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In part I Schuller and Farkas ultimately come across as not being big advocates of multiple tonguing. Today we turn a corner however and arrive at sources a bit more committed to learning the skill.
Q is worth trying
Milan Yancich in A Practical Guide to French Horn Playing has a section of exercises to develop triple and double tonguing. While he notes that the most common syllables used to describe triple tonguing are “Tu Tu Ku, Ta Ta Ta, Ti Ti Ki”
I ask my students to use Tu Tu Q. The Ku or Q must be stressed with a breath accent…. To attain speed one must begin the patterns slowly, gradually, increasing the speed to the point where the tonguing begins to sound “galloping”, stuttering, or just plain uneven. At that point return to the original slow tempo and begin again.
He goes far beyond the printed description of this idea in the audio recording that goes along with A Practical Guide. Originally on two LP records and currently available on two CD’s, in the recording he explains that this approach was learned from the virtuoso cornet soloist Bohumir Kryl, who was the grandfather of his wife. I highly recommend listening to the audio version of A Practical Guide for the insights found there. And the printed exercises in A Practical Guide are great ones for working on the skill as well; I don’t believe any horn resource published prior to A Practical Guide has exercises for multiple tonguing.
And more on this necessary skill
Fred Fox suggests the syllables “ta” and “ka” in Essentials of Brass Playing, and especially recommends developing the “ka” attack well (“Practice playing scales using the ‘ka’ attack only”).
Harry Berv in A Creative Approach to the French Horn feels that the mastery of double and triple tonguing “is an absolute necessity on the horn.”
Every horn player, no matter how quickly he can tongue, will many times in his playing career encounter passages that will necessitate either double- or triple-tonguing. Mastering this art is not as difficult as are the hours of tedious and laborious practice. As with most techniques on the horn, it will be easier for some than for others….
For double tonguing Berv recommends “TU-KU.” To develop the KU he suggests practicing scales with the KU articulations.
The speed of double-tonguing must be controlled so it can be used at any tempo. You must perfect it so that it can be used in a single-tongue passage undetected. A good horn player should be able to accent double-tonguing to produce whatever effect he might find written in the music; for example, he might find he is able to play a triplet passage more easily double-tongued than triple-tongued….
For triple tonguing he suggests TU TU KU as standard and TU KU TU as the alternate method. “Control of speed is a prime requisite” he noted. “A horn player must never be caught having to play a passage that is too slow for him to double- or triple-tongue and too fast for him to single-tongue.”
When the series returns, we will have a few more helpful notes on multiple tonguing.
Continue in Hornmasters Series to Part III
