Tenor Saxophone Tonguing

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Dave Birkin and on behalf of expertvillage.com, I am going to be talking to you bit about tonguing with the saxophone. The way my tongue is in my mouth when I play saxophone, the best way to think about of it is, if you are able to roll an R, you know, we have size of your tongue on your upper teeth and the front of your tongue is the only thing that moves, so if you rolled an R you tongue will look like this (……) like that, see and that very front of your tongue is what makes contact with the reed and it is kind of almost like as if you would, like if this is the mouthpiece and this is the reed and this is your tongue, imagine like I am tonguing in between the reed and mouthpiece, I am making contact with that reed, with this muscle, right there, it is like under the tip of the tongue, like the edge of the tongue, and that is what makes contact with the reed. If you do it the way I am saying, where the sides of your tongue are anchored on your upper teeth and the very front of tongue is the only thing that moves, you shouldn’t see any movement in here when somebody tonguing. Just want to have it anchored and the front, the very end of the tongue moving very rapidly or very slowly whatever, but having control. In that way you can do that R&B kind of double tonguing that, you know, like triple tonguing. "