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Reply Woodwinds/Brass
circular breathing for woodwinds. can you do it?

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can you circular breathe?
  yeah its wicked easy.
  no but i know what it is.
  ive tried it but i failed
  wtf is that?
  *takes waffle and leaves*
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zetsu-senpai

PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 4:52 pm


so i play the clarinet..
i have recently heard about this thing called "circular breathing" online and asked my band teacher about it.
she told me that it takes years for some ppl to master it.
i tried it out and started practicing it throughout the week.
i have the basic idea of it and think i might be able to acomplish it.

does anyone know how to do it?
if you do and you are eather a clarinet player or saxifone player can you help me out with this. pm me if you do.
PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 5:52 pm


Haha, I wish.
I want to know how to so badly. xD

kiwii becher


f1zzy

PostPosted: Fri Dec 21, 2007 8:09 pm


I tried once... I passed out then I tried again.. I hit my head on the table when I was falling down to pass out.. then I did it once more got it right and then celebrated with a batch of cookies.. then I could never do it again.. But it would be nice to learn how to do it since my music has a lot of tied whole notes.
PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 10:15 am


I play the oboe...so If I have it pretty easy. (it's a little thing called large amount of air trying to go through thin spaces at once)

The_Real_Lycan


my_red_roze

PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:09 pm


i want to so bad!!! if you ever figure out how can you help me?
PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:41 pm


what excatly is it?

nightmare_nightangel


Aderyn_Eara

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:42 am


I've tried it on bass clarinet, and you kind of have to puff up your cheeks and push air out while you're breathing in. It's HARD.
PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 7:53 pm


My friend who plays oboe can do it easily. It's pretty hard for a flute player like me... >_<

animefan7

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Amphion

PostPosted: Tue Dec 25, 2007 10:16 pm


My understanding is that it involves taking the last little bit of air in your lungs and puffing it into your cheeks. You then use your cheeks to push out this last remaining air while you breathe in through your nose to your lungs. As this destroys your embourchure (sp?), I'm not sure how practicable it is on the average woodwind crying
PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 12:34 am


Circular Breathing involves your allowing your cheeks to puff out. You breathe in through your nose while you use your cheek muscles to push air through your instruments.

I've heard that it's easiest to do on an Oboe, because of the fact that the oboe has the most resistance of all woodwinds, so it's easier to ration the amount of air in your cheek.

When you practice it, you have to make sure to keep your embouchure tight. This is extremely difficult because you have to be able to engage your cheeks separately from your lips. As a Woodwind player you develop the habit to NOT let your cheeks puff out. Which makes learning how to circular breathe more difficult.

In my experience the less resistance the woodwind has the more difficult it is to circular breathe on. The amount of resistance an instrument has, is related to the amount of air it requires to produce a nice tone. (i.e. Soprano Bb Clarinet has more resistance, and requires less air to produce nice tone quality, Bass Clarinet has less resistance and requires more air to produce nice tone quality, thus a bass clarinet is probably going to be more difficult to circular breathe on.)

I believe the order of highest resistance to lowest goes something like this (this would be considering that all instruments required the same or similar reed size and mouthpiece width etc.)

Oboe
Clarinet
Alto Sax/Alto Clarinet
Tenor Sax
Bass Clarinet
Bassoon
Baritone Sax
Flute

I know that flutes have probably the hardest time with circular breathing, because unlike reeded instruments, there is absolutely no resistance coming from the instrument. All the resistance would have to be done with the flute players aperture(embouchure), which is contrary to habit, because flute players usually control their breath using their diaphragm and use the aperture as a directing and focusing device.

In my personal opinion, I wouldn't really advise circular breathing on the lower woodwinds, because the amount of air required to keep a note speaking is about a second or two, using the amount of air your cheeks can store. Flutes, if you can get good at it, I would say "Go for it" as well as low woodwinds.

I also believe that for the most part, you don't really need to circular breathe, because in large groups you can stagger breathe, and in chamber groups you can just find a place to put in an extra breath mark. But I would imagine it would prove it's use in chamber music, composed by inconsiderate composers or transcribed from a string arrangement.

A couple of wrapping up thoughts. Something you have to work on with circular breathing is the transition from cheek air, to lung air, and make sure it doesn't sound noticeable (something I can't really do myself. There is always an ugly lump and a noticeable change in tone quality when I switch between the too).

Last thought, some of you should play around with vibrato while circular breathing. I'd imagine it might be able to cloak the intonation problems that come from the lack of embouchure and air support. But then again, it might just screw up your circular breathing because you can't release a steady amount of air.

Mr. Apple Juice


Gleekus Spottacus

PostPosted: Wed Dec 26, 2007 7:05 pm


One guy used it and held out a note for like 30 minutes. 8O
PostPosted: Thu Dec 27, 2007 8:10 am


I once saw a guy, playing the digeridoo(sp?), who had mastered circular breathing.

ACricketToFillTheSilence

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Woodwinds/Brass

 
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