Hey,

At the moment I am learning to double and triple tongue, and I am finding it quite difficult. I have found I can single tongue almost as fast as my teacher can double tongue.

I have been taught to like say tu-ku-tu-ku for double and tu-tu-ku-tu-tu-ku for triple. I was wondering if there is anyway to practice it better? as I'm just not getting anywhere with it at the moment.

thanks in advance

Lisa x

Are you using the Arban to learn from? If not, I would recommend it, as there are some really good exercises in there. HOWEVER, Arban was French, so it was easier for him to use tu-tu-ku for triple, however because of language differences, it's easier for the english to do tu-ku-tu. Try that & see if it's any easier.

All I can say is that practice makes perfect.. it took me three years to perfect my triple tounging, but took my younger brother only about a week. Everyone's different.

It might help you to find a piece which has triple tonguing in it- sometimes it's easier when it's put into practice that if you're just asked to do it.

I would recommend Lake of Bays concert polka by Herbert Clarke.. this has a lovely section & coda filled with triple tonguing, & a beautiful waltz section also.
Hope that helped!

The crucial thing is to practise REALLY slowly to start with - if you can double tongue quavers at crotchet=120 with real clarity, then speeding up subsequently should be a relative doddle. It's also worth practising tonguing exercises with just 'ku' - can you get it as clear as the 'tu'? I'm sure you do your tonguing practice daily - personally, tonguing is the part of my technique that needs the most daily maintenance.

Re the syllable order in triple tonguing, I agree with Crispian Steele-Perkins who says it doesn't really matter what order you do them in, as one way or another you will end up with two tu's and one ku; ideally, you should be able to do any of them, but find the one that you find most comfortable and master that.

Oh, and be patient!

I am teaching a couple of kids to double / triple tongue at the moment, and I find the thing they forget to do is to keep the air flowing through the instrument as well as using the tongue, which results in a "pecking" kind of sound. I sometimes ask them to play a long note and think about how the air feels / how it feels to blow the note, and then try and keep that feeling as they are tonguing.
Hope this helps a little - the other thing is, as briantrumpet says, lots of very slow practice! (I personally find t-t-k easier than t-k-t - I think it's a case of finding which one works for you!)
Best of luck!

I finally plucked up the courage recently to start to learn to double tongue properly, so I started off on the first double tongueing exercise in the arban SLOWLY.

And it's working! I can now double tongue evenly just about faster than I can single tongue Just need to pick up the speed a little more and work through the rest of the exercises, as at the moment I can only double tongue on one note, and I want to be able to double tongue up a scale etc.

Thanks for all the replies! been a long time since I been on here sorry



Actually i've never been told about the Arban method whats that? some kinda book?
sorry if i'm being incredibly stupid here I just kinda copy back what my teacher is doing and then practice the same at home.



Yeah that sounds good I shall try find it in the music shop near me, I also have conversations for cornet which has a bit in



Found another way which I find better for triple doh-ga-tu works well but hopefully as I get better I will be able to master more of them

Anyway practice is helping a lot anyway, they getting better now

lol double and triple tounging must be hard on a tuba yes going up and down a scale sounds fun but a bit boring when its so slow which is all I can manage

thanks again

Lisa x

You can see all of Arban here. It's out of copyright by a long way.

I've never tried on any other instrument so I can't comment, but as with all brass instruments it is most difficult in the higher and (particularly for the tuba) low registers.

It can be boring, but if you stick at it then it really doesn't take long, just work through the arban exercises for double/triple tongueing. It's been tried and tested many times by the best brass players so it does work!