email: ross_fillmore@yahoo.com www.rossfillmore.com
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ROSS A. FILLMORE Didgeridoo Instructor
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Didgeridoo Instruction Drone and Sounds
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The didgeridoo is not like any other wind instrument in that you only
get one note. However, you can get different intonations depending
on what you do with your lips, cheeks, tongue, jaw, and breathing.
To make the basic drone, you purse your lips together and make a
vibration with your lips. However, unlike a trumpet where your lips
are tight, for the didgeridoo your lips are very loose; I tell people it is
like a baby blowing bubbles. With controlled pressure from your
diaphragm and lungs, you should get a nice, steady sound.
The intonations are made by what you do with your tongue and other
parts of your mouth. Go through the motions of forming the different
vowel sounds but WITHOUT using your vocal cords. Diphthongs are
particularly fun to do because you string different vowel sounds
together, i.e., OY (oh-ee). Once you've gotten the hang of droning,
practice going oyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoy with your tongue as you
are droning. Again, you're not engaging the vocal cords; you are just
going through the motions with your tongue.
Once you have that figured out, you can experiment with different
mouth and tongue positions to come up with all kinds of sounds.
Vocalization is when you use your vocal cords to sing, chant, howl,
bark, and make bird calls into the didgeridoo while droning. This
takes a little more practice but is a lot of fun.
Basically, actually, and so forth...