I am self taught and have been whistling for three years. Just getting into rolls etc now. I bought the McCullough book and find it very useful.
BUT a flute player told me that ta ka ta was better than ta ta ta for tongueing triplets and I have been doing that. Now McCullough says stop the air flow by tapping the end of the whistle with the tongue. I find that impossible to do at speed. ta ka ta cuts off the air flow at the roof of the mouth and seems much more natural.
Sooooooooooo boys and girls do you ta ka ta or do you …
I wud lIk 2 NO
Trumpet players use the ta-ka-ta for fast triple tongueing and ta-ka for double. I suspect many other wind instruments do too. It’s the best way to do them fast. If you’re doing them slow, ta-ta-ta is best because all three sound exactly the same.
Often pipers, when they play the whistle, will use as much finger technique as possible and try not to rely on the tounge as much to achieve ornamentation. Obviously, the pipes are fundamentally different in their play than whistles, but the fingerings are still quite similar.
On the pipes, a tight triplet is played by sounding the notes very cleanly with an actual stopping of all sound for a split second in between each note. This is impossible to do the same way on whistle, but like cranning, it can be adapted and performed in a similar manner.
For my own playing, I find I’m not tounging so mch as I am using very brief cuts or taps to sound a triplet. Your actual mileage may vary however.
The master of triplets, Brian Finnegan, uses the tuh tuh tuh (sounds like t t t) technique, by smacking his tongue on the back of his teeth. He said that you should start of doing them slowly and speed up when you have them, just like learning a tune.
It is said that Kevin Crawford uses a throat technique to do his triplets glottal, like huh huh huh or ooh ooh ooh or something.
Because I play in a Donegal-Scots type of band, I triple tongue a lot (like in our medley of Convenience and Dinky’s.
It’s a “ta-del-da” (most accurate way I can write it out). A part of my tongue (not quite the tip but back a half-inch maybe) hits the roof of my mouth, not quite reaching the back of my teeth but I expect that’s an individual physiognomy thing; it’s the same idea as described above. If you practice enough, you can keep the triplet going into a “drum roll”, though I don’t know how I would ever use that in anything.
I bet that tonguing triplets is like that genetic thing with curling your tongue, not everybody can do it exactly the same way.
I dunno Red. For me, the reason I am using them is almost always the situation where a high melody note is followed by three low-note “pedal” tones (often an octave or other interval lower), and crispness and separation is what I am trying to get. Anything else I usually roll. There is not really that many places to use triplets to me but some of these Donegal tunes call for em. I couldn;t see any point in using a triplet if it wasn’t to be very crisp and rhythmic.
Some players who don’t have a lot of recorded trad might be confused if they use sheet music as their tune source, because many publishers show triplets where most would normally roll. It’s a sloppy notation shortcut, imo. I have seen that a fair bit in the sundry tune books I have amassed over the years and you spot it if you have listened to a lot of tunes on recordings and live. An exception is Breathnach, who very carefully shows triplets and distinguishes them from rolls. A very notable example in one of the volumes is a version of Boys on the Lough, the famous Coleman tune. He shows an opening triplet where most players would roll by instinct, I imagine. With that one, you almost have to force yourself to do it (to try it that way), because it seems “wrong.” I am not comfortable with a triplet there to this day, but its a master’s version, done by Tommy Potts, i think, that Breathnach transcribed.
There are a lot of situations where triplets are appropriate though I suspect the use you guys are talking about is more limited to that of sort of replacing a roll.
Using triplets in reels can create a lovely melodic flow a sense of movement listen to the fiddleplaying of michael Coleman, the music of Willie Clancy Johnny Doran and the like.
I use quite a few legato triplets [maybe tongue the first note] to fill in intervals e.g. Bd into 3)Bcd, BG as 3)BAG or longer cascading sort of stuff it brings great life to tunes.
I usually try to use a rill instead but sometimes tongued triplets sound right, it’s generally a bad idea to flick the end of the fipple with your tongue though since it can make it clog more often, I usually use kind of a duh-guh-duh instead of the ta-ka-ta, it’s less harsh and can even be done on low notes withough having to worry about squeaking.
Yeah Peter. What I meant by a triplet that you would triple-tongue are where you play the same three notes after a different melody note. The other kind of triplet, the “fill-in” triplet, where you often add a note between a third interval etc is another animal to me because its so different rhythmically. And I sure don’t articulate those, if I even tongue the first note. The tune where I really worked to get the right feel for that kind of triplet was the beginning of Banks of the Ilen. Julia Clifford taught me, on the record, of course, with help from BSteve’s explanation.
If we are talking about where the melody has 3 of the same notes in a row instead of the triplets with 3 notes in the time of 2, I will sometimes use tongueing by ta ta ta. If the note is g or higher, I will tap on the bottom 2 holes. Sometimes, I raise the second note instead of playing what is written.
Angelo
Thanks for all the replies. I did mean triplets of identicle notes. It’s interesting to observe what the tongue does when doing ta ta ta and ta ka ta and ta del da. That last is quite subtle.
I dont’ do much triple tonguing but when I do, I use “diddly”. Its softer
and less defined than dugida or tukita. When I had the boehm lessons
years ago they’d just got me up to triple tongue when I stopped. I was
supposed to learn t-k-t which is I think the most defined one.
Lesl
Lesl, I find “diddle-dee” easier too. In “A Dossan of Heather,” (if I may quote): “To produce the tongued triplets, which are beautifully clear and even, Packie [Manus Byrne] uses a technique derived from lilting: his tongue makes a ‘diddle-dee’ movement rather than the ‘ta-ka-ta’ recommended in classical flute or recorder technique.”
And Packie describes in a wonderful way how he does it: “Nearly everyone will do the twiddlies with their fingers. Now I used to, when the fingers were really nimble. I had very nimble fingers at one time. But then I discovered that to make any job of a reel like that [The Skylark], I had to put in the little trebly things, and I done it with me tongue. Well now, anyone can do it if they practice. You’ll do anything with practice you know. Practice makes master! I do it with the tongue against the top of my mouth, but I cannot do it so well since I got the false teeth. When I had my own teeth I had much more room for the tongue to hop about! Yi-till-diddly, i-till-diddly…You could keep that diddly-diddly thing going all the time.”
Somebody told me he was playing an F whistle in the wrong foot forward video.
Not everybody is adamant against tonguing on the whistle. John Skelton, who can play a mean tune or six, says that he toungues regularly on the whistle, and on the flute when it is called for. He apparently is willing to use whatever articulation gets the best result for him at the time.
