Whistle While You Work

As promised here’s a thought on voicing that I’ve had for a few weeks now. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, clarinetists use the term voicing to describe the way in which the embouchure and tongue affect tone production. Today I just want to focus on the tongue. The reason is because we quite obviously can’t see inside a person’s mouth to get a look at what their tongue is doing. That can make learning how to use it properly a challenge. There are many different exercises that you can use to learn about voicing while playing the clarinet, and I’ve described a few of them in the past. But like many things sometimes it helps to remove the instrument and focus only on the part of the body we’re trying to work on. So here’s the idea – whistle. It may sound completely ridiculous, but we’re going to try and see.

Try these steps…

• Whistle any tune you know (Mary had a little lamb works well).
• Got it?
• Try again and notice how you’re tongue moves.
• Stop on the highest note and notice that it’s higher and more forward than any of the other notes.
• Now try a gliss from the lowest note you can whistle to the highest.
• Notice where the tongue is at the beginning of the gliss and at the end.

I think you’ll find that on the highest note, your tongue will be in just about the right position for clarinet playing.  That is to say high in the back (touching the top teeth) and low in the front.  Another reason why I like this idea is because it keeps the rest of the mouth relaxed and yet also uses air.  Using the air while whistling gives this idea a definite advantage over the “vowel sounds” technique in my opinion.  Two caveats -  first, we obviously don’t form the embouchure in the same way for clarinet as we do when we whistle.  Second – having an extremely low position for the front of the tongue is not good for articulation.  You don’t want to end up “anchor tonguing”.  Besides that, try it and let me know what you think!