In music, time is divided by measures or bars. The nature of these measures is described by the time signature. Each note in the measure will be assigned a value based on the time signature. Let's look at a common time signature :
Now I'm going to give you an exercise using double tonguing and show you how by dividing up time into small and smaller units, you can increase the speed of your double tonguing while retaining accuracy and staying "in rhythm". Grab you didj and stand up!
What we are going to do is walk and play didj (advanced players can also chew gum). Walking in place, step at a slow pace (about 60 steps a minute) and count to your self starting with your right foot as ONE, left foot TWO, right foot THREE and left foot FOUR. ONE and THREE will always be your right foot. TWO and FOUR will always be your left foot. Once you have that going keep it slow and even and start to play. Mouth the syllable TUC on ONE, KA on TWO, TUC on THREE and KA on four. TUC will fall on the ONE and THREE with the right foot and KA on TWO and FOUR - left foot.
Now we are going to divide those beats in half. Keep stepping at the same pace, ONE, TWO, THREE and FOUR. But now on each beat we say ,"TUC KA". Keep that going nice and steady. Even though we are still stepping at around 60 beats a minute, we're playing twice as many notes in the same time or about 120 notes. Lets divided it again in half so that on each step we are playing, "TUC KA TUC KA TUC KA TUC KA". That is eight notes a step and you can now see we wanted to start with a slow step! If this seems impossibly fast, start over and step even slower on the first cycle of one note per step. Then two notes per step and finally four. Of course, if you find the exercise unchallenging, start over stepping faster. Here is how each of these measures would look written out :
Next month, I'll talk more about double tonguing as applied within a rhythmic cycle.
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