Handedness in Concert Band Instruments Ed Dumas About 85 percent of the human population is right-handed, and about 15 percent of the population is left-handed. With the vast majority of the population being right-handed, it is no surprise that society has mostly catered to that large group, and expects others to adapt accordingly. While this might be unfair, it has certainly been consistent over the centuries. In the last 20-30 years, though, it has been more common in the education system to adapt the parameters surrounding left-handed students so that the students themselves have fewer personal adaptations to make. We want them to be more comfortable living in a world built for right-handedness. For example, as a heavily right-handed young student, I was astounded to realize that it makes way more sense for left-handed students to write on the opposite side of a sheet of paper. By doing this, when a binder is open and laid flat on a desk, the left-handed student does not have to reach across the rings of the binder which would cause a significant impediment to effective printing. Printing on the left side of the rings solves that problem for left-handed students. At the same time, though, other adaptions just cannot be made. For example, as a right-handed student printing from left to right, my hand leads my printing across the page so that my hand does not block out what I have just written. This allows me to see my printing better while creating it. But, allowing a left-handed student to print from right to left for the same reason is not acceptable. The trouble now would be that if 15% of the population were to print everything from right to left, 85% of the population would not be able to read it! As a result, catering to handedness has its limits. The same is true of musical instruments. All of our musical instruments in a concert band program were built to be played the same way. Students in their rush to adapt everything to accommodate handedness often miss the point that all of our musical instruments are played with two hands doing independent jobs, and “switching hands” is just not a solution that works for most instruments. I will run through some of the peculiarities of the various band instruments so that students and parents have a better idea of what to watch for and what is possible. Much of the discussion of handedness on wind instruments began with the guitar, which is not even used in our concert band classes. Even from the early days of Rock and Roll, left-handed guitarists have been wanting to use the left hand to strum over the open hole while using the right hand to form chords on the neck. While this is possible by just “turning the guitar over” to the other side to play it, the guitar really should be restrung to put the order of the strings correct once again. Even doing that, though, is insufficient for purists who would suggest that the saddle and possibly the nut should be reversed to correct the string heights as well. Then comes the discussion about the pickguard, if there is one, which is now on the wrong side of the tone hole. Finally, if there is a cutaway on the body this has now been placed where it no longer helps in making the upper pitches more accessible. The real solution is to purchase a left-handed guitar, which manufacturers have begun doing decades ago. By completely reversing everything on the guitar, there is no longer a problem of “adaptations” when playing guitar left-handed. Unfortunately, the solution for left-handed wind instrument players is not nearly as simple. For example, the flute played “flipped over” will end up with multiple issues which make it unplayable. There will be numerous pinky keys (those played with the pinkies) that cannot be reached, and the lip plate on the flute head will now be mounted upside down, making the creation of a tone nearly impossible. Thankfully few flute students have ever tried doing that for me, except for a small group who were just confused on the first days. Clarinet, though, has not been so fortunate. Many players have demanded to play clarinet with the right hand on top because “I am right-handed.” This is kind of a reverse left-handed argument which ignores the challenges later on. The challenges of playing this way include again pinky keys that are unreachable, but now also include some others like knuckle keys that cannot be reached. By taking out a clarinet and showing to beginning students that it must be played with both hands, which includes the right hand on the lower tone holes, that argument usually goes away. But, I remember one time having to justify to a principal why a clarinet cannot be played reverse when a student complained! It was one of those moments when the principal realized without words why these instruments are best left to specialists. The trouble of reversing hands for clarinet is very much the same for saxes. Thankfully, I have never had a student request to play sax with the right hand on top, unlike numerous clarinet students. I did, though, one time have a very talented young man as a joke learn to play sax by reversing his hands. This was just a great source of comedy for him, as he never played this way normally. We all loved it, mostly because it was so incredibly awkward to watch, and yet he still managed it! I have had a few trumpet players ask to play the instrument using their left hand on the valves. Once I explained to them, though, that this means that the valve triggers are not activated since the right hand has trouble reaching them, usually, that request disappears. I have though, seen one left-handed trumpet player in university. He played this way because he was an amputee and he had a hook on his right hand which he used on the second slide to hold the horn up while he played with his left hand. The triggers were still unused in this scenario. The part of this solution that always mildly irritated me was that as a player he was still better than me! Now, if I have had students insisting on playing trumpet with the left hand, which it is not built for, I would suggest that they consider French Horn which uses the left hand on the valves. The right hand of the horn player, though, is still used by shaping the notes inside the bell of the instrument. But at least in the beginning, this can maybe solve a left-handed issue for brass. The thing about French Horn that most young players do not realize is that the instrument was developed as a right-handed instrument. This is because, before the invention of valves in 1814, the French Horn players changed pitches by using the right hand in the bell to shape the notes. By opening and closing off the bell with their right hand, the players were able to adjust the pitches to some degree. When valves were then added, it just seemed obvious to put them where they were available to the other hand not currently in use, which was the left hand! As a trumpet player, I have spent some little time on French Horn and have not found it difficult to adapt to left-handed valves. This instrument, then, could be useful to help those students who insist on beginning on a “left-handed” brass instrument, but still is a right-handed instrument. The trombone is the one instrument of all the winds that could be truly reversed to be played with the left hand. When assembling the two halves of the instrument, the student could flip the slide over to the other side of the bell. The student would then use the right hand to hold the instrument, and the left hand to manipulate the slide. Surprisingly, I have rarely had any students ask about doing this, and none followed up when I explained the ramifications of doing it this way. Imagine in your mind that you are watching a symphony orchestra perform. Watch the violin players, and notice how they all move the bow up and down in precise same movements. Often violin 1 and violin 2 parts will move independently, but rarely will all the violin 1 parts be not moving together as one unit. If one or more players are out of sync with the section, the section leader will surely have something to say later about bow movements! Now imagine that one player who is a left-handed violinist and has re-strung the violin to be played correctly with the left hand on the bow and the right hand on the neck of the violin. Now imagine that bow moving up and down in opposite directions to the rest of the violin section! That player then has huge space issues which are necessary to avoid bow crashes with other players, as well as the reverse action being a huge distraction to the audience. For that reason, left- handed violin players rarely, or never, get contracts with a professional orchestra, which is their “bread and butter” work. Now imagine the same scenario with a left-handed trombone player. While it is technically possible, there is a bit more of a demand for space and there is still the confusion issue for the audience. But, the biggest issue comes in advancing onto a trombone with an F attachment which later many experienced trombone players want to do. This attachment goes on the upper bell part of the trombone and is played by the thumb of the left hand. These triggers are not available to the right hand when you are a left-handed trombone player. If you “flip around” a trigger trombone, the build of that F attachment will be such that your right-hand thumb cannot activate it. Being a left-handed player means that you are likely destined to never step up away from the basic trombone to either a trigger horn or a bass trombone. This has now limited your progress as a musician before you have even started. Now when it comes to low brass and playing left-handed, these instruments are usually just a complete non-starter. Due to the size of euphoniums and tubas, these instruments are made so that the valves are accessible to the right hand when the mouthpiece is played in position. The valves are just not accessible to the left hand, which means in my career no one has ever asked to try. Interestingly, just as French Horn played with the left hand on the valves, I don’t think this has been a handicap for left-handed students wanting to play low brass and needing to use their right hand. Now, I have suggested one other solution for students that are strongly left- handed and just refuse to play a “right-handed” instrument. For these students, I have often suggested going into percussion which is a musical world that demands equal use of both hands on two sticks or mallets. Interestingly, the handedness problem still shows up in percussion, but in a different way. Here students sometimes insist that they use only one hand when playing a percussion instrument, and are reluctant to develop the other hand to become equal to the strong hand. For example, I have seen countless numbers of students holding two sticks at a snare drum while only one moves to make all of the strikes on the instrument. The same is true and maybe even more common when playing the xylophone with two mallets. Students going into percussion, whether left-handed or right-handed, need to understand that percussion requires both hands and that their job is to develop the other hand to become equal and alternating. Failing to do that means they cannot be a percussionist, as they will never be able to keep up with the demands of the job in future years. By now it should be evident to parents and students that all band instruments were built to be “right-handed.” The better truth, though, is that they are built to be played with both hands doing fairly independent jobs and whether right- or left-handed, students will need to master tasks for either hand to succeed as a musician. Whether right or left-handed, starting with the strong or weak hand creates little difference when it comes to mastering tasks for both hands. Manufacturers also do not create “left-handed” or reverse versions of wind instruments, as they just cannot be built to any kind of economy of scale. They become just too expensive to custom build a horn in a mirror image! There are a few options available such as trombone or percussion, but students should be well aware of the ramifications of these choices before making them. In the end, I would suggest to students and parents to ignore handedness and consider what instrument the student has his or her heart set upon to learn. Then, begin to learn that instrument conventionally, and be thankful for whatever strengths your “handedness” has given you, while also being mindful of developing your other hand to match.

The Six Percent Rule Ed Dumas I have always had trouble convincing students that all wind musical instruments are quite flawed in terms of musical intonation. I am also completely convinced that I am not alone in that struggle! So, I took to using the Six Percent Rule to help senior students understand WHY they needed to pay more attention to their intonation and I think it has helped, at least to some degree. First, a little sidebar about intonation. There is a difference between tuning and intonation. Tuning is what all musicians do together so that they can agree on at least one foundational pitch. Most groups today settle on A = 440, which means that the A above middle C will be exactly 440 Hz or 440 vibrations per second. Intonation means that if you place an A at 440 Hz, then the A#/Bb just above it needs to be precisely 466.16 Hz. If you place the Bb at 475 Hz or 450 Hz, your intonation is off, even though your tuning note might be correct with others. It is the placement of intonation that has worried me the most over the years, as many students have seemed reluctant to understand that the 6% rule means that it is practically impossible to build a wind instrument with perfect intonation. I have usually found that once students understand WHY their instruments are inaccurate, they are more likely to go along with the notion that they must learn to adjust for intonation problems on all wind instruments. So What Is The Six Percent Rule? I mentioned that if A = 440 Hz, then A#/Bb just above must be 466.16 Hz. Exact pitch frequencies can be found on numerous tables all over the internet and are readily available. The concept I want students to understand though is “IF A = 440 Hz.” Though we often aim for 440 Hz, there are plenty of times when conductors choose to alter that tuning frequency. I have done this myself if we were playing outside when it is very cold (such as at a Remembrance Ceremony), choosing to drop the tuning pitch slightly (A = 436 Hz) rather than try to fight the coldness all the time. The reverse is true when it is very hot and the conductor chooses to tune slightly higher (A = 444 Hz) to reduce the amount of fight with the tuner and instruments. As an aside, you should keep in mind that string instruments such as string basses and violins move oppositely due to temperature changes. For them, cold temperatures will RAISE the pitch due to increased tension on cold & shortened strings. Similarly, raised temperatures will LOWER the pitch due to reducing tension on lengthened strings. This may affect how far you can compensate a band for temperature. Now, let us assume that the room temperature is normal, and the musicians have chosen to tune to A = 440 Hz. Given those parameters, the A#/Bb immediately above then should be 466.16 Hz. The difference between them is 5.95 percent, since 440 X 1.0595 = 446.18 Hz. The difference of .02 Hz is a rounding error, and for the sake of students, I round this all to become “The Six Percent Rule” when in reality it is “The 5.95% Rule.” The former just sounds easier to remember! So, depending on where we place A, the next pitch up (A#/Bb) should be about 5.95% higher. Each successive pitch higher will use the same 5.95% increase in Hz to create the next sound. This is the relative tuning that students need to develop on their wind instruments that plague so many students and bands. Now, I should mention that I honestly believe the best place for students to develop a strong relative pitch ability is in a choral program. In a band class, beginning band students will inadvertently learn a faulty absolute sense of pitch by thinking that to get that Bb, I just “add these fingers or keys and the instrument does the rest.” But in a choir, placing a valve down or adding a key is just not a thing. There is little chance here that they will develop that faulty dependency on an instrument to make it right for them. I sincerely wish that I had a choral program available to me when I was in secondary school, and I STRONGLY encourage every wind instrument player to sing in a choral program if there is one available to you! Additive vs Subtractive Instruments Now consider the guitar for a moment, which is best thought of as six musical instruments in one, since it has six strings. If you play the A string open, which means no fingers on frets, that string will sound an A. To make it sound one pitch higher (A#/Bb), you then place one finger on the first fret. This removes 5.95% of the length of the vibrating string, thereby making it sound one semitone higher. For each successive pitch on that string, you move to the next fret up along the length of the string. Notice that the second fret that you have now pressed to get the B sound is closer to the first fret than the first fret was to the nut at the top. The reason for this is that the effective length of the string has been made shorter when you played the Bb, which means that the next 5.95 percent reduction will be shorter than the last one. This pattern continues up the string with the frets getting closer and closer while the 5.95%s keep getting lesser due to a shorter previous string. Hence, the guitar is a “Subtractive Instrument” meaning that to change the pitch on any given string, one must remove some active length of the string by pressing down on a fret. There is no possible way of making a string longer by adding to it to achieve a lower sound than the “open” position of no frets. A different string needs to be used to achieve this lower sound. Now consider that all wind instruments are additive, rather than subtractive. For winds, the length of the tube is fixed and cannot be shortened, but can be added to by placing down a finger or valve. On a trumpet, a player will produce the highest possible sound on that given harmonic when not pressing any valves. By adding a second valve, the player adds in the length of the tube that accompanies this valve. Let’s call it length “1” which represents one tube length on the second valve. By adding one length of tube, the pitch now drops one semitone. To drop another semitone, the student would have to add in another length of tube. This is achieved by raising the second valve and adding the first valve since the first valve tube is double the length of the tubing of the second valve. This first valve, then, will drop the pitch by two semitones. The third valve is three times the length of the second valve, which means adding this valve alone will drop the pitch three semitones. More semitone drops can be achieved by combining the valves. Normally a drop of three semitones would be achieved by using the first and second valves (2+1). Four semitones would be achieved with second and third valves (1+3), five semitones would be one and three (2+3), and finally, a drop of six semitones would be all three valves (2+1+3). Now, here is where the math gets complicated for students. If we assume that instrument makers create the valve tubes at PRECISELY lengths of 2, 1, and 3, then the larger valve combinations will be dramatically short in their percent drop. That is because the 5.95% extra length also needs to take into account the other lengths already added in. So, a first valve drop of two pitches should be the length of the horn, plus two times 5.95% of that horn length AND 5.95% MORE of the second valve length. A drop of three semitones should have an added drop of 5.95% of the entire horn that was used to create the pitch just above it, which means adding a percent of a percent. Here is a chart of the basic formulas used to calculate the length of tubing to add in. Lengths (L) of Additional Tube (Valve Combinations) 1L (2) 2L (1) 3L (1,2) 4L (2,3) 5L (1,3) 6L (1,2,3) Formula L = 1 additional valve tube length L 2L+Lx5.95% 3L + (2L + L x 5.95%) x 5.95% 4L + [3L + (2L + L x 5.95%) x 5.95%] x 5.95% 5L + {4L + [3L + (2L + L x 5.95%) x 5.95%] x 5.95%} x 5.95% 6L + {{5L + 4L + [3L + (2L + L x 5.95%) x 5.95%] x 5.95%} x 5.95%} x 5.95% Now I don’t expect you or anyone else to memorize these formulas. Quite frankly it hurt my brain just working this out, and I am not even convinced that it is 100% correct! I even ran out of available brackets on my keyboard and had to use the { } type of brackets twice. But the point is that the math is very complex, and students must not be complacent with just putting down 1,2,3 for a trumpet C# and be satisfied with that! The Six Percent Rule dictates that they must make some further changes to their slide lengths by using the third slide trigger when playing that note. The same is true of using 1,3 for a low D on trumpet. After hearing this from me, few students would risk hearing another math lesson on the Six Percent Rule, but would rather just opt to begin using the trigger to put those notes in tune! Now when talking to brass players about adding some trigger length to make the 1,3 and 1,2,3 combinations in tune, students usually question how much length to add using the trigger. This is a good question, and students will find that the amount of addition varies between the various instrument makers. That is because the various manufacturers will use slightly different lengths for all the valve slides to achieve a combination they feel would work the best on their instrument. Therefore, the way to tell is to check it against a tuner. If you are checking trigger slide lengths against a tuner, please be aware of the challenges with tuners and the bio-feedback response. If you are not sure about this effect, please review the article titled “Digital Tuners In A Concert Band” for a good explanation. Then, remind your students not to “stare” at the tuner when checking a note. Now, in the same way that brass instruments are additive in their lengths, woodwind instruments are also additive, but not often thought of that way. The shortest instrument available for a clarinet would be the length from the tip of the reed to the first open key which is Bb using thumb & one. The next lowest sound will add 5.95% of that length by removing the thumb and allowing that key to close. The next lower pitch after that will add 5.95% of the entire instrument on the pitch above, which includes one calculation of the 5.95% already. Hence the next pitch-down addition will be slightly longer than the previous addition. In that way, students can see that each successive addition of length means that the additions are growing longer and the holes or keys more separated. For woodwinds, students can then get a sense of why the fingers spread as the instrument gets longer, as well as the tone holes (clarinet), get larger. Once the tone holes become too large or too far apart, keys must be used to allow fingers to complete the task. Hence larger instruments like bass clarinets do not have open holes in the same way as a soprano clarinet. There are several more functions that I like to mention to students when discussing why their instruments all have poor intonation. The first is the size of the bore of the instrument, and how much this bore opens from the mouthpiece to the bell. The second is the use of harmonics in different registers, and how the length additions will change how all the pitches in the various harmonics will sound. Third is a consideration that the way the instrument is built will determine if the harmonics are even in tune with each other, before the use of lengthening tubes using keys or valves. By now students are getting some dizzying understanding that the math that is involved in making a wind instrument is extremely complex. When one understands that manufacturers make some accommodations to try to help with impossible intonation, this then becomes an engineering-level challenge. For example, manufacturers will adapt the lengths of the three valve slides on a trumpet to help with some pitches, knowing that they are also then putting other pitches farther off correct. The notes that use the third valve without the trigger (2+3) tend to be pushed farther off correct if the trigger valve was made a little longer to help compensate for 1+2+3. Notes that use the 1st valve or 2nd valve could even be pushed off from correct if those slides were adjusted to help move the 1,2,3 combination to more in tune. Simply putting down some fingers and hoping it will be in tune now is usually seen as incredibly naïve. This makes room for a discussion with students about which notes on their instrument need correction. The throat tones on the clarinet come to mind, which behave more like subtractive notes since the clarinet played “open” is a G and not a Bb. The very short notes on a flute like high Db/C# are also renowned for being fairly off-pitch. The same is true of open Db/C# on sax which can be very out of tune. Finally, a comment about the trombone. I mentioned that due to the math challenges regarding the Six Percent Rule, it is practically impossible to build a wind instrument that plays with perfect intonation. The trombone is the closest that could be achieved for this, but it requires trombone players to understand that the distances between the various positions lengthen as they go down the slide. The distance between positions 1 and 2 will not be the same as the distance between say 4 and 5. As long as trombone players understand that the positions lengthen and that they, like everyone else, must use their ears to place a pitch, it is a fantastic instrument for intonation! The other important concept for trombone players to understand is that the various positions will change slightly depending on which harmonic they are playing on. Hence, they may end up with a slightly shorter or longer position on some harmonics. The discussion with students about The Six Percent Rule leads naturally into a discussion about which notes on their particular instrument need to have special attention paid to it. There are some excellent band technique books available with some good descriptions of Pitch Tendencies of the various wind instruments. Once students get a glimpse of how complex this whole topic is, they are then usually much more open to some higher-level intonation studies on their instruments, or to at least check their intonation against a tuner to find a better placement!

Fast Tonguing for Beginners Ed Dumas Never underestimate the number of things that you can learn from your beginning band students. The things that they will teach you as the teacher, though, will likely be less about music and more about how people learn and the challenges that they may face. The first article I wrote for this blog was titled, “Set, Exhale, Inhale, Play.” It was a discussion on how to circumvent the natural inclination of beginning band students to breathe as they raise the instrument into the playing position. If students do not get that order correct, a good number of them will develop a closed throat in their playing that will dog them for years to come. If you are not familiar with the concept presented in that article, this is a very good time to review it, and I would strongly encourage that. I would like to present now, another concept that beginning band students taught me about their learning how to breathe on a wind instrument. I noticed quite early that some beginners would take a breath for literally every note that they played on their instrument. I also knew that this was a problem that could not be allowed to become a habit, as it could discourage many students from carrying on. This problem is particularly common for flute players due to the flute naturally having such low resistance. If the beginning flautist has not yet developed firm embouchure corners (side of the mouth where the top and bottom lip meet) and a small aperture (the opening between the lips), then the air will escape too fast. This will cause the student to “gas out” very quickly and need to breathe far too often. While this problem is very common with flutes, I have seen “breathing for every note” in every other wind instrument as well. Now, I have talked to flute players about this problem by explaining that they must play more than one note in a breath, better would be two complete measures in the beginning days. We have talked about small aperture and creating resistance in the embouchure because the flute has almost none. I have talked to all band students about how the music does not sound “musical” if you breathe for every note. I have even sung or played the song back to them with a breath for every note, and then more correctly used longer breathes and phrases to make it sound more pleasant. I have even played for them long slurred passages and passages with a rapid succession of notes to show that in some music it is simply physically impossible to breathe for every note. Yet, none of those concepts worked for every student. Most of the ideas listed above worked for most of the students, but no matter what I said, there always seemed to be a small group that persisted in breathing for every note. I knew that this doomed their satisfaction in the band to the point that they would not stick with it in future years. I also knew that I needed the students to feel what it was like to extend the air and play “more than one note per breath.” Talking about it did not seem to be enough, because, in the first few weeks of playing, they did not have enough skill on the instrument to do some of the types of playing that I was describing. If they could not yet play more than one or two pitches on their instrument, how could they play a rapid succession of pitches to understand how to not breathe for every note? If the flute players, in particular, had very soft embouchures, how could I get them to firm up their embouchure to play longer than one note in a breath? I needed to create an exercise where students couldn't succeed unless they did the breathing correctly, and this exercise needed to be playable by beginners on the second or third day with extremely limited skill. Waiting any longer risked setting in motion a habit that might be hard or impossible to break later on. I then also began to notice that it was the flute players that demonstrated this ”breathing for every note” problem the most. I was also seeing this problem on other instruments, such as clarinet or sax, particularly where the embouchure was set very loose. My light bulb started to go on when I saw that it was the same students breathing for every note that also had the most trouble getting tonguing happening in their instrument. This was not a coincidence.   Even with so little skill on their instrument, I knew that I had to get them tonguing right away or risk losing them forever. So, about the second or third day of playing their instrument, I would present the idea of tonguing. Rather than drawing out on the board for the students a rhythm in musical notation, I just wanted them to do it and feel it on their instrument. We can worry about what it looks like in notation later. So, using my own horn, I would play a measure of rhythm for the students and ask them to copy me. We would use a concert D, which is the middle note of what is usually the first five pitches presented to beginners – Bb, C, D, Eb, & F. I like this pitch for this exercise as it is more likely to give most students better success. It has easier fingers for flutes, gives clarinets and saxes some fingering on the instrument to “hang on to,” and gives the brass players a pitch which is less likely to jump harmonics on them. My starting rhythm would be something like two quarter notes, two eighth notes, and one more quarter note (Tah, Tah, Tee-Tee, Tah). You need not describe this to the students, just play it and have them play it back. I asked them to do it in a “Call and Response” kind of activity. “If I change, they change” sort of thing. Invariably, in the beginning, some students will mess up the playback because of not being sure when to start their response. Very quickly, though, they will learn to play it in time without a delay after your “call” measure of 4 counts. Continue with a call and response giving the students plenty of opportunities to practice their tonguing. The next step is to not wait after they have given their response to your call but to present another call still in time right after their response. Give them plenty of repetitions to practice this new skill as well. Now you have established in their mind practicing the skill of tonguing while they are learning a stronger sense of time. You can continue this exercise for several minutes changing the rhythms of the measures each time. I have never met a class of students that did not enjoy this as a fun challenge. As soon as the students have more than one pitch available to them, practice the call and response using different pitches. If you change pitches, they must follow. Invariably some students will miss when you change pitches, so when that happens just remind them to listen for the pitch change as well. When I first started doing this exercise trying to get beginners to have a chance to practice the skill of tonguing without the worry of failure, I began to notice that many of the players who would breathe for every note were now having to change their method of playing. They could no longer keep up with the class when taking a breath on every note, particularly during the eighth notes. To do the task successfully, they had to change their breathing to complete several notes in one breath. Most would then soon be exhaling for a complete measure during their response to this exercise. At this point, it seemed to me that tonguing was the answer to the “breathing for every note” problem. Well if there is one thing that I learned growing up, it was “If a little bit is good, then more must be better!” I actually learned that lesson too well as a kid, and often have to remind myself that most of the time, only a little bit is best. But in this case, more was definitely better. Just to have some fun with the students, I started adding more eighth notes in a measure and placing them on different counts in the measure. Then the students wanted more challenges, so I added in some sixteenth notes. We were now mixing up quarters, eighths, and sixteenths in various rhythms. Eventually, they were playing back to me a complete measure of sixteenths in 4/4 time at about quarter note equals about 106 or so. Note that this was not after weeks, it was after days at most, sometimes even just minutes! As long as I did not try to get them to intellectually understand what they were playing, they could do it. They just needed to copy me. So, now I realized that I found the magic exercise to fix their breathing such that students could only be successful if they breathed correctly. The students that were struggling with extending the air were now rapidly working through that issue. Embouchures were tightening up and tonguing was beginning to happen all at the same time. The best part was that I did not have to talk about it, we could just play something that automatically fixed their breathing! This became a natural warmup for beginning band students from then on. Each day for the next month or two, we would start with just a few minutes of call and response. The students loved the game and it really helped focus their minds on the task at hand, which is to play the instrument. Once I committed to doing this warmup with beginners each day from about the second or third day onward, I rarely ever saw students who insisted upon taking a breath for each note. In later grades, if I did come across a student that was struggling with extending the breath, then I would roll out this exercise once more to help them focus on the correct task. The rest of the class would not need to know who I was directing the exercise toward, as they all loved a simple Call and Response activity for fun. Practice fast tonguing with your beginners early and often for the best success. Assume that your students will not practice it unless you model it for them in class first. When they can intellectually read and understand smaller divisions of the pulse, then you can present them with some written rhythm studies to play in class. At this point of seeing sixteenth notes written on a board or paper for the first time, students are often surprised when I would tell them, “You have already played this, but you just did not know what you played!” But if you never present fast tonguing right from the start in band class, assume they will never practice it at home either! A Note About Positive Thoughts When I was about seventeen, my father began to give me driving lessons in the family car. My father was a licensed and working driver instructor, so I had the benefit of spending countless hours practicing driving for free. One of the most important lessons that he taught me was to consider what thoughts were going through my brain while I was in charge of a very heavy vehicle which had the potential to take a life. He wanted to make sure that I was thinking positive thoughts, and not negative thoughts. Now a definition of a “positive thought” here is in order. Oftentimes students today interpret a “positive thought” as meaning some thought that was positively self-affirming to them, such as “You are capable of doing this.” The opposite negative thought would be something like “You suck at this!” While of course, I would never want students to make negative self-defeating thoughts about themselves, this is not what my father had in mind. My driver-instructor father was far more concerned with action thoughts, things that we do or do not do. To him, a positive thought was to keep in mind the ACTION that should be completed. A negative thought would be a listing of which action you do NOT want to do. My driver instructor father was trying to get me to keep in mind the positive actions that I needed to complete to stay safe as a driver, and NOT to obsess over the negative actions that could potentially kill me. So far, his words have proved to be very wise. Here is an example. If I found myself following too closely to the car in front, he would instruct me to think “Keep your distance.” Repeating that mantra while driving helped me not rear-end the car in front. Using the negative opposite, though, did not have an equal effect. Saying the statement “Don’t have an accident” while driving still has an action component to the sentence, which is “Have an accident.” Since the brain does not understand well the difference between positives and negatives, most people when stating a negative or “Don’t” statement, then still focus on the wrong result, which in this case would be to “Have an accident.” Therefore, you are far more likely to have an accident if you tell yourself “Don’t have an accident!” The solution is to state what you WANT, not what you DON’T WANT. Hence, the statement “Keep your distance!” Now apply this brilliant logic to the problem above of first-year band students breathing for every note. Do not tell them, or encourage them to tell themselves “Don’t breathe!” They will surely breathe more often since they are focusing on that action! Instead, tell your students to “Extend the air!” when they are breathing too often. Tell them the positive action you want, and they will far more likely give it to you. It will likely not work every time for every student in the beginning, but it will certainly help to move them all towards your objective of not breathing for every note or every pitch change on their instrument. With some thought, this simple advice can be applied to so many problems in the students’ world of music. Have some fun finding other positive directions for the many actions that you want your students to achieve. Then you will find that the challenge for you is to always remember to “state the positive.” You can begin this philosophy when your students are practicing fast tonguing on their wind instrument by not telling them “Don’t breathe!” Instead, tell them “Extend the air!” It is guaranteed to keep them focusing on the correct action that you are looking for, and your students will understand much faster!