This Trumpet Topic page is a conclusion in a series of postings related to improving one's
single tonguing. Like so many of our trumpet techniques, maintenance is often simply a
matter of disciplining ourselves to regularly devoting just a few minutes every single day
to exercises which were designed to preserve that technique.
If you have incorporated the basic exercises from my preceding four web pages into your daily practice routine your single tonguing should have shown considerable improvement by now. If you missed those pages, you can access them by clicking the link at the bottom of this page.
Following is my exercise for single tonguing maintenance. The entire exercise should be played in one breath. After you are able to make it in one breath (at approx. quarter = 120) you should always practice it with a metronome, constantly trying to keep pushing your tempo faster and faster.
My exercises from the preceding pages in this series should have given you a good preparation for perfecting the opening excerpt from Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major. My suggestion is that you think of starting this excerpt on the downbeat of a 3/8 measure rather than starting it after a sixteenth rest, as it was originally notated. See my Ravel opening . Starting on a downbeat gives better focus, better rhythm, and you are less likely to start with a closed throat.
