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Many years ago when I was an undergraduate flute student at Ithaca College, I was asked by my teacher to purchase a copy of Marcel Moyse’s “De La Sonorite.” When I had worked through the first section my teacher then assigned the third section of the book to me. There Moyse had asked his readers to work on articulation studies specifically to be practiced “with the tongue out”. My teacher where upon proceeded to adamently corss out those very words. Interestingly, I had initially as a total beginner first gotten a sound “with my tongue out”, which my band director also proceeded to tell me “not to do!” Now for a second time I was being  told not to do that yet again.

Well….. I was a good little flute student and listened to both my band director and my flute teacher and learned to play my single tongue with my tongue inside my mouth— not even behind my upper teeth but intead on upper pallette.

Fast forward to 1994 when I went to a Trevor Wye Masterclass at Connecticut College and was just as adamently told by Trevor that my tonguing was all wrong! Voila… the two schools of thought on articulation! American and French.

So…. at a rather ripe old age I proceeded to re-learn what I had initially found by myself as a beginner flute student…. and subsequently have spent almost twenty years perfecting my “forward tongue technique”.

Now as a teacher I have had quite a bit of Suzuki flute training. The Suzuki people start all their students with spitting rice which gets the beginner student to tongue with the tip of the tongue outside of the lips. ! What to do???

American flute students of my generation who wre spefically taught to tongue with the syllable “too” behind our teeth or the syllable “doo” on our upper pallette were not tonguing this way at all!

To be up front about all this…. I now do not tongue ( at least unless I want to because of the music) with my tongue inside my mouth any more. And furthermore I do not teach any of my students to do it any more either.

This is most likely still heresy to many American flute teachers even today…. but after having re-learned what I intially found on my own to work for me…. and had to un-learn because my teachers told me it was wrong…..really DOES work!!!

Time after time I see and hear my students’ tone imporve instantly when they forward tongue. Time after time when I try to play softly and lightly both on my flute and on my piccolo with a forward (ok…. let’s call the  animal what it really also gets called in America….i.e. French tonguing) or French tongue stroke my  own sound also improves. So… what’s the deal?

It seems to me that flute pedagogy just isn’t the same everywhere nor is there any consensus on what is the right way or the wrong way to do many things when playing the flute. Time after time I have read so-called experts discuss something such as artuclation like this and read one expert say the total opposite of the other! So—How do we non-experts make any sense of  all this?It really seems confusing, doesn’t it,  to read one famous teacher say one thing and another famous teacher to say something quite the opposite.

Well, sorry to say… I don’t actually have an answer . Unfortunately. But regarding articulation  I do have anecdotal evidence to say that for me and my students that the French or forward tongue stroke usually sounds much better and that  I now definitely advocate that way of articulation.(Clearly there is nothing new in the flute world afterall Because…. this tonguing argument apparently goes way back….. even to Quantz… who states somewhere in his “Versuch” that advocates for the forward tongue stroke are wrong!)

SO if you would like to experiment with French tonguing and see if it works for you and/or your students….. I will outline some ways below to practice it.

1. Start with a “ha” sound on every note in  the Reichert Daily Excercise #2. Go all the way through the complete 24 keys this way. You will find that some keys are easier than others. No matter… just do it and do it every single day so that your abdominal muscles get used to supporting the sound….. without your tongue.

2. After a while when you have gotten the hang of this, try  single tonguing triplets on each note. This will take a good 15-20 minutes of your time every day. But it is the best way I know to make your tongue get independent enough to produce an absolutely clear tone at the very initial  beginning of the sound.

3. Then work on the Moyse 24 Little Studies. He has several short etudes in that classic book where you can try to forward tongue  clearly. The Boehm Exercises also have several wonderful excercises where you can practice this new technique as does the famous single and double tonguing excercise from the Andersen Etudes opus 15.

4. Don’t assume that learning this forward tongue technique  will be easy or quick. Initially your mouth will produce prodigious amounts of saliva…. your salvatory glands just don’t realize that you are not eating. But after a while, this will cease( and you will most likely actually be hungry anyway) and  your tongue eventually will get strong and your tone will amazingly improve in addtion to your tonguing because articulation studies are really a version of tone studies.

5. Aha!!! You didn’t know that did you? But as your tonguing gets clearer so will your tone.

6. Don’t give up on your old way of “too” and “doo”! Just intergrate this new French tongue into yout arsenal of tricks.!

Hope this all is helpful! Perhaps more on this in a future Blog entry……..

Judy

Ok. So Tonight I feel like I made one step forward and twenty steps backward practing the picc part of Daphnis.Posting this because it may help others out there understand this process  because somehow it never is easy.(Understatement of the night)

In a nutshell:Here is how it stands at the moment……

1. The first birdcall at  156 is going great ( at least something is)…. It sounds pretty bird-like and I am pretty confident that I know it. One small step forward……

2. the solo at 159 where I  forshadow the real big famous flute solo later on ( it…. the picc one … is supposed to be offstage but I am not being asked to  do that… and I take it most people  aren’t) I am working really hard to get nuances on the “A” resolving to the fourth beat F#…. and to be totally in control of the opening scales where I am trying to stess the first three notes( the A,B and C natural.) Also trying to have enough air left on the final E so that I  do  not cut it short. So far not too happy with this one…. on step backward!

3.Sort of have the twelves at 163 and 168 down … but only IF I practice them every day…. otherwise they disappear. I guess this goes neither forward nor backward…..

4. Getting to The Really hard Parts now….the  Big Picc Solo at 183 just defies me. I can play it a 132…. the speed it goes  at the start (it is supposed to get faster) BUT Making it SOFT as the conductor wants it is not always happening…VERY frustrating. Practicing double tonguing endlessly…. forward tonguing it and then trying softer tonguing in the back of my upper pallette. Nothing is helping… also practing Trevor’s picc practice book for soft high register picc …. excercises…. definitely one step backwards for this one.

5. All the Dance sixteenth note passages…. well some of them are improving…. some of them I can do at 120-132…. some of them I can do at 140-152. ALL OF THEM have to be  at 168 !!!!!! Take at least two steps backward!!!!!

I have  two  weeks off from NEP rehearsals to get this all down….. ( AND……There are other pieces also on this concert  that I have to practice too)and almost a full month before the actual concert….. stay tuned to see if I get ahead of it or not…….And if anyone out there in “FLUTELAND” has any good suggestions to help make this process less frustrating … don’t hesitate to email me. I am open to ANY help here…….

WHY DO WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES????? THIS  PIECE IS HARD!!!!!!!!!!!! NO WONDER IT IS ALWAYS ON ORCHESTRA AUDITIONS………..

Judy

Tonight was a late one! But I had some great moments!

Practicing my flute and realized that if I put my lip plate higher up on my lower lip…..voila! I get a clearer and  more focused sound! Seems like all the Piccolo practice I am  doing for the Daphnis picc part is really helping……So……If I play my flute like I play the piccolo….. I sound better!!

This reminds me of a comment that Eldred Spell made to me back in June last year as we were recording my Handel CD…. regarding the placement of the lip plate on the lower lip and telling me that he now encourages all his students to play higher. Guess what? It works!! Why didn’t I do more of this before now? I think it also has to do with practicing piccolo! So all those negative comments we flutists make …. like  “my tone is  awful today!”… “too much piccolo playing”… is completely incorrect after all? Maybe…. Just maybe piccolo playing is not BAD for us flute players… but maybe it is actually good for us!

Another thought… when playing the piccolo it is necessary to make your embourchure hole really small and focused… but not tight…. so that also seems to affect your flute sound….. for the better I think. The smaller the hole, the more focused the  sound! Wow… seems so simple. Why didn’t I think of this before????

I am always trying things out…. you know. Probably not always a good thing for me…. but perhaps this is? Sometimes I have made my playing worse when I try things out but sometimes in fact I have made it better. This seems to be one of those times.. for the better that is.

Another thing that I came to by trying out things myself  without a teacher telling me to do it though was puffing my cheeks when playing. Moyse has a comment on this in the De La Sonorite where he suggests to release all the tension in your jaw when playing in the high register on flute( for his high register tone studie). I worked on this years ago for a long, long time until I could get the corners of my embourchure to relax enough to play with puffed cheeks. Nowadays…. I read in Flute Talk all the time about how we need to keep air in our cheeks when we play. So…. it seems sometimes that if we experiment oursleves we make progress. What a novel thought!!

So…. go to it! Experiment.

PS ( I hear that Takahashi does this too!  Experiment that is….Not having ever studied with him…. unfortunately ….since I would have loved to….  but have heard this tidbit through the “grapevine” that apparently  he seems to experiment too)…. as I said before…. maybe not a bad thing to do when practicing!

Judy

Try it…. it may work for you too!

Judy