Well I am sure the subject has gone far enough and the "stop the note with the tongue" as opposed to the "don't use the tongue to stop the note" has reached a new high. I would share something that I discovered while driving down to North Carolina for my sons wedding. Something I have been doing all of my life and had just taken for granted. Is it not amazing how long one can live without realizing how we do something!! Well anyway, I had been doing my usual lip buzzing mouthpiece buzzing and was just about all buzzed out... not to be confused with having a buss on :)"... when I started to whistle a happy tune. I discovered a long time ago not to whistle a unhappy tune, especially when you are driving a long distance. As I was happily whistling along I became aware... why I didn't become aware of this a half century ago.... that all of my "pitch" changes were being made by moving my tongue around, and not by changing the little aperture between my lips. Hmmmmmm, I tried it even more and was becoming more intrigued by how much I could change the pitches by the placement of the tongue in my mouth. I even did some little trills. "When trilling the tip of my tongue sort of felt like a flicking snakes tongue." And that "snake tongue flicking" sort of made me think of my X mother-in-law. "Alright now Milton Behave." So for the next couple of hundred miles or so I kept whistling things with my "whistler" I compared the formed aperture between my lips when I was buzzing and the aperture when I was whistling. Wow, there was very very little difference. The buzz aperture was shaped like the end of a oboe reed and the whistle aperture was a little more round. I tried long tone whistling, staccato whistling, "long call" whistling, soft, loud fast, slow and ever other whistle I could think of. I tried stopping the whistle with the tongue, doing staccato with the tongue, and then all of that with just the breath: Everything I could think of. Again why it took me fifty years, who knows. What I found with the whistle was that I could never end a note using the tongue without getting a "end of the whistle" nasty sound. I couldn't whistle stacatto using the tongue. In fact I couldn't make any kind of nice sound or stop or staccato when I used the tongue to stop the air. Now now yes I know whistling isn't like playing the horn? Or coarse not? But just out of curiosity, why don't some of you "whistlers" out there give this thing a try and see what you come up with. I would be curious to find our how your "whistles" work. And on yes. I know we don't use our vocal chords like a singer... not exactly anyway but we do use them.... but I at least... believe we do approach playing the horn more like a singer sings, than does any other instrument. I was married to a singer and one of the most memorial lessons I ever had was from her voice teacher in New York. ..Winifred Cessel... Sorry about the spelling Winifred.. After that lesson, I will always sure we play the horn very much like a singer sings. Sorry to run on guys. And don't worry I have the fire extinguisher close by. :)
Milton Milton Kicklighter 4th Horn Buffalo Philharmonic Retired _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
