high "dle"

[baileyman]

Some time ago someone asked about vowels for doodle tongue. Sorry I cannot find who. I think the concern was with the behavior of the "dle". Well, stuff has been showing up in the practice room on this.

The problem I'm working on is raising partials on dle. At some higher pitch, the note wants to collapse. So taking a flexibility like (notated in partials): 3456 5654 3, which may work fine in slur, in doodle the dle has to rise from 5 to 6 twice. It is quite possible the F will collapse to D. But why?

Well, it seems easy to coordinate the doo with pitch just as in ordinary tonguing. That is, there's a tongue position for every pitch/volume combination that resonates best. doo can pretty much copy the ordinary tonguing position closely for good sound. Raising partials on doo seems like ordinary behavior for the tongue. (A solution to the flexie above is to just force a doo on the 6th so both 5 and 6 get a doo, temporarily reversing the doodle, and then forcing another doo on the last 5.)

But on the same flexie dle may want to collapse. This is reminiscent of other note collapses when the mouth cavity is not tuned and resonant to the desired pitch. So, can dle be tuned? Yes. A helpful practice is to take simple flexies and work them entirely in dle. For this, the front of the tongue is on the roof in your ordinary dle posture, then air start the flexie and manipulate the pitches with your tongue while keeping the tip on the roof (or wherever you dle). It may feel weird to do this. The mechanism of manipulation may be unfamiliar. But it can be done. It can match your doo flexie speed. (I repeat my flexies several times for both the doo and dle slurs and different tonguings. The alternation of styles seems to inform the neuro-muscular system how things work or need to work.)

There are some things about this that seem to be true. First, tone is colored differently. I think this is because of the different mouth cavity formation. Starting from the lips and going backwards, doo makes a familiar resonant cavity just behind the teeth, as usual. dle however has a channel underneath the tongue, splitting, leading around the sides, into a cavity at the back of the tongue. Second, it is that rear cavity where it seems the resonant tuning occurs. That it communicates with the chops through the pair of small pipes formed around the tongue to the chops seems to change behavior and sound.

Anyway, it seems the tuning is in back, so direct your attention to sound and feel in the back. And the vowels that show up are like no language I have ever heard (but maybe in sci-fi movie sound effects). It would be fun to see this in MRI to verify!

[Arrowhead]

Doodling across the different ranges- you can use the standard vowels for
high range: "e" (dee-dul-lee-dul....)
mid range: "ah" "oo" or "i"
low range: "oh" or "aw"

The tuning shouldn't change on the "dle" syllable, it's just a smoother transition to say "da-dul" as opposed to "da da". The goal is to get the normal the second "da" in "da da" to sound almost exactly like the "dul" in "da-dul".
The first few pages of the McChesney book really hammer home the above concepts.

[Doug Elliott]

I think everyone who doodles has limitations on how high it works. I remember Bill Watrous talking about that in a clinic, although his limit was pretty high.

I can't doodle in the traditional way so I don't have a personal perspective on it, but I think the ability to doodle (at all) and the possible range for it depends on individual mouth structure.

[Pre59]

I can't doodle in the traditional way so I don't have a personal perspective on it, but I think the ability to doodle (at all) and the possible range for it depends on individual mouth structure.

Likewise, and does it only work at, "on the mic" levels for many people?

[Doug Elliott]

I suspect so.

I have heard many criticisms over the years of Bill Watrous not being able to play loud. I saw him at a clinic (late '1970's maybe) where he addressed that - He demonstrated his usual style of fast doodle tonguing, but very loud. He definitely could do it, but said he chose not to because there was a limit as to how long he could do it before it stopped working.

[Arrowhead]

I've heard the same comments made about Fontana (not from me- he's my favorite player). Never saw him live, but some folks talk about the wonderful tone colors that came out of his bell, that's not necessarily captured by recordings, etc.
Anyways....
I've been trying to find the earliest example of doodle tonguing I can, and i think Tommy Turk was doing it in 1949(?) At the two minute mark

[baileyman]

Fontana said that Tommy played really impressively at 17, but that later at one point Tommy was living and working in Las Vegas and that he didn't think Tommy really knew what he was doing when he was young, and that he did not still do it.

It seems possible it could be a dither tongue.