Contrabass Digest: 2005-04-10

While on the topic of insightul teachers, can anyone suggest an efffective way to learn flutter tonguing? I'm 48 years old and have played woodwinds for 35 years, yet I have never been able to do this. I can make a guttural "R" in the throat and bring it up to the front of the tongue, and over the past year have extended this to the point that I can flutter tongue pretty effectively in the low register of the alto recorder. But with upper register notes, or on an oboe or clarinet, the stronger wind stream dampens out my fluttering.

Curiously, I also lack the ability to make a tube out of my protruded tongue. My two oldest sons can do this, and both of them can flutter (on trombone and trumpet).