Articulating on Oboe

There is a lot of physical control that goes into being a musician. And the control that must be exerted is usually in very small areas, such as individual fingers or wrists as I briefly covered in an earlier post about hand position and tendinitis.

Another one of these areas is the tounge.

For wind instruments, the tounge is used to articulate notes. For non musicians, this is similar to how you articulate speech. When you say a sentence, the tounge touches (or doesn't touch) at different places around the mouth to create a certain sound. The tounge works in a similar way to create certain sounds on an instrument.

On oboe, there is a desired method of where and how the tounge should hit.

Generally, all wind instruments emphasize a light tounge when articulating notes. Having a heavy tounge is the equivalent of trying to talk while sticking your tounge out of your mouth.

Tounging on oboe requires the middle of the tounge to hit the side of the reed.

To the left is a few examples of oboe reeds -- oboe reeds are made of two blades of cane tied together on a metal tube.  

In order to tounge lightly on oboe, the tounge must touch the smallest opening of the two blades. The smallest opening, then, is on the right or left corners where the two blades meet.