Thanks. I'm a guitar player so this is of limited practical use but it's always interesting to read about the techniques and ideas (trials and tribulations) other instruments face.
The very earliest treatises on wind playing recommend doodle as the main way of tonguing fast notes. You find it in virtually every printed method book from the 1530's until the second half of the 18th century.
I don't think they were very interested in rhythmic evenness. They generally favoured variety, and "sprezzatura" (a kind of effortless, almost nonchalant grace and virtuosity). Especially in the kind of virtuosic, improvised playing where they recommend doodle as the default, the idea of aiming for evenness of rhythm or articulation would have been crude and unmusical to them. Reading a bit between the lines, that seems to be one of the reasons they discouraged what is now called double tonguing, and favoured doodle in three different variations (in a modern English, something like le-dl-le-dl-le-dl for a smoothest, softest articulation, de-dl-le-dl-de-dl-le-dl as a medium solution, and te-dl-le-dl-te-dl-le-dl for a more pointed articulation), and also te-re-te-re for moderately fast notes like quarters, eights and sixteenths. Interestingly, when looking at later sources, they invert the rhythmical placement, doing di-ri-di-ri with the di off the beat and ri on the beat which goes really well especially with the French "croches inégales" (very akin to swung 8ths).
My experience using historical tonguings is that while it's certainly possible to train double tonguing to be rhythmically flexible and less mechanical, its natural tendency is to be rhythmically consistent (i.e. also when rhythmically uneven, it encourages a certain consistency or straightness in the unevenness), whereas doodle and te-re-te-re in particular naturally allow and encourage more freedom in rhythm from the get go.
So, not just recorder players, but all wind instruments. And already in the Renaissance. The first known mention of tonguing patterns in a printed book is Silvestro Ganassi's La Fontegara of 1535, which is mostly a recorder method. He gives it as "lere lere lere" (also with different vowels). Most Italian sources thereafter follow the same. Dalla Casa (1584) was a virtuoso of the cornetto, the sister-instrument of the trombone. Rognoni's Selva de varii passaggi of 1620, containing the same articulations, includes the earliest solo piece specifically for trombone.
Martin Agricola in 1545 gives a group of sixteen very fast notes landing on the beat as Tellellellellellellellel-le, which to me remains the best way to represent it. I find the usual "doodle" or "did'll" has too many consonants (no coincidence that McChesney removes some of those consonants in his patterns! Although I am also not a fan of his "ul" syllable)
This is super fascinating, thanks! I find that there is no difference in placement between ta and da other than the voice; my tongue does not hit further back in my mouth. That said, I do find a qualitative difference between ta-ka, da-ga, and na-nga in sound and feel, despite the fact they all hit the same spots on the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. The vowel shape makes a difference, too, and I've been experimenting with short i, particularly ni-ngi, in my double tonguing practice. Looking forward to the next installment!
Do you mean that there is no difference in placement between ta and da when you are speaking? or playing?
For me in playing there is a big difference but that's something I've worked on - ta is articulated, tongue on teeth, and da is legato, tongue on the roof of the mouth. Tip of tongue placement will be covered in detail in a future essay!
Both, but it’s more complicated now that I think about it more. Standard flute articulation is actually almost interdental; I touch the bottom of my top teeth and my upper lip simultaneously. If I tongue on the alveolar ridge (which is the normal place when I speak), I don’t think of it as a different consonant — but maybe other flutists do! I should ask. I think that I think of the different consonants more in terms of the stiffness of my tongue. But I’m definitely going to give this some extra attention this week!
Exactly. I think the rub is in describing how to do the different strokes. One person's "da" is not necessarily the same as another person's. Linguistics helps, but not everyone is familiar with that, and I'm sure the linguistics folk have a wide range of opinions, too, about how to talk about placement. All that said, it's a stupidly interesting discussion for us wind players, and we should absolutely keep trying to figure out how to talk about it.
interesting - I would add that the "swingy" eighth note is from what I call the African Triplet for its relationship to the clave rhythm. If you take eighth note triplets and play the first two as though they are tied and then the third, you get that swing, eighth note feeling. Once I realized this, a lot of other jazz rhythms started to make sense, including the way Armstrong first started to play quarter note triplets as the essence of certain of his rhythmic ideas (his quarter note triplets were exactly clave).
Thanks. I'm a guitar player so this is of limited practical use but it's always interesting to read about the techniques and ideas (trials and tribulations) other instruments face.
I’m very curious about baroque recorder players using doodle tongue, where did you hear about that?
I go into a little detail in my first post about double tonguing. https://jacobgarchik.substack.com/p/double-tonguing-for-fun-and-profit
You can also read about it from several sources, including here: https://americanrecorder.org/docs/AR_Mag_November_1986_Multipage.pdf and this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctt0jY2D2i0
The very earliest treatises on wind playing recommend doodle as the main way of tonguing fast notes. You find it in virtually every printed method book from the 1530's until the second half of the 18th century.
Did they consider it rhythmically uneven? And if not, why do modern jazz musicians consider it rhythmically uneven? This is a mystery to me.
I don't think they were very interested in rhythmic evenness. They generally favoured variety, and "sprezzatura" (a kind of effortless, almost nonchalant grace and virtuosity). Especially in the kind of virtuosic, improvised playing where they recommend doodle as the default, the idea of aiming for evenness of rhythm or articulation would have been crude and unmusical to them. Reading a bit between the lines, that seems to be one of the reasons they discouraged what is now called double tonguing, and favoured doodle in three different variations (in a modern English, something like le-dl-le-dl-le-dl for a smoothest, softest articulation, de-dl-le-dl-de-dl-le-dl as a medium solution, and te-dl-le-dl-te-dl-le-dl for a more pointed articulation), and also te-re-te-re for moderately fast notes like quarters, eights and sixteenths. Interestingly, when looking at later sources, they invert the rhythmical placement, doing di-ri-di-ri with the di off the beat and ri on the beat which goes really well especially with the French "croches inégales" (very akin to swung 8ths).
My experience using historical tonguings is that while it's certainly possible to train double tonguing to be rhythmically flexible and less mechanical, its natural tendency is to be rhythmically consistent (i.e. also when rhythmically uneven, it encourages a certain consistency or straightness in the unevenness), whereas doodle and te-re-te-re in particular naturally allow and encourage more freedom in rhythm from the get go.
So, not just recorder players, but all wind instruments. And already in the Renaissance. The first known mention of tonguing patterns in a printed book is Silvestro Ganassi's La Fontegara of 1535, which is mostly a recorder method. He gives it as "lere lere lere" (also with different vowels). Most Italian sources thereafter follow the same. Dalla Casa (1584) was a virtuoso of the cornetto, the sister-instrument of the trombone. Rognoni's Selva de varii passaggi of 1620, containing the same articulations, includes the earliest solo piece specifically for trombone.
Martin Agricola in 1545 gives a group of sixteen very fast notes landing on the beat as Tellellellellellellellel-le, which to me remains the best way to represent it. I find the usual "doodle" or "did'll" has too many consonants (no coincidence that McChesney removes some of those consonants in his patterns! Although I am also not a fan of his "ul" syllable)
This is super fascinating, thanks! I find that there is no difference in placement between ta and da other than the voice; my tongue does not hit further back in my mouth. That said, I do find a qualitative difference between ta-ka, da-ga, and na-nga in sound and feel, despite the fact they all hit the same spots on the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. The vowel shape makes a difference, too, and I've been experimenting with short i, particularly ni-ngi, in my double tonguing practice. Looking forward to the next installment!
Do you mean that there is no difference in placement between ta and da when you are speaking? or playing?
For me in playing there is a big difference but that's something I've worked on - ta is articulated, tongue on teeth, and da is legato, tongue on the roof of the mouth. Tip of tongue placement will be covered in detail in a future essay!
Both, but it’s more complicated now that I think about it more. Standard flute articulation is actually almost interdental; I touch the bottom of my top teeth and my upper lip simultaneously. If I tongue on the alveolar ridge (which is the normal place when I speak), I don’t think of it as a different consonant — but maybe other flutists do! I should ask. I think that I think of the different consonants more in terms of the stiffness of my tongue. But I’m definitely going to give this some extra attention this week!
I also use interdental for low register and for extreme hard articulation. Different strokes for different types of playing.
Exactly. I think the rub is in describing how to do the different strokes. One person's "da" is not necessarily the same as another person's. Linguistics helps, but not everyone is familiar with that, and I'm sure the linguistics folk have a wide range of opinions, too, about how to talk about placement. All that said, it's a stupidly interesting discussion for us wind players, and we should absolutely keep trying to figure out how to talk about it.
interesting - I would add that the "swingy" eighth note is from what I call the African Triplet for its relationship to the clave rhythm. If you take eighth note triplets and play the first two as though they are tied and then the third, you get that swing, eighth note feeling. Once I realized this, a lot of other jazz rhythms started to make sense, including the way Armstrong first started to play quarter note triplets as the essence of certain of his rhythmic ideas (his quarter note triplets were exactly clave).