Low range tonguing

[PosauneCat]

I’ve picked up the horn after a very long time away. Progress is slow but encouraging. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is my tongue dropping quite low in the low range. It’s almost between the teeth at low C (C3), and between the teeth by low F (F2). I’m pretty sure I never did this before. Anybody else have that issue?

I come from the Remington school of trombone playing. I missed studying with Emory Remington by about 6 years, but studied with his protégé, Don Knaub, and later John Marcellus, at Eastman. ER used to say “if you can say TAH, you can play TAH on the trombone.” That syllable can be pronounced with a variety of tongue placements, everything from right on the alveolar ridge (ridge just behind the upper front teeth on the hard palate) and anywhere along the path from there to between the front teeth. We were all taught to try to hit the spot right where the hard palate meets the top of the front upper teeth.

Maybe my mouth structure has changed over the eons, hard to say. So how bad is a low placement in the low range? It sounds good and feels good, but…?

[robcat2075]

I missed studying with Emory Remington by about ten years... and a thousand miles.

I think I've always been tonguing the very low notes between the teeth. I think I've seen a few prominent players admit to it.

I don't think it's very far between the teeth but it is different from tonguing higher notes. I begin to edge into it from low F down and by pedal Bb it's definitely a thing.

I dunno. No one ever instructed me to do so, it naturally occurred without conscious planning.

No one who heard me, including major university teachers and a guy with a real symphony bass trombone career, ever said there was something wrong with the result i was getting so where I was tonguing was never an issue that was discussed. Never mentioned.

It's possible it's not allowed but I'm doubtful i could retrain myself now to not do it.

[Vegasbound]

IMHO have a lesson with Doug Elliott

[Kbiggs]

I believe that many trombonists (and other brass players) move the tongue lower as they descend into the lower register, whether they recognize it or not. I think what’s more important is whether your tongue position affects your ability to start notes in the lower register with consistency and accuracy, and whether the sound that is produced is good.

[PosauneCat]

I believe that many trombonists (and other brass players) move the tongue lower as they descend into the lower register, whether they recognize it or not. I think what’s more important is whether your tongue position affects your ability to start notes in the lower register with consistency and accuracy, and whether the sound that is produced is good.

My sound and attack is best with my tongue lower (in the lower range). I’m not too concerned. It’s not like I’m preparing for a professional career again. I’m just curious to hear what other ms have to say.

[Burgerbob]

I recently read something from Jeff Reynolds, about not letting the tongue get too low too quickly in the range... I thought that was interesting.

[brtnats]

You’re going to HAVE to move your tongue lower as you descend; it’s a function of openness and airspeed. I DO tongue almost between my lips, but it’s at over an octave lower than you do (starts around Gb1 for me). If it sounds good and doesn’t give you trouble, I wouldn’t sweat it, but if it were me I’d work on moving the tongue down more slowly in the range.

[Doug Elliott]

Yes you have to move your tongue lower to open your mouth cavity, but that can be accomplished different ways - some better than others. Getting a lower tongue position does not mean you have to articulate lower. Lower the back of your tongue, open your throat, raise your soft palate to have a bigger cavity. Keep your articulations back away from your teeth and lips. The real reason players articulate between their lips is to close them so they can start the vibration... Lips have to start from a closed position to start vibrating cleanly. If you open your mouth and it opens your aperture, it takes some amount of air flow before the Bernoulli effect kicks in to pull your lips back together and start the vibration.

The best way to do that is to keep your lips together, open the cavity in ways that don't disturb that relationship, and learn to articulate normally with a quick stroke down and/or back. Clean attacks in the low range are the result of four things: proper mouth cavity for the range, starting with your lips touching, getting the articulation out of the way quickly, and instant air flow which happens because of those other things.

It can take a lot of time to learn to play that way if you have become accustomed to the easy way of opening your mouth too much. Instant gratification is not your friend.

[PosauneCat]

Yes you have to move your tongue lower to open your mouth cavity, but that can be accomplished different ways - some better than others. Getting a lower tongue position does not mean you have to articulate lower. Lower the back of your tongue, open your throat, raise your soft palate to have a bigger cavity. Keep your articulations back away from your teeth and lips. The real reason players articulate between their lips is to close them so they can start the vibration... Lips have to start from a closed position to start vibrating cleanly. If you open your mouth and it opens your aperture, it takes some amount of air flow before the Bernoulli effect kicks in to pull your lips back together and start the vibration.

The best way to do that is to keep your lips together, open the cavity in ways that don't disturb that relationship, and learn to articulate normally with a quick stroke down and/or back. Clean attacks in the low range are the result of four things: proper mouth cavity for the range, starting with your lips touching, getting the articulation out of the way quickly, and instant air flow which happens because of those other things.

It can take a lot of time to learn to play that way if you have become accustomed to the easy way of opening your mouth too much. Instant gratification is not your friend.

Good info, Doug. Before I call you for another lesson I’ll work on it. And, immediate gratification is not one’s friend, but, unfortunately, it has become de rigueur in much of our culture.

[harrisonreed]

Doug Yeo, whose career in bass trombone playing is legendary, tongues every note between his teeth, even in the upper register. The MRI videos he and Sarah Willis did are gold.

I think we as brass players imagine a lot of things like articulation as happening a certain way, but in reality, we are wrong about ourselves.

For example, if you strive to have your tongue articulate on the back of your upper teeth it may happen, and you might feel that happen -- that doesn't mean that the bottom side of your tongue isn't going past your lower teeth and making contact with your lips. We can see that in the MRI video. In the lower register his tongue is going through both lips.

In the Sarah Willis version, she also makes contact with her lower lip, and sometimes both lips, on nearly every note (she is a pronounced downstream player with a recessed lower jaw). That is not possible without tonguing between the teeth. I think players like to think in 2D, so they don't account for the fact that the lower lip can be behind the upper teeth they are aiming for.

[PosauneCat]

Doug Yeo, whose career in bass trombone playing is legendary, tongues every note between his teeth, even in the upper register. The MRI videos he and Sarah Willis did are gold.

I think we as brass players imagine a lot of things like articulation as happening a certain way, but in reality, we are wrong about ourselves.

For example, if you strive to have your tongue articulate on the back of your upper teeth it may happen, and you might feel that happen -- that doesn't mean that the bottom side of your tongue isn't going past your lower teeth and making contact with your lips. We can see that in the MRI video. In the lower register his tongue is going through both lips.

In the Sarah Willis version, she also makes contact with her lower lip, and sometimes both lips, on nearly every note (she is a pronounced downstream player with a recessed lower jaw). That is not possible without tonguing between the teeth. I think players like to think in 2D, so they don't account for the fact that the lower lip can be behind the upper teeth they are aiming for.

Thanks for this. Interesting stuff. Between this and what Doug wrote above I did some investigating and found I don’t really tongue between the teeth it’s just that the upper tip of my tongue touches the bottom of the upper front teeth (in the low reg). I’m not too concerned as I pretty much suck at everything else on the trombone right now too. That’s the danger of trying to get it back when you’re an adult, you know too much, you expect too much, and it’s painful to go through the sucky part until it starts to fall into place. I’m both impatient and a perfectionist so perhaps this is a real fool’s errand for me.

[PosauneCat]

I missed studying with Emory Remington by about ten years... and a thousand miles.

10 years?! Remington died in 1971, from the look of you in your videos you probably weren’t even born for a few more decades!

[Doug Elliott]

Realize that in those MRI's they were not actually playing their instruments in anything close to a normal position. And what you see depends on what you're looking for. I see Sarah's articulations followed by a slow motion of tongue position change where you can distinctly hear the sound changing with it. I think that's a fairly common thing for horn players to do. It's "less desirable" let's say, on trombone.

[harrisonreed]

It's true. They were on their backs with plastic mouthpieces. Somehow I still don't think that every articulation making contact with the lips can be explained by them being on their backs. I couldn't find a single one where the bottom of the tongue does not make contact with the bottom lip. Every other thing they do follows what is generally accepted as good practice as they move through different registers.

Sure I'm looking for what I want to see for the sake of argument. But what I don't see is "textbook" tonguing where the tongue stays behind the upper teeth without touching the lips. They aren't doing it in the videos.

As this is really the only view I know of into the inside of someone's head as they play, and the players are high profile and probably trying their best to play as they normally would, dismissing what we can clearly see because of less than ideal circumstances seems wrong. Maybe there is a half truth here.

[robcat2075]

Is it possible Doug Yeo is an outlier?

I'm confident I'm not putting my tongue between my teeth over the entire range. Or maybe I'm an outlier?

I missed studying with Emory Remington by about ten years... and a thousand miles.

10 years?! Remington died in 1971, from the look of you in your videos you probably weren’t even born for a few more decades!

I'm what the boys say is, "not bad... for 61."

[PosauneCat]

Is it possible Doug Yeo is an outlier?

I'm confident I'm not putting my tongue between my teeth over the entire range. Or maybe I'm an outlier?

10 years?! Remington died in 1971, from the look of you in your videos you probably weren’t even born for a few more decades!

I'm what the boys say is, "not bad... for 61."

Seriously?!?! Did you discover the fountain of youth?

[PosauneCat]

[quote=robcat2075 post_id=154848 time=<a href="tel:1628823876">1628823876</a> user_id=3697]
Is it possible Doug Yeo is an outlier?

I'm confident I'm not putting my tongue between my teeth over the entire range. Or maybe I'm an outlier?




[quote=PosauneCat post_id=154837 time=<a href="tel:1628814084">1628814084</a> user_id=11292]


10 years?! Remington died in 1971, from the look of you in your videos you probably weren’t even born for a few more decades!

I'm what the boys say is, "not bad... for 61."
[/quote]

Seriously?!?! Did you discover the fountain of youth?
[/quote]

Is it possible Doug Yeo is an outlier?

I'm confident I'm not putting my tongue between my teeth over the entire range. Or maybe I'm an outlier?






I'm what the boys say is, "not bad... for 61."

Seriously?!?! Did you discover the fountain of youth? By comparison, I’m what the boys say is “holy crap, is that gonna happen to me?” . See my photo? I was really with Brahms that day!

[Crazy4Tbone86]

Thank you harrisonreed! All this discussion about "tonguing between the teeth" has been making me crazy. I really don't know why it is described that way. We need to describe WHERE the tongue makes contact and harrisonreed nailed it. For low register (at least for me), the tongue articulates ON THE UPPER LIP.

I think the "between the teeth" description has led many students to some bad practices. Students come to me and say "my former teacher told me to tongue low notes between my teeth but I cannot get a clear attack." It turns out that they were tonguing ON their teeth and their attacks were a lispy "thaw, thaw, thaw."

A clear articulation requires an air tight seal. This can be achieved with (what I call) the standard articulation.....a "tah" or "toh" with the tongue making contact on the gum line just behind the upper teeth. It can also be achieved (what I use for low register) by tonguing on the upper lip because the jaw is dropped and moved forward slightly. When the jaw moves forward slightly, the more natural place for the tip of the tongue to make contact is on the upper lip. No matter which one was used, a clear and air-tight "t" sound must be achieved. Tonguing on the teeth could never achieve that because of the leaking spaces between the teeth.

When I was at Oberlin, Thomas Cramer had me do many scale-type exercises involving the pitches at the bottom of the bass clef. He would have me play them all on the gum line behind my teeth, then on my upper lip (with my horn at a slightly higher angle because it aided in dropping my jaw and moving it forward). Finally, I had to choose a transition point and navigate both types of tonguing with the same rapid passages. At first it took a lot of concentration. After much repetition, the understanding of how it worked and the automation set in.

I have only seen a few of those MRI studies over the years. Do we really know that they were all on their backs? I know Sarah Willis was because they showed the entire set up before she entered the MRI machine. If they were, it seems to invalidate so many things about the study. Let's face it.....there is nothing normal or natural about playing a brass instrument while lying on your back! Knowledge about tongue position during a sustained note might be gained but the angle of the mouthpiece (which impacts articulation) could be very different while lying on one's back, especially in a tight cylinder.

[harrisonreed]

Is it possible Doug Yeo is an outlier?

I'm confident I'm not putting my tongue between my teeth over the entire range. Or maybe I'm an outlier?

I think most players, especially downstream players, don't realize or notice that the aperture formed by the lips is below the upper teeth -- even if the tip of your tongue hits the back of your upper teeth, the tongue is not something with zero thickness. I can almost guarantee that some of the bottom of your tongue is making contact with the lower lip at the very least.

As brass players we just don't think about it that way. It's easy to think of the tongue as a sheet that has no thickness, or a single point that hits your teeth or palate. It's also easy to think of the lips as a straight line separating two planes that have no thickness.

I'm exaggerating a lot of things in the image I drew (I think the teeth should be much closer together, and I overemphasized how thick the lips are), but I think the tongue touches the lips a lot more than we think it does:

DSC_0712 (2).png

[Doug Elliott]

What Crazy4Tbone86 is describing as "tonguing on the upper lip" to get a clean attack is exactly what I wrote earlier:

"The real reason players articulate between their lips is to close them so they can start the vibration... Lips have to start from a closed position to start vibrating cleanly."

I don't happen to think that's the best way to do it, but the fact is that many or maybe even most players play that way in the low range.

[robcat2075]

That's a human mouth? Wow.

Mine is not like that.

In the interest of science, I played an F on the staff, then kept kept my jaw steady while I tested how much of a pencil point I could fit between my teeth.

The width was about 3/16". I'm sure that my tongue is not protruding through the teeth for that note.



But for a pedal Bb the width is greater than the width of a pencil. The tip of my tongue is definitely going between the teeth for that.

Seriously?!?! Did you discover the fountain of youth?

It's the artist's life... no heavy lifting!

[BGuttman]

...

I have only seen a few of those MRI studies over the years. Do we really know that they were all on their backs? I know Sarah Willis was because they showed the entire set up before she entered the MRI machine. If they were, it seems to invalidate so many things about the study. Let's face it.....there is nothing normal or natural about playing a brass instrument while lying on your back! Knowledge about tongue position during a sustained note might be gained but the angle of the mouthpiece (which impacts articulation) could be very different while lying on one's back, especially in a tight cylinder.

Having suffered through a couple of MRI's I can assure you that you need to lie on your back. In many cases they need to anchor your head and you can't move your arms. They probably applied a plastic mouthpiece to Doug's or Sarah's mouth with some kind of fixture. And forget about putting an instrument in there. No clearance to speak of.

You cannot use a metal mouthpiece. You cannot have any ferrous metal in the MRI. In fact, some tattoo inks are iron based and hence if you have tattoos you may not get an MRI.

For that matter, an MRI is EXTREMELY noisy. You may not even be able to hear what you are buzzing. This could be a factor in how the MRI images came out. Doug and Sarah are working through muscle memory, not feedback.

[PosauneCat]

I may have misspoken in the original post and if I did this whole discuss may be moot, if so, I apologize. I don’t tongue between my lips, in the low range my tongue goes lower on my top teeth to where I am not hitting the point where the hard palate meets the top of my front teeth. It simply drops down to where my tongue is hitting right at the button of my front teeth.

[BGuttman]

I may have misspoken in the original post and if I did this whole discuss may be moot, if so, I apologize. I don’t tongue between my lips, in the low range my tongue goes lower on my top teeth to where I am not hitting the point where the hard palate meets the top of my front teeth. It simply drops down to where my tongue is hitting right at the button of my front teeth.

I have a gap between the two top front teeth. If I did what you describe I'd get "thah" articulations everywhere.

[harrisonreed]

That's a human mouth? Wow.

Mine is not like that.

In the interest of science, I played an F on the staff, then kept kept my jaw steady while I tested how much of a pencil point I could fit between my teeth.

The width was about 3/16". I'm sure that my tongue is not protruding through the teeth for that note.



But for a pedal Bb the width is greater than the width of a pencil. The tip of my tongue is definitely going between the teeth for that.

Seriously?!?! Did you discover the fountain of youth?

It's the artist's life... no heavy lifting!

We can't all be animators... I'm no visual media artist. I even said the teeth should be closer together than in that drawing. If the concept I was trying to illustrate isn't clear in what I drew I'll eat my hat. I appreciate the criticism and I'll go back into my hole.

[PosauneCat]

Deleted post. I got off topic so I moved it to a separate thread.

[PosauneCat]

I may have misspoken in the original post and if I did this whole discuss may be moot, if so, I apologize. I don’t tongue between my lips, in the low range my tongue goes lower on my top teeth to where I am not hitting the point where the hard palate meets the top of my front teeth. It simply drops down to where my tongue is hitting right at the button of my front teeth.

I have a gap between the two top front teeth. If I did what you describe I'd get "thah" articulations everywhere.

My advice, Bruce, don’t do that.

[BGuttman]

I don't do that.

I guess I come from the same period as you. I studied with a Remington disciple as a kid (though Remington was still alive -- just barely). Same guy as Sam Burtis. Sam became a pro, I became an engineer.

[Crazy4Tbone86]

My advice to everyone is “do not tongue on your teeth at all!” You will never get a firm seal unless you have dental work that makes your front top 8 teeth (or so) one continuous tooth.

The only reason I see “tonguing” on teeth would be used is for pieces that require the musician to speak text while playing. Those pieces do are rare and usually require other specialized articulations as well.

[robcat2075]

We can't all be animators... I'm no visual media artist. I even said the teeth should be closer together than in that drawing. If the concept I was trying to illustrate isn't clear in what I drew I'll eat my hat. I appreciate the criticism and I'll go back into my hole.

I'm sorry! I apologize. Drawing something you can't see is a challenging proposal for anyone.

[baileyman]

As Harrison describes, I too get a resonant mouth cavity where the pitch tunes in. (The set at that point has minimal effort--that's what being in tune feels like.) But I also find that there is not just one such resonant cavity, but a range of them for any note, working in cooperation with chop "tension", whatever that is. (One can feel the "tension" compensate by playing some note like middle C with an "ee" syllable then slowly hold pitch and move to an "ah".)

Then the tonguing problem becomes, how to articulate this cavity so that the pitch it resonates at is undisturbed? Doug mentions Willis' "less desirable" tongue motion, and that's the idea. So I find there are lots of "correct" tonguings depending on the cavity and the "tension".

For the low range in question, touching the lips can be part of it. But sometimes I do better tuning the mouth and chops, and in that case the notes start with minimal excitement and the tongue can be a number of places.

Up high, the cavity gets small, and the possibilities narrow. Currently I'm experimenting with ways to go up a high partial on "dle" articulation in doodle, but that's off this topic.

[PosauneCat]

I don't do that.

I guess I come from the same period as you. I studied with a Remington disciple as a kid (though Remington was still alive -- just barely). Same guy as Sam Burtis. Sam became a pro, I became an engineer.

I’m curious to know who you studied with. Can you drop me a PM if you’re willing? I don’t know anything about Sam’s background, so I don’t know who it would have been.

[Wilktone]

I find it difficult to interpret exactly where the teeth are and where the tongue is actually striking on the MRI video. It looks like the tongue could be striking the lips on the attack, but when I play the video at .25 speed and watch closely it's tough to say. Here's a screen shot of the video paused just as Yeo is about to attack a high Bb. Where do you think his tongue tip is? The MRI is blurry and the teeth aren't showing. At the moment I paused you can't even see the tongue tip.



No offense to Harrison's drawings, but that doesn't represent how I attack pitches (for what it's worth). Even on pedal tones my tongue tip strikes about where the upper teeth and gums meet. When I play higher the tongue tip comes back further above the teeth.

Dave

[wwright]

What a great thread! I've been wrestling with articulation in the low register lately, too, and this has given me a lot to think about and work on. Doug's observation that "between the lips" tonguing is a way to get the Bernoulli effect started when the lips are too far apart was not obvious to me until I read it. And then it was obvious after one minute trying it on the horn.

I was thinking that my problem was the tongue not getting out of the way of the air stream but I wasn't getting too far with just trying to move the tongue faster. The fact that my air attacks (i.e. with no tongue) start to go fuzzy at the same point in the low register that my articulations get iffy and I have to switch to tonguing on the lip confirms it for me that it's an aperture problem. I can work on that.

Good stuff.

[harrisonreed]

I find it difficult to interpret exactly where the teeth are and where the tongue is actually striking on the MRI video. It looks like the tongue could be striking the lips on the attack, but when I play the video at .25 speed and watch closely it's tough to say. Here's a screen shot of the video paused just as Yeo is about to attack a high Bb. Where do you think his tongue tip is? The MRI is blurry and the teeth aren't showing. At the moment I paused you can't even see the tongue tip.



No offense to Harrison's drawings, but that doesn't represent how I attack pitches (for what it's worth). Even on pedal tones my tongue tip strikes about where the upper teeth and gums meet. When I play higher the tongue tip comes back further above the teeth.

Dave

The thread is about the low register though. It's also worth noting that his front teeth are acting like metal in this MRI (they might be implants I don't know). They block everything that goes behind them. You can actually see his tongue below the blocked portion, touching his lip in that picture.

[Doug Elliott]

What a great thread! I've been wrestling with articulation in the low register lately, too, and this has given me a lot to think about and work on. Doug's observation that "between the lips" tonguing is a way to get the Bernoulli effect started when the lips are too far apart was not obvious to me until I read it. And then it was obvious after one minute trying it on the horn.

I was thinking that my problem was the tongue not getting out of the way of the air stream but I wasn't getting too far with just trying to move the tongue faster. The fact that my air attacks (i.e. with no tongue) start to go fuzzy at the same point in the low register that my articulations get iffy and I have to switch to tonguing on the lip confirms it for me that it's an aperture problem. I can work on that.

Good stuff.

Analysis (when it's correct and means something) can be a great thing to help understand what's going on.

When it's just guessing, or incorrect, or looking at the wrong thing, it just confuses the issue and causes more problems.

[Kbiggs]

Analysis (when it's correct and means something) can be a great thing to help understand what's going on.

When it's just guessing, or incorrect, or looking at the wrong thing, it just confuses the issue and causes more problems.

This.

[Wilktone]

The thread is about the low register though. It's also worth noting that his front teeth are acting like metal in this MRI (they might be implants I don't know). They block everything that goes behind them. You can actually see his tongue below the blocked portion, touching his lip in that picture.

Yes, my point was that we’re not really seeing his teeth in relation to his lips. At that particular moment where I captured the screen shot his tongue tip disappears. I poked around and think I found out why.

“Also, our discussion revealed that in my videos, the tip of my tongue was not always imaged as clearly as it is with some other players when it moves to the most anterior (frontal) position. The reason for this is the fact that I have a titanium dental implant in one of my eye teeth that created what is called a susceptibility artifact that led to some signal intensity alterations at that place in my mouth.“

https://thelasttrombone.com/2017/08/22/ ... y-project/

I didn’t see anything in that article where Yeo described how he started the notes. I think the study was designed to show what the tongue was doing while slurring or sustaining notes. It would be interesting to see how Yeo’s articulations compare with the other available videos from other players who assisted. I’ve seen the horn one, but again, I thought the point was to look at the tongue arch more so than the articulation.

I don’t doubt that players articulate on the lips. Some great players actually teach this. Has anyone thought to ask Yeo? He’s been pretty accessible in the past, but I think the last time I communicated with him was about 20 years ago.

[BGuttman]

I remember hearing Alan Raph at a seminar talk about tonguing through his lips for low notes. Wish I could remember more details but it was a LONG time ago.

[SwissTbone]

I remember hearing Alan Raph at a seminar talk about tonguing through his lips for low notes. Wish I could remember more details but it was a LONG time ago.

I know of some Tuba players doing that. And I discovered myself doing it on some loud articulated pedals. It worked kinda... but with some practice I didn't need that trick anymore

[Basbasun]

There are many ways to tongue in the low range, low range for tenor trombone is not as low as low range for bass trombone. And the low range when playing loud on the bass like from pedal F and lower like a loud pedal D, can be some problem, some solve it by tounguge between the lips, some on the lips, some with the tip on lower teeth and the dorsal part of the tomgue behind the top teeth. That is not the case for most tenor trombonists.
I do not think tonuing between the lips very common though, between the teeth is more common. But, mostly only for loud low pedals. If they are written in the score you want to play them right?

[Wilktone]

Just to muddy the waters a little, here's a video podcast of one of the researchers involved in the fMRI studies, Peter Iltis, discussing this research. I've cued it up to start where he is discussing the attacks.



"The tongue moves to make contact usually right behind where the teeth and the gums connect."

Be sure to continue listening on further where they discuss the tongue coming between the lips and more that would be relevant to this discussion. He hints that they are working on conducting some studies that will address this topic more specifically than the fMRI videos that Doug Yeo participated in.

[timothy42b]

I wonder if sometimes the feel of tonguing on the lips or teeth is because that's where the tip lies when you are actually dorsal tonguing farther back.

[harrisonreed]

I wonder if sometimes the feel of tonguing on the lips or teeth is because that's where the tip lies when you are actually dorsal tonguing farther back.

This is it, exactly. At least for some registers, in some dynamics. The tongue is not a 2D plane.

[Basbasun]

I wonder if sometimes the feel of tonguing on the lips or teeth is because that's where the tip lies when you are actually dorsal tonguing farther back.

This is it, exactly. At least for some registers, in some dynamics. The tongue is not a 2D plane.

Yes. It might be a question of what part of the tongue you are awere of. I do dorsal tongueing most of the time, The tip of my tongue might be touching the lips on low register, but not on F2. What happens lower than Bb 1 depends on the wolume.

The talk about the glottis is sometimes a bit fun. Epiglottis and glottis is not exactly the same.
Also it is sometimes fun to look at what other brass players say. .

[Basbasun]

Another interesting basstrombonist in the MRI camera.

There are many great trombone players in world. From diffenernt schools. The MRI camare show lots of tongue to
ps between the teeth. But as the the dorsal tongue is doing the attack it does not matter much.
And, as sometimes said, many (most) players don't really know what they do.

[Wilktone]

Another interesting basstrombonist in the MRI camera.
The MRI camare show lots of tongue to
ps between the teeth. But as the the dorsal tongue is doing the attack it does not matter much.
And, as sometimes said, many (most) players don't really know what they do.

Much like Doug Yeo's fMRI video, I would caution everyone from making assumptions about exactly where the tongue is striking for the attacks. Yes, many players do tongue between the teeth, but since we're not seeing the teeth in those videos we don't know exactly what's going on. Please do keep in mind that we're seeing a "slice" and we don't know exactly where the fMRI camera is focusing on. Is it a slice from perfectly in the center or are we seeing some of the lips captured at a point that are from the side? The teeth, lips, and jaw are curved in sort of a semi-circle. What looks like the tongue tip pressing against the lip may be the tongue against the teeth, but with the view of the lips from the left (or right) side of the player's mouth showing over it.

Again, many players do articulate between the teeth, so I'm not saying that's not what's going on here. But we need to be aware of the limitations of this study (done to investigate the tongue arch, not the tongue at the moment of articulation itself) and be careful to qualify what we're saying accordingly.

Here's another one, from a while ago. In these video fluoroscopy examples we can see the teeth and bones clearly, but the tongue is less prominent. Where do you think the tongue tip is striking for the initial attacks in these?



Now I know that this topic is "low notes on trombone," but to me it looks like the tongue tip is more clearly striking behind the upper teeth or above on that video. At least for those two players.

Dave

[baileyman]

Players seems to use chop "tension" to determine pitch rather than tuned mouth volumes. They seem to follow the advice "keep a low tongue, open throat". It seems to me in this scheme a player can probably tongue wherever they want to since the action of the tongue is not likely to affect the pitch. With a tuned mouth volume, the tongue seems to have to find a motion that will not disturb the tuning and thus the pitch.

[Basbasun]

Another interesting basstrombonist in the MRI camera.
The MRI camare show lots of tongue to
ps between the teeth. But as the the dorsal tongue is doing the attack it does not matter much.
And, as sometimes said, many (most) players don't really know what they do.

Much like Doug Yeo's fMRI video, I would caution everyone from making assumptions about exactly where the tongue is striking for the attacks. Yes, many players do tongue between the teeth, but since we're not seeing the teeth in those videos we don't know exactly what's going on. Please do keep in mind that we're seeing a "slice" and we don't know exactly where the fMRI camera is focusing on. Is it a slice from perfectly in the center or are we seeing some of the lips captured at a point that are from the side? The teeth, lips, and jaw are curved in sort of a semi-circle. What looks like the tongue tip pressing against the lip may be the tongue against the teeth, but with the view of the lips from the left (or right) side of the player's mouth showing over it.

Again, many players do articulate between the teeth, so I'm not saying that's not what's going on here. But we need to be aware of the limitations of this study (done to investigate the tongue arch, not the tongue at the moment of articulation itself) and be careful to qualify what we're saying accordingly.

Here's another one, from a while ago. In these video fluoroscopy examples we can see the teeth and bones clearly, but the tongue is less prominent. Where do you think the tongue tip is striking for the initial attacks in these?



Now I know that this topic is "low notes on trombone," but to me it looks like the tongue tip is more clearly striking behind the upper teeth or above on that video. At least for those two players.

Dave

If the tongue tuch the lips it has gone through the teeth, as it does on the video.
I do think that many trombonist tongue like the last video on the middle high and evn low range range, but change their tonguing in lower pedal range. There are so many good trombonist out there, and many ways to skin a cat. How do you tongue a pedal F Dave?

[baileyman]

Another thing that seems true on this vid is that the players seem to time their tongue to start the note on the release, not the attack.