Fact and fiction in woodwind teaching

Be wary of pedagogical approaches to woodwind articulation that depend on analogies to speech sounds.

The most common, at least in the English-speaking world, is the idea that tonguing is like saying “too” or “doo.” And certainly there are significant mechanical similarities, especially with “too.” “Doo” doesn’t work as well because it is a voiced consonant, produced essentially the same way as “too” but with vibration of the vocal cords, an undesirable effect for woodwind playing (except for some extended techniques).

Some teachers recommend something like “too” for crisper articulations and “doo” for gentler ones. If you compare carefully your whispered (unvoiced) “t” and “d” sounds, you may find that they are not, in fact, completely identical. My “t” gives a bit more explosive sound, because I release the entire tongue, and my “d” is softer because I tend to release only the tip of the tongue, keeping the back in contact with my molars. But this difference doesn’t apply to good woodwind playing technique, in which the back of the tongue must be kept independent from the tip in order to manipulate voicing.

“Loo” is another one that gets mentioned sometimes for gentler articulations. This one also doesn’t work well if taken literally because (1) the “l” sound is voiced and (2) it leaks air around the sides of the tongue. (You can approximate an unvoiced version by whispering “lll…,” but that sound isn’t typically used in English.) A woodwind book I read recently recommends some additional oddities like “droo” or “thoo.” “Droo” doesn’t work well because it has a sequence of two consonant tongue positions, one of which is voiced. “Thoo” (presumably the unvoiced version) leaks air near the tip of the tongue.

Another point worth making is that consonant sounds in English aren’t necessarily the same as consonants in other languages, so even if we select some workable English consonant sounds, it’s not a given that those are the ideal choices. (Plenty of study has already been done on this topic.)

And that’s just the consonants. Assuming they are used as a shorthand for describing articulations, with an understanding that they do not precisely represent articulation technique, vowel sounds can still cause confusion. Consider the “oo” in “too.” Vowel sounds are loosely analogous to woodwind voicings, so it is best to match the vowels to the instrument. Is “oo” the right voicing to evoke?

For low-voiced instruments, an “oh”- or “ah”-like vowel sound is a better match. (“Oh” is still problematic because English speakers pronounce it as a diphthong, two vowel sounds in sequence—this will cause unstable pitch and tone when applied to a woodwind instrument. To avoid this, we must borrow an “o” sound from another language.) For the clarinet, “ee” is the closest match. For saxophones, the vowel sound needs to be somewhere in between, perhaps near the schwa (ə) sound like the “a” in “about.”

Language sounds can be used only as a very limited analogy for woodwind articulation technique—use them with care.

There’s a common misconception about woodwind articulation, that notes somehow “start” with the tongue. So, how do you start notes with your tongue? Does your tongue somehow strike the reed, making it vibrate? Try it, I’ll wait.

Hit that reed with your tongue as hard as you like, but I suspect nothing will happen until you add air. The truth of the matter is that air starts the vibration—the tongue actually stops it.

So why use the tongue at the beginning of a note—why not just start the air? Try it as an experiment. Starting from zero air pressure, very gradually add air. You will probably hear air noise first, and then tone. Can you predict precisely when the tone will kick in? Using the tongue allows the note to be “released” after sufficient air pressure is in place, avoiding the airy and unpredictable note beginning.

Thinking in terms of the tongue releasing the note rather than kickstarting it leads to more efficient, controlled, and subtle articulation.

It seems that many of us are taught first to treat notes with staccato markings as “short,” and then later refine that definition to mean something like “separated” or “detached.” The difference in these definitions is that a “detached” note might really be quite long, but has at least a sliver of silence separating it from the note afterwards.

But for wind players, even this definition may be too simplistic, and in some cases produces a sound that is too aggressively clipped or pecky.

To achieve an appropriate staccato effect, the notes might not actually be detached at all. Check out this demonstration of staccato technique on the violin:

It’s clear that the violinist is detaching the notes from each other. But listen carefully—does the instrument go completely silent in between notes? At a faster tempo, it doesn’t. Even though the violinist temporarily stops driving the strings’ vibrations with the bow, the instrument continues to resonate on its own, and this (softer) sound may bleed into the next note.

A wind instrument doesn’t resonate in the same way: when the wind player stops blowing, the sound stops immediately. But since our modern wind technique borrows so heavily from the bowed string tradition, in many cases it is necessary to imitate this resonance to achieve the desired effect. To oversimplify a bit, the wind player must end “staccato” notes with very brief decrescendos.

When this technique is applied to staccato passages, it may mean that rather than literally detaching the notes from each other, the wind player must give the impression of detachment while also giving the impression of a brief violin-style resonance following each note. In other words, the “space” between the notes is actually filled, at least partially but maybe completely, with a very quick decrescendo.

A reverberant performance space also helps to mask wind instruments’ lack of damped oscillation, but ultimately it is up to the wind player to create the faux resonance when the situation demands. Pay close attention to the ends of your staccato notes!