Articulation Tips

Making sure that fingers and tongue are coordinated is the first step in achieving clean articulation. It will help to practice passages slurred first to carefully listen for clean and even finger changes. If the fingers are not even, there is no way articulated passages can be even.  Practice with varied articulation: slur 2/tongue 2, reverse that as well, and then try all articulated...SLOWLY. Speeding up can be worked on in small bursts, (using chunking to break up the passage) ...then put each piece back together. Sometimes the problems of coordination are NOT the tongues fault: it's rushing fingers causing the problem. The tongue should not move a great deal inside the mouth and should not cut notes off...Keep listening. Because there is no way to SEE articulation, we must rely on our ears to fix the problems.