Tuba: Articulation

I'm Michael Moore with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. I want to talk to you about articulation, which is tonguing and slurring, and the correct way to do both. Articulation is something that a lot of tuba players don't really understand, because it's not when your tongue hits the note, it's when you release the note. You actually blow out against your tongue for a split second. Your tongue should be kind of behind your front teeth, and then when you release the tongue, then you get a sound. So, if your tongue comes up and you think that's when the note starts, you'll be late. You have to actually, it's when you release the tongue that you do it. It's very simple, but it's something that a lot of beginners have a problem with. They don't understand the role of the tongue. So, your air is already there on the way out. You don't start blowing when the note starts. You start blowing a little bit, a nanosecond, before the note speaks. You're actually literally blowing out against your tongue for a nanosecond. You don't want to go crazy, because the more you do that, the louder the note's going to be, and you don't need it to be an ugly sound. You just want it to have that little bit of air already moving out when you play. And then there's multiple tonguing, where you go da-ga-da-ga-da-ga-da-ga-da, or da-da-ga-da-da-ga-da-ga-da-da-da-da-da. And you can practice all these articulations with your scales, because it's good to practice articulations with scale patterns, because the notes are close together. There's really no embouchure difference at all. And you can practice all different kinds of patterns. You don't have to only learn what your school district is saying. You should play da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, or you can also play da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You can play scales in any pattern you want. You can slur going up, slur going down. You can go slur to, tongue to. All different types of articulations are really good to practice, because they occur in music a lot more. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You hear that pattern a lot in schools, but music doesn't necessarily do it that way. It might go instead of, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. It might go, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. More like that. So you can also practice articulations on one note. You can practice slurs going up and be as smooth as you can going up. It's always harder to slur going up than it is going down. That's easy. Going up is a little bit harder. So, I would say practice going up a lot more. And then you can practice double tonguing. You can say, it should be exactly what you do when you do it in speech. Same thing. And then you can triple tongue. You can go da-ga-da-da or da-da-ga-da, either one. All those types of patterns for articulation are very good if you combine them with scales and arpeggios as well. So, I hope that this helps you with your scales and articulation.