Two Plus Two Jim Snidero practice tips

[ChuckTbone]

Hi there,

I’ve recently been working on the piece Two Plus Two by Jim Snidero in his Advanced trombone book and have been having so troubles with it.
The written tempo is half note = 99 which is extremely fast as it’s a bepop song almost all eights. I have it pretty comfortable to quarter note = 145 but am have trouble pushing it past that. I have been slowly working up but seem to have hit a roadblock. I don’t think I can double tongue it as it sounds very sloppy if I try but when I try to play it at tempo at all my tongue cannot articulate fast enough if I try and single tongue it.
Just wondered if anyone has any tips or suggestions or if anyone had even heard of this song before.
Thanks!

[tbdana]

I don't know the piece. But this post is an example of why I have an issue with the people who say you must practice it slow and then slowly speed it up. The fact is, which you've discovered, we have to play fast things differently than we play slow things. So by practicing slow, you never practice the techniques you'll need to play it fast, and you may never reach your goal.

So, if it's faster than you can single tongue, you're just going to have to practice it double-tonguing. As an homage to the "practice slow" folks, there is no lower limit to how slow you can double-tongue. So, just start practicing it with a double-tongue. Do it slowly if you like, to clean it up. But you're going to have to practice it at speed to get it down. In fact, I'd say practice it faster than you'll actually play it.

Remember that at speed you have to lighten the way you play it. Your tongue has to be lighter, you have to play phrases instead of notes, and your coordination of tonguing and crossing partials has be be honed.

Besides, if it "sounds very sloppy" when you double-tongue, doesn't that tell you that you need to practice double-tonguing (in general) until it doesn't sound sloppy?

Is this the tune you're talking about? If so, it doesn't seem very fast to me.

[Wilktone]

It's OK to be sloppy in the practice room.

If you practice things that you can already do well you'll be able to maintain your current level, but you're not going to really make much progress. Jugglers have an expression, "If you're not dropping you're not learning." You need to spend some time practicing things that you can't play yet. I think most of your practice time should be spent playing things that you can almost, but not quite play yet. This is where you'll get the most benefit from practice time. It's also good to spend some time playing things that are definitely past your ability to play.

Work on your double tonguing. Try a very light legato double tongue (da-ga), but if you're interested in jazz I'd see if you can get doodle tonguing together. Take the Arbans book, as one example, and spend a little time every day working on your multiple tonguing and get those scale and chord arpeggio patterns together.

Dave

[lmalewic]

That’s me in the video lol. This tune is actually a really comfortable tempo for single tonguing. I would recommend working up your single tongue. Getting the more efficient tongue placement while keeping the air moving through each articulation. I have several videos about articulation on my YouTube. Here’s one of them. Hope it helps.