Double/Triple Tounging

[passion4tuba]

hey..i've been playing tuba for about 3 years now and i am really trying to figure out how to double tounge, i am aware of the syllables needed (du guh, or dig gah) i can say them but wen applied to the mouthpiece...no success! can someone please tell me what exercises i need to do to ensure a solid and fast double or triple tounge?

[ThomasP]

When I couldn't double tongue well I tried it while whistling. It helped me. Also multiple tonguing takes a certain amount of perserverance to become proficient at it.

[windshieldbug]

i can say them but when applied to the mouthpiece...no success!

What does happen?

[ufoneum]

I think Joe Alessi said it best, "I had a teacher who told me that multiple-tonguing is easy - - - simply practice it two hours a day for two years."

For those that want an easier approach: practice the syllables away from the horn. Duh-guh, tuh-kuh, something - whatever works for you. When you can do this at a decent clip, play your scales using the SECOND syllable. Put enough air behind it, and start SLOW. Don't use multiple tonguing as a means to simply play fast. Your single and multiple tongues should overlap by at least 40bpm.

[MikeMason]

If you were to prioritize important aspects of tuba playing,multiple tonguing would be slightly ahead of circular breathing.After playing for 24 yrs,i have only needed multiple tonguing maybe 1 time outside my practice room and never for a paying gig.It is infinitely more important to have a clean,fast single tongue.If you want to perform all the current solo literature,then you definitely WILL need to multiple tongue.Re-read the practice thread with the guitar article for some perspective.The above rant is,of course,just my opinion...

[Lew]

If you were to prioritize important aspects of tuba playing,multiple tonguing would be slightly ahead of circular breathing.After playing for 24 yrs,i have only needed multiple tonguing maybe 1 time outside my practice room and never for a paying gig.It is infinitely more important to have a clean,fast single tongue.If you want to perform all the current solo literature,then you definitely WILL need to multiple tongue.Re-read the practice thread with the guitar article for some perspective.The above rant is,of course,just my opinion...

I am an amateur, but I find many pieces on which there is no way I can play them without double tonguing. Even Stars & Stripes, which we play every concert (enough already), requires double tonguing, at least for me at the speed at which we play it. Maybe the problem is that my single tonguing isn't fast enough, but I find double tonguing very important, especially for marches.

[Steve Marcus]

Brass banding also demands much multiple tonguing from tubists.

[dtemp]

The best advice I ever got for multiple tounging was actually from a golf lesson. I was having trouble with my chipping, and my instructor told me that I had to much tension in my arms. Later that day, while I was practicing tuba, I was running through one of my daily mutiple tounging exercises with the usual frustration. Then I had a "revelation" so to speak. When I started the routines, I already knew I hated them. That, in turn, created tension not only in my brain, but in my face as well. When I worked on keeping my tongue relaxed, it got easier. The easier it got, the more fun it got, and vice versa. My advice (if anyone cares): don't work so hard. The idea is to keep the tongue relaxed. That way, it moves more freely.

Good luck.

[KevinBock]

Use more air, thats what most people forget to do, I mean an obscene amount of air, and all that duh-guh stuff too.

[Chuck(G)]

Some folks have trouble initially because double-tonguing requires a little bit of coordination--and you can hit some mental roadblocks.

Try starting out by double-tonguing dotted rhythms (i.e. dotted-eighth-sixteenth). You'll find that you can get both notes of a pair out pretty cleanly and at a pretty good speed. Now, just work on lengthening the short note and shortening the long note so you're tonguing straight eighths.

Also, most folks find that triple-tonguing using a TTK (or DDG) sequence comes a lot faster than (TKT). Which is another mental puzzle.

Using TTK:

TTKTTKTTKTTKTTKTTK

Using TKT:

TKTTKTTKTTKTTKTTKT

The same, except for an additional "T" on the front end for TTK, no? Yet for me TTK is definitely faster than TKT.

[tubeast]

Something that really helped me was a book "funk bass" by Jon Liebman. A step-by-step approach to funk bass playing starting off with very basic stuff. The first exercise was meant to work on the thumb slap and consisted of tons of repeated quarter notes.
In an attempt to produce that sound effect on the tuba, I started to use a "Khough" attack (as pronounced in "Dough".
I use a "slow motion double tongue technique" on rhythms that could be done with the "T" attack easily, just because the sound effect resembles the slapped bass more closely.

After quite a while, I noticed a great improvement in quick double tonguing as well.
I guess it was because I had paid greater attention to the tongue position rather than the speed for quite a while.
The fun thing is that I pursued a totally different goal (imitating an electric bass) and never thought about double-tonguing at all in the process.

[Chuck(G)]

If you want to be a little self-abusive, try triple tonguing
alternatively tu-tu-ka, tu-tu-ka, and then tu-ka-tu,tu-ka-tu.
Is one of these more accepted than the other?

I believe that TTK is the more accepted one--it's the one mentioned in Arbans.