[Quetscher]

Hi Troy,
thanks for that fantastic Irish melodica video. Circular breath – wow! How do you produce your triplets? With your tongue? With your throat? And how do you manage to make them sound so accurate? (and please don’t tell me: just practice;-))

[Daren]

Hi Quetscher. Glad you like it! I do the triplets with my tongue, though you can also do them with fingers on single notes. A flute player friend showed me how to do it – flute players do it all the time. For a triplet, I make the sounds te, ke, te, into the mouth piece. Start by doing it very slowly, in perfect time, and then gradually speed it up, making sure to never compromise the rhythmic accuracy. After a while it becomes natural and effortless!

[Kevin]

Amazing precision on those Troy. I’ve rarely heard triple-tonguing that good from any instrument.
you know you are going to have to start a whole new thread on circular breathing! 😉

[Quetscher]

Thanks for the advice, Troy, it really helps a lot!

Another auestion: when you play two or more triplets in a row, is it Te-ke-te Ke-te-ke or Te-ke-te Te-ke-te or (I found this, too) Te-te-ke Te-te-ke? What do you prefer to play fast and accurate at the same time?

[Daren]

Hi Quetscher, I’d use Te-ke-te Te-ke-te for fast repeating triplets. For the last ‘te’, you could try placing the tongue slightly back on the roof of the mouth (moving towards a ‘de’ sound).

[jazzman1945]

On melodica playing triplet is even easier than the flute. Te-ke-te apparently comes from the Indian konnakol (ta-ki-ta). Selection of suitable combinations of syllables also depends on the native language. For me ,for example, it’s easier to play triplets on pa-ta-ta, that goes 2 times faster than te-ke-to. Can be changed to pa-tu-tu or ku-tu-tu, that changes the timbre a bit.

[Author]

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