Cracking the Code – Reed Instrument Edition

Off-Topic
#1

Hey Reed Players (clarinet, sax, etc.) and curious musicians! Guitarist/Clarinetist here - I’ve been pondering for a while about how hard it is to tongue fast on a reed instrument. The classic advice I always hear is to use the “tip of the tongue on the tip of the reed”. To actually prove this, we’d need some serious tech: cameras and sensors inside someone’s mouth? (Troy?). Plus, the tongue is incredibly complex, with 8 muscles and the ability to move in 30 different ways!

So, I’m starting to wonder if the “tip of the tongue, tip of the reed” advice might be a bit misguided or incomplete — kind of like how guitarists have been getting misleading advice for years before CTC came along. Any thoughts on this out there?
I can do some double tounging too but that is a topic for another post…

#2

I’m not a reed player, but I did go to school for low brass performance ages ago. This is certainly an interesting idea, but it would definitely be difficult to both analyze, and then put whatever was gleaned into practice.

All I can add here, which is a connection I only made just now, is that the way I learned double-tonguing on trombone was to alternate the syllables “ta” and “ka”, which… is konnakol. * mind blown *

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