Advanced age effects on tonguing and reading

[Joe Hostetter]

At age 78, my tonguing speed has slowed to eighth notes at mm120. Also, my mental and physical coordination for reading has slowed. Is this an unavoidable consequence of advancing age? Is it mental dementia? Have people who maintained many hours of practice daily all their life avoided this decline at advanced age? Twenty to Sixty years ago, gigs kept me strong and I didn't have to rely on personal practice. Doc Severinsen seems to have maintained strength longer than most.

[John Mohan]

I looked you up Joe, and you've got some great playing credits!

Aging sucks. That said, yes there are exercises you can do to not only slow down, but stop and even reverse what's happening to your tonguing speed and other physical and mental aspects of playing. Research has shown that resistance exercise and aerobic exercise (in moderation) can build surprising levels of muscle strength and coordination even into one's 80's and beyond.

For tonguing speed there's a particular exercise that Herbert Clarke used a version of to increase his single tonguing speed to 16th notes at 160bpm. Claude Gordon used the same exercise to get to a still impressive 16ths at 144 bpm single tongued. Personally, I've been a bit of a slouch as I haven't practiced the exercise as regularly as I should, but I've gotten my 16ths to as fast as 132 bpm at times in my career and I'm always good for 120 bpm.

The exercise appears as the first exercise in Claude Gordon's Tongue Level Exercises book. You take a full breath, and start on middle G and repeat middle G's as fast as you comfortably can and repeat them until you are about half out of air. Then, rest as long as you played, before repeating the exercise on middle G#. Continue upward chromatically, always resting between each set of notes until you get to middle C. Then work your way down chromatically until you get down to Low C. Don't try to play these faster than you comfortably can play them, or you will just tense up your tongue and speed increase development will not occur. This exercise, done from middle G up to middle C and then down to low C, repeating each set of notes until you are half empty of air, will take about 15 minutes a day to do, assuming you rest between each set of notes as long as you played the previous set of notes. The rest time is critical. Speed will not come overnight, but it will happen.

After doing the exercise for several weeks, start doing it with a metronome. Set the metronome to a speed you can comfortably play the exercise at (for you, 16ths at perhaps 58 or eight notes at perhaps 116). It is important not to set the speed too high, because again, tension will develop and you will not progress. After a while (perhaps two weeks, perhaps two months) you will feel like you are having to slow down to stay with the metronome. It is at this point that you try clicking the metronome to the next higher speed. If you are able to play the exercise comfortably at the new speed - great! If you feel you are struggling to keep up with the metronome, then set it back down to the old speed for a while. Be patient and you'll progress faster. That's a bit of a dichotomy, but it is true.

It took me two years to build my speed up from 16ths at 104 bpm to 16ths at 132 bpm. It was worth the effort.

Try to get in 15 or 20 minutes of sight reading per day to maintain or even increase your abilities in these areas. I'm sure that even with your experience there is still plenty of etude, solo and charts out there you haven't read yet. A lot is available on the Internet in terms of free downloads, and most of the great Etude books are still available for purchase.

Best wishes,

John Mohan
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[hackney_wick]

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[John Mohan]

[nieuwguyski]

[Seymor B Fudd]

[Craig Swartz]

I'm starting to get there (just signed up for Medicare a couple weeks back) but so far, in playing and about everything else, I'm finding no big changes so long as I keep up normal routines I've managed all my life. I still put in 5 plus miles per day running, now that I'm primarily retired from a regular day gig I'm able to practice/play my horns much longer and for fun, and I don't lay around in bed or doing nothing all day. I'm going to get old kicking and screaming the whole way. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be different, if the Nolan (Logan's Run) snowflakes don't have their way with us oldies... ( Then again, there'd still have to be someone to take care of them and hold their hands.)

[jtpowell]

Since you mentioned the tongue here are some interesting bits from NPR's science Friday on the tongue and aging. "When Your Tongue Needs a Tuneup" - https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/when-your-tongue-needs-a-tuneup/ 12 minutes, the play button is at the top.
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[Joe Hostetter]

I am new to trumpetherald and hadn't setup my profile . So I tried by using the signature box. In it, I addressed the question suggested by repliers that I might be the Joe Hostetter who played in the Casa Loma band. In 1967, I was playing a gig all Summer in a club in upper Cape Cod. Customers were telling me that they knew another trumpet player also with my name. Later I learned about his background and later met him. I want to thank especially the first replier for his expert help and he must have thought that I was the other Joe.

[hackney_wick]

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[Vin DiBona]

As one ages, it is inevitable that certain skills will decline, especially in brass playing.
Most, if not all, symphonic trumpeters in major orchestras look to retire in their 60s. Bud Herseth was the exception and even Bud knew in his mid 70s he could not do what he did a few years back.
Jazz players can last longer simply because they make adjustments to their style and will stay away from extreme upper register stuff. They can still hit those notes of course, but pick their spots.
You certainly can get smarter as an older player, but as you approach the mid 60s and older, you will decline in some way. That doesn't mean you still cannot play well, just not like you once did.
The great Nolan Ryan could still get into the upper 90s in his mid 40s. He quit when his legs started to give out and it took too many days to be ready to pitch. It happens.
R. Tomasek

[razeontherock]

I've never applied myself to anything like the exercise John Mohan describes. Trying it for the first time sure is embarrassing! I average 50 seconds tonguing one note, with plenty of air leftover after that to hold the note and work on tone, dynamics, etc. I'm also sure to use my best KTM, with my tongue tip nice and still, but also relaxed. Otherwise all I'd be practicing is how to play worse!

It's almost obscene how much I had to slow it down in order to be able to do it properly. I'm coming out of a downward playing spiral, so this is a good time for me to work on something like this. I sure hope it picks up my max tongue speed!

OTOH, I bet I can multiple tongue slower than all you cats, lol. I obviously need to rely on it a lot, and never suffered from any 'in-between' speed, too fast to single tongue but too slow to multiple tongue. That's because I had to learn how to multiple tongue so slowly ...

[chuck in ny]

re doc severinsen. doc maintains a regimen of daily exercise and seems to keep good habits, not overeating and so forth.
you can maintain good health until you pass away but IT WILL COST YOU. most do not want to pay the price. it's murder to eat well and put your body through a radical change of diet and that's before becoming superannuated as the OP is. probably the best compromise there is something reachable such as eliminating sweets. then you have exercise or if that is not possible a regimen of daily sweats. ask the swedes as they have been claiming for millennia that the sauna will cure you.
everybody is different and there is no one prescription. you have to find your own way. i don't care how old you are, if you have the desire, there is hope.

[Seymor B Fudd]