Tah/Toh vs. Dah/Doh (marching band context)

[tubeast]

Articulations in general are fun to practise.
Whole bunches of them.
I think it pays off learning (and teaching) diverse articulations even if few of them are preferred when playing a given style of music. Humans are used to moving their tongue in intricate ways in order to speak properly. Let´s make use of that feature.
In my opinion learning all kinds of articulation helps building up an awareness of proper tongue placement.
This will benefit self control and the ability to improve on your own. Plus, when used with both brain and heart, slight changes in articulation, in combination with riding "the pocket" just might provide THE difference between music and etudes.

Just imagine the different attacks used on electric and string basses and try to reproduce these on tuba.
On some of these, you want to put your tongue on the rim of the lips instead of the base of your upper front teeth, for example. The "K"- attack may produce a more percussive sound, either.

In the eyes of you experienced pro performers and instructors, does this make sense ?

[iiipopes]

From a purely phonemic aspect, the only difference between dah and tah is that in English we use our voices to make the D sound while the T is aspirative (know the word--it's how I passed my master's comps with 99%!)

There is no difference. But because D uses the voice and T uses only air, I went for the tah.

It's no big deal!

With due respect, especially with teaching children with speech difficulties to enunciate plainly, it is a big deal, and you are probably the same as the vast majority of Americans who do flatten their tongue against the palate for the "t" consonant, blurring it, just without the vocal additive that makes it into a "d" consonant. President Clinton, being from and having an Arkansas dialect in his speech, was one of the most recent notable people who flatten their tongues and blur the "t" consonant. And the rain in Spain does stay mainly on the plains.

[LoyalTubist]

We aren't talking speech difficulties here... We are talking about articulation... When I was a full-time instrumental music teacher and I had a beginning band, I made it clear how articulations should be handled.

Now, with regards to those who speak a language other than English, it's different. In Spanish, for example, the T doesn't have nearly as much air behind it and the D, depending on where it is in a word, can either sound like a voiced T or something close to the English voiced TH sound. I haven't really figured out Vietnamese consonants yet...

Here is the way the Vietnamese pronounce products commonly used in the United States (my wife helped me with this):

Colgate [Con Got]
Ford [Pho]
Brylcreem [Bri Crin]
Alka-Seltzer [An Can Set Xa]
Nestle [Net Le]

Incidentally, when I've had students with speech impediments, I was always very specific with articulation. I grew up with several speech problems growing up, so I understand the mindset.

[iiipopes]

Then you of all people should understand the difference between the proper placement of the pointed tip of the tongue right at where the teeth meet the palate with a good aspirant to get a proper "t" consonant, as opposed to the flat of the tongue against the palate with vocalization to get a proper "d" consonant.