. I'm closer to a short i-- 'ihh'. The 'EEE' makes the sound thin, bright, and tense.

When you think 'ahh' in your throat, it raises the soft pallet, and opens the sound.

 

If you pull your tongue back, and keep the tip low, your tongue has to arch, especially when you introduce the mouthpiece to push the tip of your tongue back. For an 'EEE' sound, more of the front potion of your tongue has to raise.

If I have the front portion in that position, it constricts my sound. I'm closer to a short i-- 'ihh'. The 'EEE' makes the sound thin, bright, and tense.

That's why I said that you drop the front down and back when you openyour mouth to put the mouthpiece in. You don't want to be blowing like when you hiss like a cat......that is all constricted and blocked. i think we might be talking about the same concept but your thinking of it differently?

 

Hissing like a cat is an example I use for kids that is too extreme. I find that usually when they shoot for "too much" is when they start getting in the ballpark because it's such an unfamiliar feeling. The "K" sound is also a bit too much, but not by a lot. This technique does take a certain amount of experimentation to get right, mostly because you can't SEE inside there and everyone IS different. However, I will say, Hak, that a lot of the issues you mention are problems I had when I started studying this technique with my mentor (an Allard student) around 10 years ago. The issue in my case was not that the technique didn't work, just that I had to find the sweet spot. Truth be told, I work every day to hone that sweet spot. I think this tongue position, and its interaction with lip control is the most important element of my sound. Years into this practice, I've become more and more extreme in my dedication to the super-high arch of the tongue. It's like drakesaxprof says, a "ski-jump" shape.

Also, it's weird, at first, keeping the open throat and raised soft palate while keeping the tongue arched. However, when you think about it, to create such a high arch in the tongue, you have to pull it up out of the throat a bit, exacerbating the large chamber behind the tight air passage.

I wish I'd gotten to jam with you while you were here, or at least been mic'ed up so I could try to add some nuance to the tone instead of shouting over that B3/Leslie. This tongue position opens up a huge sonic palate that's just not there when I play any other way.

It is hard to ALWAYS maintain, to "never not play like that." I remember a gig where I had let the tongue drop because I wasn't focused and I was sick. I'll never forget the reaction when I brought it back up to the high position. It's such a technical thing we think no one could notice, that it's just done for the sake of being "right," and adding a touch of color. However, I saw it in the face of the lady at the table right in front of me: I took a breath, and my next phrase was done with the high tongue, and it made her take a sharp breath of air. It's one of a few performance moments I'll never forget, and it really drove home the importance of ALWAYS having a sound that can do that!

 

My clarinet teacher in college taught me to say "SHHHHH" very loud and forcefully to get the tongue in this kind of position and to check it. When I do that, I end up with a tongue position similar to what Gary, Dan, and Neff are talking about. This is how I generally try to play.

 

This is what we're aiming at, isn't it?

That is, we just want the quicker upper air stream to occur. That'll make all sorts of beautiful things to happen.

 

That is, we just want the quicker upper air stream to occur. That'll make all sorts of beautiful things to happen.

Such as generate lift? :lol:

I always thought I was weird for playing like this, though it's how I was taught and how I teach. I know it works! It's good to see so many other guys who keep the high tongue position.

 

Wow this is an intersting concept. In all my years of playing I never thought about tong position while playing, not did any teacher ever tell me about it.
OTOH, I'm a bit hesitant to try this because I sort of like my tone the way it is..
Question for people who use and/or teach this :
Would you say it makes it easier to play the difficult technical stuff because of the increased air speed ? I mean big leaps over the octave for instance ?
Would you say this works better on any specific sax (tenor alto sop bari) or does it really aply to the one just as well as the other ?

 

I've been messing around with tongue position, alongside other things, for the past year. My impression is that the tongue itself does very little, HOWEVER, its position has a great impact on the throat and embouchure, which do matter. The tongue rests rather high in the back, like a ski slope as someone said, and it also rests very wide . If you flatten it out or narrow it, you constrict your throat. This seems to have been Joe's point, that anything other than a relaxed tongue position will introduce tension and therefore constriction into the air passage. Trying to "do" something different with your tongue can create problems rather than solve them.

Here's my rule of thumb. Talk through your embouchure (meaning more the oral cavity, tongue/throat position, diaphragm you maintain when playing). Do you sound funny? You shouldn't. (Unless of course you normally talk funny.)

 

i think that whatever the teacher teaches you, as a person that is present at the time, is what you should listen to.
i just hope, that the teacher knows what they are talking about and can lead you on the right path.

 

Where it get s really confusing is when you tell a student to open up their throat. When most people hear this they drop their tongue down and try to get it out of the way.

 

You guys should check out this guy & what he has to say about tounge position:

http://keithunderwood.org/

I know he's a flute guy, but he really KNOWS whats going on i.e. breath, tounge, mouth, etc.

 

When I started playing flute I got a whole new appreciation for the tongue position. It's helped my sax playing hugely.

 

I have been reading a lot about this lately, especially at joeallard.org. What I am not understand is where the tip of the tongue is. If it is close to the hard pallet wouldn't it over the mouthpiece. How does one tongue from that position?

 

fascinating that this post actually generated something other than people just calling me a jerk !

your tongue slopes down slightly and sets right directly in front of the reed leading the air right into the opening between the reed and the
mouthpiece.

 

If you read my posts.......I say to drop the front of your tongue down and back a litttle bit to play but keep the back still arched in that "eee" position. Everyone who plays this way on this thread has been describing the same thing.

 

Dude, sorry. I saw that several times but it didn't fully click. My bad. Thanks for clarifying.