Tongued Arpeggios

Brass players are often taught to double-tongue from an early age; woodwind players, not so much.

Double tonguing on the sax is incredibly fun, especially when playing a piece such as Handel's "Arrival of the Queen of Sheba", which is almost entirely tongued arpeggios and runs.

Sax Double Tongue Technique

I use the typical "ta-ka" method, whereby I tongue the first note the normal way by using my tongue to stop the reed, while the second note ("ka") is is stopped by raising the back of the tongue to block the airflow from my throat.

You can try this right now, try making the sound "ka" while attempting to blow air out of your mouth.

I ran into the two usual problems with the "ta-ka" (or "ta-gah") method:

1. It takes practice to get the two notes to sound the same
2. It requires endurance my tongue muscle to continue more then eight beats

Thus, the piece by Handel, which you have probably heard countless times. When played legato (with no space between the notes) the character of the piece loses the feeling of pagaentry and bombosity. I thank my understanding neighbors for putting up with two months of me practicing this piece for three hours at a stretch, day after day.

Here's how both sound:

 

Triple Tonguing

Brass players also know about triple tonguing, where the syllables are "ta da ga" (or similar). For those who can do it, it's truly amazing to listen to, especially when playing scales. I literally have no idea how this is done, but it's possible.

Fast Tonguing in Classical Soprano Sax

Unknown to most people, the soprano saxophone sounds like a cross between an oboe and an Eb clarinet, depending on how it's played (reedy or smooth). For an example of how it can be used to make stellar music, listen to The Paul Winter Consort.

I was fortunate enough to play John Boyd's arrangement of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" for concert band, which uses a soprano sax for the section of repeated triplets in the sixth movement "Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle" usually played by a trumpet (in the Ravel arrangement).

The figure looks like this:

That's seven tongued notes in one beat (tempo: andantino), and it continues for eight measures during which you can't really take a breath.

Even after a month of practicing, I couldn't tongue fast enough to play it correctly consistently, especially since the accent is on the downbeat, not the grace note proceding it. Like many others, I dropped the first grace note. I've listened to countless recordings and amateur musicians like me do likewise.