I find playing semiquavers at speed hard enough slurred let alone tongued!

Is there anything I can do to be able to tongue faster?

Double tonguing.

And how on earth do I do that?!

Decide which consonant sounds to use, I use d - g and keep them equal, don't stress one more than the other. It might be easier to start away form the instrument (my sister kept telling me to shut up when I was siting there saying dgdgdgdgdgdg etc). Then practice from one note to the other slowly, and gradually build up the speed. Start with 2 and then build up to 3 and 4 etc. It's also easier to start in the lower octave.

Good luck!

So I actually say dgdgdgd into the sax lol?!

Oh... well you didn't specify an instrument.

Hmph.

Well ok I now specify sax!

What did you think? Piano?!!

rofl

*raises eyebrow in an extremely sarcastic way*

I thought you meant flute actually.


Well then I don't know about sax.

I do these on clarinet and they work! Start *really* slowly and tongue a scale, hold the first note on longer than the rest and then come back down. Then start the same scale a note higher, so that you work you're way up gradually. Then when you've got that scale, speed it up until it's at a good speed. The start a scale higher and do the same. It takes ages and doesn't work instantly, but I could see a small improvement each time!

hen you do it (when you start) you need to be able to hear the note coming out clearly and with no "fluffs" if you know what I mean, otherwise the whole exercise is pointless. Doing scales so that two notes are slurred, two notes tongued helps too!

Put a metronome on at about 100 and tongue twice every beat. Then put it to 101, repeat. Then 102. And keep going until you reach your limit.

Another way is to keep the metronome the same and start two to a beat, then three, then four, then five................until you reach your limit. Your "limit" should increase each time you do this.

This should be done first with single notes, then scales.

Ok, thanks.

I'll try those suggestions.

I can't do double tonguing.

What I do is try to imitate the sound of a penny dropping. you know how it hits, the floor, bounces, hits again, bounces, in a kind of d...............d............d........d......d.......d.....d.....d...d..d.d.d.ddd kind of way? Am I making sense? Well anyway you try to see how fast you can get it at the end!

you need to not think about doing it
then it just happens