speed

It's not guaranteed that a fast lick will have a movement pattern, breath pattern or both, but it's worth looking for... the discover of them can help make a fast lick much easier to play.

Your Tongue Block Study 3 song ("Gary's Blues") contains a great example in Bar 6 of Chorus 5. Note that each beat has you moving up one hole and coming back, all with the same breath. For the next beat you move down the scale and blow, then using the same movement. Rinse and repeat and you have the entire lick. This discovery will help you to play this lick much more easily. continue reading...

Fast licks can be challenging to learn due to the number of notes packed into a small amount of time. Difficulty is heightened with awkward breathing patterns or the addition of challenging techniques such as bending or note treatments (dip, cut, gliss, slap, flutter or octave for example). Students will struggle to fit all of the notes of a passage in time, and in their struggle they'll often unknowingly play a lick too fast in order to get to what's next in the music. continue reading...

A student came in last week asking about jaw movement after watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0fusOgxp_8. Here's what I told him...

"I tend not to focus on jaw movement anymore with students as a technique to study. In my experience, some techniques tend to show up in one's playing over time without having to focus on it, and this is one of them. To answer your question... when moving a hole to the right and coming back, you can use your jaw to make the quick motion away and back. The same applies for moving from one hole to the left and back. continue reading...

A great speed lick should still sound musical when slowed down.

Take a listen at 25 minutes where they speak of our tendency to speed up for slower tempos and slow down for faster tempos.

The Power of Music
http://www.wnyc.org/radio/#/ondemand/332637