"Pulling" the didgeridoo sound.

IPlayDidgeridoo · **Posted:** Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:33 am

Hello.

This weekend I joined a workshop i Holland with the great and very skilled Ansgar-Manuel Stein.

The first 3 hour was about how to play the traditional way - the NEAL style. As Mr. Stein told us, that he can't play the traditionel way, but give the music the feeling of traditionel - and man he is good at his job. The last 1½ hour was about the western style. After the workshop there was a small concert with Mr Stein for a hour - if you ever will get the possibeility to see him live, you should do it - it is suchs a great expirence. Here is a small you tube clip of Mr Stein in action - it is from 2007.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcZmbF3fvDI

Just to get to the topic.

Mr. Stein told me that the aboriginal people are "pulling" the didge when they are playing. Meaning that they lift the sound with the upperlip in a specaial way. On the H T didgeridoo CD it is not explained, and Mr Stein pointed out.

Have you people on the forum more to say about this "pulling" techinc, and more about how to do it.

Kind regards

Søren
- Denmark.
- sorry for my bad english.

Ahaw · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:02 pm

Hi Søren,

I risqued my own interpretation of the term "pulling" in this topic :

Ahaw wrote:

From what I understand, the Dhrill sound is really produced in that movement, and not in the starting or ending tongue position in themselves.
I imagine that movement as an excavator's shovel (!!!).
As if the tongue was that shovel that had to bring back the air-flow into the throat, working against that air pressure and letting only a small thin amout pass through.
Or... if we see it the other way : as if the tongue was trying to pull inside your throat the air of the outside (or of inside the didj), a bit like a dog lapping water...
And maybe that last image is the origin for the use of the verb "to pull" instead of "to play" when talking about didjing ?

Though I'm not sure at all if this "image" is correct or at the origin of the verb "to pull"... Still waiting for more informed than myself to tell...

Ahaw · **Posted:** Thu Oct 23, 2008 5:35 pm

In fact, this applies to all the phrases in which you are able to breath in.
Tongue retroflex (Dhrill, Drong)
Jaw breathing-in (Kah)
Cheeks puffed out.

As long as you are able to breath inside a seemingly continuous flow of Passive-Voicing (though it has to stop for a 1/4 second), that "breath-in + PV sound" distorts the didj sound.
Thus creating a perticular strong and interresting sound at the moment you're breathing in, "pulling in" the air.
That sound is used as a regular pattern, hence the term "pulling the didj".

Still my own interpretation... submited to criticism :wink:

IPlayDidgeridoo · **Posted:** Sat Nov 01, 2008 9:00 am

Thank you very much

Kind regards

Søren Dahl
- Denmark

Ahaw · **Posted:** Wed Nov 05, 2008 4:21 am

Well... de nada.

Though it's only my interpretation and hence not necessarily right... and even pretty much likely to be wrong !
No-one else have their own version... or better, the "real" reason ?
:wink:

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"Pulling" the didgeridoo sound.

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