I don't get this adversity to tonguing...

[Clover]

I read the posts, everyone here seems to be against the tongue. I listen to my favorite whistle and flute players and the tongue is all over the place. What am I missing?

[MadmanWithaWhistle]

My guess is that many associate "tonguing" with how a recorder is played, usually tonguing every note. Most people tongue to either "start" the whistle on a phrase, or to emphasize a cut. (Some are of the opinion that every cut should be tongued, but I like to pick and choose which I tongue for emphasis). I don't think people are against tonguing three or for times in a section, but tonguing every (or almost every) note isn't using everything the whistle has to offer.

[benhall.1]

Two things strike me:

1) It seems to me that there is much more tonguing amongst the whistlers than the fluters. Think of someone like Sean Ryan and the whole school of whistlers who emulate him. Fluters tend to huff instead. (I think.)

2) I think it can be hard, especially when listening to fluters, to hear whether they're using tonguing or some other form of articulation. Some that I could have sworn were using tonguing loads turn out to be just very adept at breath pulsing or what people call the glottal stop. I'd be more keen on the pulsing than the stops, personally, but that's another matter.

[brewerpaul]

It's like any other technique-- it needs to be used judiciously. On some whistles it's virtually essential in order to get the higher notes to "speak" without cracking.

[pancelticpiper]

I read the posts, everyone here seems to be against the tongue. I listen to my favorite whistle and flute players and the tongue is all over the place. What am I missing?

I'm not up on what the modern guys are doing nowadays. What I know, the style I learned, is how the older guys played back in the 1970s when I was first learning flute and whistle. With these guys little or no tonguing was done on the flute, loads of tonguing was done on the whistle.

The same guy could play the same tune on flute, then on whistle, and on the flute no tonguing and on the whistle loads of tonguing.

The old-style fluteplayers did lots of "pushing" but this was done with the diaphragm not the tongue.

On the whistle, and this is the hardest thing for people coming from "classical" flute or recorder to learn, despite the fact that there is quite a bit of tonguing the underlying style is legato. I might say that it's a legato style that's accentuated with tonguing.

"Classical" fluteplayers and recorder players, when they approach Irish flute or whistle, seem to always use a detached style. What they're trying to do is create each note as a complete entity with a beautiful attack, core, and decay. Irish reels and jigs aren't like that! The individual notes don't have that sort of value but are just parts of a stream of sound.

The difference is like reading a sentence as it would be spoken with the words all flowing together and reading... a... sentence... with... each... word... having... a... separate... beginning... and... end.

At Irish flute workshops I've even had to resort to asking some of the "classical" people to play with their tongues held against the roof of their mouths: there are people who, unless they do that, are simply incapable of playing legato.

[scheky]

Did anybody other than me get a juvenile chuckle out of this topic and the uncontrollable urge to respond : "That's what she said..."


Nobody?

[crookedtune]

Yeah. I wanted to do the whole 'aversity versus adversity' lecture, too, but I guess not enough of us care about any of that these days. At least they tried to spell it out. (OMG!!!).

[StevieJ]

Yeah. I wanted to do the whole 'aversity versus adversity' lecture, too, but I guess not enough of us care about any of that these days. At least they tried to spell it out. (OMG!!!).

That's for people who've been to unaversity.

It's "aversion".

[Steve Bliven]

Best wishes
from my 5th grade English Teacher, Edna Brown

[MTGuru]

Shouldn't that be: Grammer Police? As in: Badge's? We don't need no steenkin' badge's.

[Mr Ed]

Speaking only for myself, a newbie, tonguing can be a crutch to cover up for what the fingers are lacking in technique. After some recent re-reading of sections of Bill Ochs' tutorial and Brother Steve's page, I've been trying to strip the tonguing out (except for starting a tune or sometimes after a breath) to force myself to rely on the fingers for articulation and ornamentation. For one thing: it has really shown that cutting with T1 needs some work, and I'm making slow and steady progress with it.

[crookedtune]

Good for you! Down with tongue's.

[StevieJ]

We sanction tonguing, but impose sanctions on toungeing and tounging.

Good for you! Down with tongue's.

Is that the name of a bar? Tongue's lounge...

[MTGuru]

Is that the name of a bar? Tongue's lounge...

Where you can relax on a chaise longue ... er, lounge.

[Kypfer]

for people who've been to unaversity.

... it can be rough, ploughing through these mis-spellings, he coughed

who was it who said "two great nations divided by a common language"