Once he got the concept, we went to work on his
actual mechanics of playing the trumpet - Breathing, posture and tonguing.
He finally single tongued with a full sound.
Then I asked him if he could double tongue. We again
went through the “try,can’t, won’t” exercise for several
minutes.
I asked him what syllables he used to double tongue.
He responded with “TA-KA-TA-KA”. I asked him why he used those
syllables.
He said it was because “That’s the way
it’s supposed to be”. I said “Really? Who told you that?”
He was dumbfounded. Someone was going to challenge his way of thinking.
I asked him to use a different set of syllables
for the exercise. I had him use the word “attic”. I got this one
from a student of mine and it works like a charm for getting students to
double tongue.
Start the first note with a “TAT” then
“IC”. then AT-IC-AT-IC-AT-IC. Guess who was double tonguing? You
guessed it. This student began to double tongue with no problem. Rafael Mendez
he wasn’t but he was on his way.
The look of amazement on his face was priceless.
“How did you do that?” he asked. I didn’t do anything. He
shifted his perception and had a breakthrough. Try different syllables. Maybe
“attic” doesn’t work for you. Step outside the traditional
approaches and experiment.
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