Using Articulation to Shape Sound

Articulation is what turns a string of individual notes into actual music. You shape it by combining your tongue and your air stream in different ways, and mastering a handful of tonguing techniques gives you a huge amount of expressive control.

Tonguing techniques: no tongue (for slurring/legato and glissing); “Da” (a soft-tongued attack for smooth playing — the one that makes legato slurring actually work); “Ta” (a clean, defined attack — imagine a tea leaf sitting on the tip of your tongue and spitting it off); “Ta Ka” or “Da Ga” (double tonguing for fast passages); “Ta Ka Ta” or “Ta Ka Ka” (triple tonguing, handy for rapid triplets); flutter (a rolled “R” tongue for a raspy, growling sound).

The main articulations: tenuto (full-length, legato notes connecting smoothly), staccato (short and detached — start with the tongue, cut the airflow to stop), accent (a firm “Ta” for an explosive start), marcato (a short, accented note, exaggerated by starting and stopping with the tongue), rip (a quick gliss up into the note from an indefinite point below), doit (establish the note, then blow hard and bend upward — on trombone, shoot the slide toward 7th while lipping up through the partials), fall (the opposite — bend downward, sliding outward while staying on the same partial), trill (a fast alternation between two close notes — on trombone usually a slur within the same slide position), shake (a rapid alternation between the base note and the partial just above it, without moving the slide), and vibrato (a subtle, slow undulation in pitch from gently moving the chin up and down).

Changing the tone itself

Mutes are your main tool for altering the character of your sound — they change the tone and reduce volume. The straight mute is the most commonly used, and the plunger mute is a jazz staple worth having in your bag.

Articulation is really the punctuation of music — it’s what brings the notes to life.