Hello again!

Hello!  How's it going?

I just wanted to post a little something here so you all know that I haven't abandoned you.  Things have been going very well with my first semester of my DMA.  My playing has dramatically improved already and I constantly feel as if my brain is oozing out of my ears from everything that I need to do.  It's rather awesome :).  I'm studying with the fabulous Rick Todd here at UM and I am absolutely 100% positive that I chose the right person with which to work in order to fix my problem areas with horn playing.  For a few weeks I felt as if I was stuck in the 6th grade again because everything that I was (and still am) working on was fundamentals.  Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.  My whole concept of producing a beautiful horn sound has been retooled and I'm so much better for it.

I plan on posting a few things once the semester wraps up here at the beginning of December.  I've been working on a couple of projects for classes and I really want to share some of the work that I've done.  I'm taking an ethnomusicology class that provides an overview of some of the different musics of Africa.  It's been a fascinating experience and has completely changed how I look at music from around the world.  My iTunes and Spotify collections have dramatically increased thanks to this class.  I'm working on a biography of sorts on a South African singer named Miriam Makeba, so I'll be posting that here when it's finished.  I'm also writing a paper on Mozart and his compositional style for solo horn (as opposed to his orchestral horn parts).  At the very least, I'll post here a biography of Joseph Leutgeb and his relationship with Mozart throughout his career.

Hang in there with me folks!  I'll be back soon!

Beginning of the Season Survival Guide

A new school year and season is upon us at last! As we once again throw ourselves head first into the seemingly bottomless pit of practicing, rehearsals, and performances, I have a few simple tips to help start things off on the right foot:

1. Hydrate
Water.  Drink it.  Drink lots of it.  Your body stands a much better chance of proper recovery if  it is not also fighting dehydration.  Be careful of your caffeine intake as well, as it will only dehydrate you further.  I feel slightly hypocritical saying that because of my own, sometimes desperate, need for coffee.  However, I also fully admit that my playing has the tendency to improve when I stop taking it intravenously.

2. Eat well
Lay off the junk and fatty fast food.  Yes, it's convenient, but the over abundance of salt and fat in these foods will only sap your energy and exacerbate any dehydration (see item 1).  Eat more fruits and veggies, lay off the salty snacks, choose lean meats over fatty ones, and make sure to eat 3 regular meals a day.  Skipping meals and eating poorly makes us lethargic and inhibits our body's ability to properly recover.

3.  Sleep
I have already covered this topic more in depth in another post, so I won't bore you too much.  We need sleep to recover.  Rest your mind and your body.  Exhaustion will only lead to ineffective practice and performance.

4. Balance
Be sure to balance your practice time.  We are not super heroes.  You will get much more out of practice sessions that cover a wide range of fundamentals, etudes, excerpts, and solo work than you will out of just playing Strauss 2 straight down for 3 hours a day.  Not only is that an ineffective use of your playing time, but no one who hears you is impressed.  Any time I hear someone trying to practice this way (the Strauss 2 method), my first response is not, "Wow! That's impressive!"  It's typically, "Wow.  You're an idiot."

5. Breathe
Run, or participate in some other aerobic exercise, regularly.  Do "Breathing Gym" exercises every morning to jump start your focus on your air.  Take up yoga to learn how to focus on your breathing. Take a 5 minute time out sometime during the day to take a few deep, cleansing breaths to relax.  Air is our friend and it's completely free.  Use as much of it as you want.

To play or to sleep? That is the question.

 Last week I had the privilege of being a part of the lab-band for the Messiah College Conducting Symposium for their Masters in Conducting program.  This entailed being at 3, 4 hour rehearsals Wednesday-Friday to work with 12(?) different student conductors on varying literature in addition to playing a concert of the repertoire on Friday night.  Between the rehearsals, working 8 hour shifts at my day job, running, private lessons, and marching band rehearsals, there was barely enough time left over to eat and squeeze in 5 hours of sleep each night.  Needless to say, I was exhausted by the end and my playing certainly suffered for it.

I think most performers realize that sacrifices must be made in order to pursue our craft.  We give up time with our families and friends in order to practice and perform, we won't see a new movie for months because we're saving for some small, yet exorbitantly priced, piece of equipment, we skip meals when we don't have time to eat between rehearsals, and we skimp on sleep when we overload our schedules.  Unfortunately, we tend to give up food and rest (the 2 things we need the most)  more often than anything else in the name of practicing or making it to another rehearsal.  Or at least I do.  I certainly cannot speak for everyone, but I know that I'm not alone in this.  There have been countless times when I chose to practice instead of taking a much needed nap.  Sleeping is what gives our bodies a chance to recover from the daily grind.  We can rest our minds with television or books, but our bodies only go into full-out recovery mode when we're asleep.  Playing an instrument requires strength and flexibility in the large muscle groups of our shoulders and backs, as well as the smaller muscles of the face, arms, and hands.  It is easy to forget that these muscles need to rest after playing just as much as a body builder must balance their workouts with rest.  Overuse of any muscle without rest leads only to fatigue of the muscle in question.  Proper rest as well as proper nutrition are key elements of building strength.

Playing for hours on end, day in and day out, wears out our muscles.  I am unaware of any instrument that requires only large muscle groups to perform (although I certainly may be unaware of one).  Strings require extensive use of the small muscles of the hand and wind players abuse the delicate muscles of the face.  Unfortunately for us, the smaller muscles are much more difficult to repair than the larger ones.  Every body builder will tell you that you have to eat and sleep well in addition to building low-impact workouts into your routine in order to effectively build strength and flexibility.  It is important to remember that musicians are small-muscle athletes.  These rules apply to us as well, whether we like it or not.  Next time you are presented with the choice of sleeping or playing, if you feel tired at all, try taking a nap.  Chances are good that it will benefit you more than continuing to abuse your body with more practice.

Excerpts (and transposition) for beginners

I recently decided that it was time for one of my high school students to finally learn an excerpt or two.  I had never had a student advanced enough to even remotely consider this before, so I took to Facebook to ask for some thoughts on the subject from my Horn playing peeps.  I had my own thoughts on the subject, as well as particular excerpts in mind, but I was curious about what kind of feedback I would receive.  Some of the more standard answers I received were: "Start with Tchaik 5 to learn about phrasing," "The Finale from 'Firebird' since it's short," and, of course, "Freebird."  I knew that my hands were slightly tied with this student because, while I wanted her to start learning some of our amazing orchestral rep, we haven't yet broached the subject of transposition.  And somewhat unfortunately, at least in this case, there aren't very many major excerpts that are both written in F and attainable enough for a high schooler.  Let's just say that Heldenleben isn't going to happen any time soon.

Then I had a friend make the suggestion that I should ask this student what she would like to play, and then choose alternate excerpts that were related, if necessary.  If she wanted to play "Heldenleben" have her instead start with the tutti horn passage from "Don Juan."  If she chose Brahms 1, transpose the part for her.  The ultimate goal was to introduce her to some of the orchestral repertoire that she had not yet experienced on her own.  As is the case for many high school instrumentalists, her school does not have an orchestra program and the area youth orchestra rehearsals conflict with marching band season.  If she was going to learn anything from the orchestral repertoire, we were going to have to get creative.  I come from the school of horn playing that does not use transposed parts, period.  In my mind, if a composer wrote something for horn in D, I play the part written for horn in D.  I was so stuck in this mentality that I had lost sight of the ultimate goal for my student.  At her age, it doesn't matter so much if the part is transposed for horn in F, or into another key entirely, if it helps her learn some of the basics of the repertoire.  Make it clear that they are not playing the original part in the original key.  Our students are much smarter than we give them credit for.  They will understand your reasons for making changes to the part and even appreciate the lengths that you are willing to go to help them start learning some of our "big" literature.

Giving them a transposed part is also a great way to introduce them to transposition.  Transcribe all 3 parts to the Beethoven 3 Trio into horn in F.  Give them a week or two to learn the parts as written in F, then give them the original parts written in E-flat.  At this point I start talking about different ways that people can approach transposition (i.e. thinking in broad terms of the key signature vs. intervallic relationships between pitches vs. a combo of the two) and I hand them a C major scale in whole notes.  Then we dive in head first and see if they can swim.  Just like everything else we do on the horn, transposition just takes practice.  It can be scary at first and very uncomfortable for beginners, but we all manage to get the hang of it in the end.  Once they've managed to work their way through a few scale patterns in E-flat, go back to Beethoven 3, confiscate their F horn parts, and ask them to prepare the original parts in E-flat.  They may freak out about it, or they could happily embrace the challenge.  Either way, they'll learn it and they'll probably feel an incredible sense of accomplishment when they do.  Many instruments use transposition in some capacity, but rarely does anyone use it to the extent that horn players do.  It's one of our "special" skills that marks us uniquely as horn players and it's always fun to welcome a student to the "club" of transposition.

Overtones and Harmonics

About 3 weeks ago I started an e-mail conversation about overtones and harmonics from a musician's perspective that ended up being rather enjoyable for me.  My mother is a high school chemistry and forensic science teacher (who at one point also taught physics).  One of her physics teaching colleagues was about to start teaching a section on harmonics and overtones and was curious about the subject as musicians see it.  He knew that mom had a daughter who was a musician, she put him in contact with me, and here we are.  Ultimately he asked me if I could watch the following video on YouTube and just give him some observations from the viewpoint of a musician:




I watched the video and was particularly struck by how differently physicists and musicians think about sound.  In the grand scheme of things, sounds waves are a very abstract section of physics.  Many of the other subjects that are studied in physics can be seen by the naked eye.  We can see gravity at work, centripetal force, momentum, etc. without needing any special equipment.  Sound waves cannot be seen; just heard.  Scientists came up with drawings and diagrams long ago in order to give sound a more visual approach.  Assigning numbers to the different aspects of sound (i.e. frequency, amplitude, wavelength, etc) also makes it a much more tangible concept.  Musicians definitely have to keep all of these things in mind while we play, but we also tend to avoid thinking too heavily about most of this information simply because it can get in the way.

Before I go any further, I just want to say two things:

1) I am not a physicist.  Everything that I say here has either been verified by my mother or her colleagues as being accurate or I was able to verify the information with websites made available by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Princeton University.  These are all conclusions and paraphrasings of my own.

2) This is what I was taught.  I am also coming at all of this from the perspective of a brass player.  I briefly discuss harmonics as applicable to string players, but I don't stay on that subject long, seeing as I am not a string player myself.  If string players have any corrections to make, please let me know and I will be happy to make corrections.  I am certainly doing my best to not convey incorrect information.  Much of this is information taught to me by musicians combined with my own knowledge of physics, as verified by actual physics teachers.  If you believe that anything I say here to be incorrect, please provide me with a reputable source that contradicts me and I am happy to revise my research.  You just disagreeing with me doesn't count.  I need something in print that has been peer reviewed in order to consider any revisions.

After reviewing the video embedded above, this is what I sent in response:

"I finally had a chance to watch the video (which was great, by the way) and I was actually kind of amused by my train of thoughts as I listened and watched.  I kept hearing myself say things like "That's an octave" and "That's the fifth above it" (speaking in terms of the tonal intervals from the fundamental pitch).  It was particularly amusing to think about how differently scientists and musicians approach the physics of sound.  The scientists like to think in numbers and pictures, whereas musicians think in terms of the sounds (or soundwaves) themselves. 

As I said in my last e-mail, musicians will use the terms "Overtones" and "Harmonics" interchangeably to a certain degree.  And in many cases, they are the same thing.  It's one of those situations where all harmonics are overtones, but not all overtones are actually harmonics, at least in the mathematical sense. We have overtones that naturally occur in an extremely out-of-tune form in relation to the fundamental, so they don't always fit in a neat little box.  I play this thing:

When I blow into the mouthpiece, my lips vibrate and create a "buzz" sound that is amplified by the instrument (it's really just a really fancy and expensive funnel when you think about it properly).  As a brass player I am much more aware of the tendencies of the natural overtone series because the entire function of my instrument depends on it.  Without using any of the 4 keys available to me, I can play any of the following notes at any point in time without changing anything except for the speed of the lip vibration:

Which valve (if any) I have depressed determines which harmonic series is available to me because each valve combination changes the fundamental of the instrument (there are 12 different fundamentals, therefore 12 different sets of overtones [some instruments are instead restricted to 7]).  You can kind of see on the staff above where things start to get a little hairy and the overtones stop following the mathematical rules.  Each bracket is highlighting an interval between 2 pitches and each one is labelled with the kind and quality of the interval between the 2 pitches.  The higher you get, the more adjectives are needed to describe the intervals because they no longer follow the math.  In order to play these pitches in tune with the fundamental, I have to actively bend the pitch one way or another (speed up or slow down the vibration) or use a different partial from another overtone series with a different fundamental.  Granted, I try to not think too hard about any of this when I'm actually playing.  That's a lot of information to have to process when you only have a half a millisecond to figure out what you're supposed to be playing next.  I'd lose my mind.

Back to the video....

So when he was describing/drawing each of the harmonics, I was sitting here thinking "2nd harmonic, 1st overtone, that's just an octave." "3rd harmonic, 2nd overtone.  That's the fifth above that." etc.  This also reminded me of the fact that string players have a completely different idea of what harmonics are compared to brass players.  By dividing the strings with their finger tip at specific intervals, without completely depressing the string to the finger board, string players have the ability to actively play multiphonics (multiple pitches at once) on a single string.  Dividing the string actually multiplies the fundamental itself, creating a very ethereal sound when only the "pure" harmonics (in-tune overtones) resonate.  It's really pretty cool to hear when it's done well.  When it's not, I suggest running away.

Here's a graphic showing how the strings can be divided to produce these harmonics:

Non-string players can kind of do the same thing, but we can't do it alone.  We need a buddy to produce the second tone for us.  For example:  If 2 horn players play an interval of a perfect fifth, and that perfect fifth is perfectly in tune, the sound waves will actually produce a sympathetic overtone and you can audibly hear the next overtone in the series (a perfect fourth above the top note) as well as the major third above the bottom note being played, making it sound as if there are 3 pitches being played instead of 2.  Other overtones are also present, they are just inaudible to the human ear at the particular frequencies that they occur.

Something else that came to mind during the video was his comment about nodes and open-ended instruments.  I don't believe that woodwind players (flute, clarinet, oboe, etc) are as concerned about nodes as brass players are, or at least as brass players should be.  When the vibrations move through the funnel of a brass instrument, the sound waves bounce back and forth against the inside of the pipes and are amplified as they gradually move from a small area in the lead pipe to the much larger area of the bell of the instrument.  The locations of the nodes change depend on the speed of the vibration, the fundamental being used (valve combination), and the exact overtone being used in that series.  If we get a dent in the body of our instruments, it can drastically change our ability to play in tune because it causes a variation in the placement of the nodes.  The sound waves can no longer move evenly through the instrument, which makes it much more difficult to play accurately."

Hopefully this wasn't too terribly confusing for anyone.  I actually had a fantastic time with the conversations that resulted from all of this over the last few weeks.  All of the graphics used above are courtesy of Wikipedia.

Opera for the Average Idiot #4: Götterdämmerung

aka:

The Ring Cycle: The Conclusion.

Warning:  This is "the long one."  Or rather, "the really long one."  Or as some people know it, "the really really REALLY long one."  I'm about to condense 4 1/2 hours of opera into something more manageable.  Wish me luck. If I'm not back in 5 minutes, just wait longer.

We last left our heroes cursing the Gods, inbreeding (Aunt Brünnhilde and Nephew Siegfried), and generally setting themselves on a course of doom and destruction.

Or as the Norse called it, Ragnarok. (click here for more info on this mythological event)

Prologue
The scene opens with the Norns (daughters of Erda. Kin of like the Fates from Greek mythology.  Kind of.) weaving the rope of destiny as they sit around the rock where Brünnhilde had been laying in her ring of fire.  While they sing of the future, where Wotan burns all of Valhalla to the ground, the rope suddenly breaks.  Disappointed, they leave.

Brünnhilde and Siegfried make their first appearance, after having what we can only assume was copious amounts of sex.  She sends him off to do heroic deeds and asks him to remember their love.  He gives her the ring that he took from Fafnir (see Opera for the Average Idiot #3 for more details) as a token of his love, takes her shield and her horse, and rides off to do herioc type things.

Insert a fabulous orchestral interlude here as we transition to Act I proper.  This is also where we get the "Short Call," which is Siegfried's leitmotif throughout all 4 operas.  Listen for it around the 5 minute, 55 second mark of this video:





Act I

We find ourselves in the hall of the Gibichungs, somewhere near the Rhine river.  King Gunther is confronted by his half-brother, Hagen, who tells him that he (Gunther) needs to find Hagen a wife and their sister Gutrune a husband.  Naturally, Hagen suggests that Brünnhilde would be perfect for him and Siegfried would be perfect for Gutrune.  Why not, right?  We then learn that Gutrune has a love potion that she could use on Siegfried to make him forget all about his pledge of love to Brünnhilde.

Conveniently enough, Siegfried shows up while out and about on his quest to do heroic-type-things.  Gunther extends his hospitality, and his sister, who give Siegfried a drink containing the love potion.  Siegfried toasts to his love for Brünnhilde, drinks the potion, forgets Brünnhilde, and falls madly in love with Gutrune.

(gif source)

Now that Seigfried is single again, he offers to find a wife for his future brother-in-law (Gunther).  Gunther tells him of a maiden asleep, surrounded by a ring of fire that only someone who is fearless can cross (Sound familiar...?).  He and Gunther swear blood brotherhood and head off to find Brünnhilde's rock.  Hagen does not partake of the swearing of blood brotherhood, preferring to remain on guard duty as he sings of how they are unwittingly bringing the Ring to him.

"Myyyyyyy prrrrrreciousssssssss......"

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Brünnhilde has a visitor in the form of her sister Waltraute (another Valkyrie), who brings her the news that Wotan has officially given up.  He has barricaded himself inside of Valhalla and is waiting for the end of the world, rather than trying to actually do something about it.

Waltraute asks Brünnhilde to give the Ring back to the Rhinemaidens (remember Das Rheingold from way back when?) to end the madness.  Being the selfish thing that she is, Brünnhilde refuses to give up the Ring since her Siggy gave it to her as a token of his love.  Waltraute gives up and leaves.  Enter Siegfried wearing the Tarnhelm, which makes him look like Gunther.  He (as Gunther) claims her as his wife and she fights him because she is still in love with Siegfried.  He tackles her, takes the Ring from her, and places it on his own finger.

Act II
This act returns us to the land of the Gibichungs where we find Hagen by the Rhine.  He is suddenly visited by his father, who is, surprisingly, the dwarf Alberich!!! We thought we had left this bastard behind in Das Rheingold, but nooooooooooooooo.....that would be too easy.  You guessed it, he's still after the Ring and he gets his son to swear that he will kill our hero and get the ring back for his father. Siegfried, Gunther, and Brünnhilde return and Brünnhilde is shocked to see that Siegfried is wearing the Ring, not Gunther who she had heretofore thought was the one who conquered her.

Brünnhilde to Siegfried: "You seduced and betrayed me!!"
S to B: "Did not!"
B to S: "Did too!"
S to B: "Did not!"
B to S: "Did too!"
S to B: "I swear on this spear that Hagen is conveniently holding, that I did not!"
B to S: "I swear on the same spear that Hagen is conveniently holding that you did!"

Unbeknownst to us, but knownst to our heroes, if an oath is sworn upon a weapon and the oath is broken, the owner of the weapon must kill the person who broke the oath.

Hellooooooooo foreshadowing.....

Siegfried heads off to the wedding feast with Gutrune.  Gunther agrees with Hagen that Siegfried must die for the insult he has given to Brünnhilde.  Brünnhilde is pretty damn pissed off at her former beau by now and she reveals to the conspirators that they can kill Siegfried if they stab him in the back.

Act III
subtitled:
DEATH!!! DOOM!!! DESTRUCTION!!!

We return to the banks of the Rhine where the Rhinemaidens are still mourning the loss of the Rhinegold (yes, three operas later, they are still in mourning).  Siegfried walks by after being separated from a hunting party and they beg him to return the Ring. He refuses and tells them that he would rather die than give it up.

Oh look....our good friend foreshadowing...nice to see you again....

(gif source)
Siegfried rejoins the hunters and starts telling stories of his childhood while everyone rests by the river.  Hagen gives him a drink containing a potion that restores his memories and he tells the tale of how he found Brünnhilde and woke her with a kiss.  Suddenly, Wotan's ravens do a fly-over, distracting Siegfried long enough for Hagen to stab him in the back.  Remember that Siegfried swore on Hagen's spear in Act II that he did not seduce/betray Brünnhilde.  Hagen was honor-bound to kill him for breaking that oath.  The hunting party carries Siegfried in a funeral procession back to the Gibichung Hall.

(scene dissolve)

The procession arrives at the Gibichung Hall where Gutrune is waiting for Siegfried.  Gunther blames Hagen for Siegfried's death.

Hagen defends his actions by reminding everyone of Siegfried's broken oath and he claims the Ring by right of conquest.  Gunther tries to stop him but Hagen attacks and kills his brother easily.  Hagen goes to take the Ring and Siegfried's hand moves in a threatening manner.  Hagen is startled and Gutrune dies.  Why not, right?

Brünnhilde makes a sufficiently dramatic entrance and orders a funeral pyre to be built by the river.  She then takes the ring from Siegfried's hand and summons the Rhinemaidens.  She tells them to take the Ring from her ashes when she is gone as the fire should cleanse the Ring of the curse.  Her final act is to send Wotan's ravens to Valhalla with a message of their impending doom.  She mounts her horse, Grane, and rides into her own funeral pyre.

I give you.....the end of the world.

The Gibichung Hall burns down.  The Rhine overflows.  The Rhinemaidens take back the Ring.  Hagen decides to be a complete idiot and goes after the Rhinemaidens to get the Ring.  They drown him.  There was much rejoicing from the Rhinemaidens (yay!).  The scene closes as we see Valhalla glowing brightly in the distance as all of the Gods are burnt to a crisp.

The End


Congratulations!!! You made it to the end!  I suppose I could have saved you even more time by simply saying that everyone dies at the end, but where would the fun be in that?? 

(gif source)

(gif source)
Now, if you don't mind, I think I have earned a drink after this one.

Slate.com article: My Response

 As I'm sure many of you are at this point aware, there was a rather ill-informed and offensive article posted on slate.com earlier this week stating that "classical music is dead."  (Click here to read the full article on slate.com)  I have been contemplating a response to the the author's comments for a few days but was having a difficult time moving beyond the extreme anger inspired by the article in order to formulate coherent thoughts on the subject.  And I was also trying to avoid resorting to simply calling the author a "jerk-face" or "ass-hat."  You know, at least make it somewhat apparent that at one point in my life I graduated Summa Cum Laude and earned a Master's degree.

Luckily, another blogger (Andy Doe, of properdischord.com.  I very highly recommend following him) took it upon himself to write a response that gave a voice to my thoughts and feelings beautifully.

PLEASE go here to read Andy's spectacular response to the the offending piece.

There's only one thing I would add as a response to the author of the Slate.com article:  Thank you.  Thank you for so blatantly offending me and bashing what I do for a living.  I really appreciate how easy you found it to declare classical music to be dead when most of your cited facts either supported the idea that support for classical music is increasing, or they came from looking at the number of "likes" on Facebook.  Last time I checked, Facebook is not a viable source of unbiased information, nor is it likely to represent a sufficiently diverse enough population to give much credibility to the number of "likes" actually counting as an unbiased survey.  Thank you for insulting how I have spent the last 20 years of my life and for declaring those 20 years to essentially be a waste of my time.  Thank you for being so willing to assume that classical music has no place in the world of today.  You all too easily declare that it belongs only to the elderly, yet here I am, under the age of 30 and completely in love with performing and listening to music from over 100 years ago.  I definitely find it preferable to most of the disposable crap that's being produced today.  Classical music will never die as long as we are here to fight you for it.  Arts funding will never disappear as long as we fight for it.  Orchestras will never die as long as we fight for them.  It is clear that you do not care for classical music yourself and therefore have no problem with writing it off as deceased.  Be sure that you do not mistake your own opinion for fact, and the fact is, classical music is not dead.  And as long as I have breath in my body to fight for it, it never will be.

Tonguing. Just Do It!

I apologize ahead of time if this post comes across as more than mildly frustrated...

I'm finding more and more that there are far too many high school horn players that have no idea how to articulate anything other than a slur. They use a "huh" attack on anything that does not have a slur marked on it, and they think that this is correct.  Some of them are even proud of their so-called ability to articulate in this manner.  Are they really not taught how to tongue properly before they reach their high school years?  Being married to a band director places me in a position where I am fully aware that we absolutely cannot hold band and orchestra directors solely responsible for this problem.  When you have 70+ students all playing different instruments at the same time, it's impossible to correct every single technique issue that may arise with your students.  If the student doesn't make it glaringly obvious in rehearsal, they can glide through 4 years of high school and their teacher could never know there was a problem.  There comes a point where you have to trust that your students are retaining at least some of the information that you try to impart to them each day.  That being said, there is a distinct difference between knowing how to tongue and choosing to not do so properly (i.e. laziness) and actually not knowing how to tongue.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have always been under the impression that tonguing is one of the most basic skills that is required of wind instrumentalists (brass and woodwind alike).  Air, buzz, tongue.  Our primary tools.  Whilst on my eternal mission to get my students to practice their fundamentals, I have been compiling the following mental list of ways to help them articulate:

-  Say "tah" into the horn while you play (I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." Right?  I'm surprised just how many students cannot do this.)
-  Play a whole note.  Follow it with 4 straight quarter notes using the same air stream as the whole note.  Simply interrupt the whole note with the tongue to create the quarter notes.
-  Pretend to spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Actually spit out watermelon/pumpkin/sunflower seeds.  Apply the same technique to playing.

-  Pick a pitch.  Play it as short as humanly possible at a loud dynamic.  Keeping the note short makes it nearly impossible to start the pitch without the tongue in addition to not allowing time for pitch manipulation.  This can help with pitch accuracy as well if you move around to different pitches.
-  Do the same thing but as softly as possible.
-  Tell them to spit tacks.
-  Don't let them do anything aside from articulation exercises in their lessons for weeks.  They'll do anything to move on to something new.

My request, as a friendly neighborhood private instructor, is that we don't allow our students to "get by" with lazy or lousy tongue technique.  It is a fairly simple concept that can be taught when they are young.  The older your students get, the harder it is to unlearn bad habits.  Especially if they are not often corrected on it.  Demonstrate proper tonguing often and bring it to your students' attention. Emulation is one of my favorite teaching tools with my younger students.  They don't need to think about how to do something.  They can copy anything you do if they just know what they are listening for.