Skip to main content

How to Train My Tongue to Go Faster as I Play My Trumpet

Increasing tonguing speed requires daily practice.

Improving your single-tonguing speed on the trumpet is a simple process. There are no tricks you can use to make your tongue go faster. You must practice daily and provide consistent and concentrated effort to improve your tongue speed on the trumpet. There is a simple exercise that will help you increase the speed of your tonguing that requires the use of a metronome and about 10 minutes of practice time per day. If you practice daily, you will be able to improve your speed quickly.

Start the metronome at 100 beats per minute. Begin by playing two eighth notes for every beat on a C-major scale to warm up your tongue. Concentrate on maintaining a consistent tonguing stroke and aim for the top of your mouth where your gums hit your teeth. Continue the exercise using sixteenth notes. This time play one eighth note followed by 10 sixteenth notes and end with a whole note. Do this on each note from "C" chromatically down to "G."

Increase the tempo two beats at a time. Continue to increase the tempo until you can't play the exercise from Step 2 cleanly. Write the fastest tempo you achieved on a piece of paper.

Take a five-minute break and start four beats slower than the tempo you wrote down in Step 3. Attempt to increase your speed on this session by increasing the speed two beats per second until you can't play cleanly anymore. Note your fastest tempo.

Return the next day and start again. Instead of starting at 100 beats per second, start 10 beats slower than your fastest pace from Step 4.

Tips


Practice daily. You will not improve without practice.
Once you are able to play sixteenth notes at 144 beats per second, try playing scales instead of steady sixteenth notes.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Similarities of Classical and Baroque Music

Music has evolved through the centuries and undergone drastic changes. One of the most significant transitions was from the Baroque to the Classical period of music. In this paragraph, I will compare and contrast some of the main features of these two styles, such as ensembles, instrumentation, and counterpoint study. The Baroque and Classical periods of music have many similarities. While the style of music changed drastically, certain key elements remained the same between the two styles. Composers in the Classical period sought to simplify music and create clearly audible musical lines. In contrast, composers from the Baroque period were interested in creating complex and highly ornamented musical lines. The Baroque period occurs from approximately 1600 to 1750, and the Classical period extends from 1750 to 1820. Ensembles Ensembles are groups of musicians that perform together. Both the Baroque and the Classical period had similar types of ensembles, such as operas, orchestras, str...

Sunday Stories: The Power of Audiation in Music Composition

Happy Sunday! Today, let’s explore the transformative power of audiation in music composition and share an inspiring story about a composer who mastered this skill. Audiation, the ability to hear and understand music in your mind, is a crucial tool for composers, enabling them to bring their musical ideas to life with greater detail and precision. What is Audiation? Audiation is the process of hearing and comprehending music in your mind without any external sound. It is similar to thinking in a language, where you can understand and manipulate words and sentences internally.  For composers, audiation is an essential skill that allows them to imagine, develop, and refine their musical ideas before they are played or written down 1 . The Benefits of Audiation for Composers 1. Enhanced Musical Understanding Audiation helps composers develop a deeper understanding of music. By hearing and analyzing music internally, they can grasp the relationships between different musical elements, ...

List of Musical Techniques and Their Meanings

Musical techniques are the building blocks of any basic music training. These techniques allow performers to improve their coordination and develop accuracy through repetitive daily exercises. Musical techniques progressively build upon previously learned techniques. Scales Scales form the basis for other musical techniques. Student may study major and minor scales as well as modern scales, such as the whole-tone and octatonic scales. A scale consists of patterns of half steps and whole steps. These whole steps and half-step arrangements will be different for each scale. Scales are musical techniques that can help a performer to play faster and more accurately, and make learning new pieces easier. Chords Chords require knowledge of major and minor scales. Chords come in several different forms that affect the sound. Triads consist of three notes spaced a third apart and classified as major, minor, augmented and diminished chords. Seventh chords build on triads and have an additional no...