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Whew. Yesterday performed Siegfried's Death and Funeral Music. Not a difficult part, except for the fact that on the low loud notes an octave below the staff, my lungs were empty after one beat of a four-beat measure, necessitating an in-and-out sound spectrum.

It seems that if I'm going to continue to try to play anything but Eb or oom-pah parts, I'm just going to have to learn to circular breathe.

Bleah. I've seen directions on how to learn this, but I don't seem to be easily coordinated in that direction; it looks like it might take years, literally, to get it down. Any of you also-old-farts, have you learned this at middle age or beyond? I'm reasonably coordinated (well, of course, I play a zillion instruments...) but not "gifted coordinated." (if I were, I wouldn't be hacking away at those zillion instruments but would be concertmaster of some major orchestra. )

MA, wondering if circular breathing could even be done at the airflow rate needed for these low passages.

I don't even know if it's possible to circular breath on tuba, but if it is...it must be incredibly hard, and I really doubt it'll sound very good. Circular breathing on smaller instruments like trumpet and woodwinds doesn't sound that bad because they require less air, and it's a little easier to get the support needed from your mouth while you're breathing in. I think it would be infinitely easier to just work on getting an immense lung capacity! Keep in mind how many professional tuba players you see playing parts similar to what you're describing, and think of how few (if any) actually circular breath.

p.s. I know I'm not an old fart, but eh.

MA,
It may not be a problem of air volume per se but one of efficiency. The whole air volume, air speed and embouchure efficiency system needs to be optimized in order to play low/loud/long (pick any two ). After Joe S's long ago post on ppp>fff<ppp over 16 beats at 60bpm I started doing this exercise and I am quite surprised to discover just how little "work" has to be done to make a good sound and how inefficiently I was using my buzz. Taking a deep breath is only one component, regulating its outflow and getting the most buzz/litre/second are equally as important. Also, take a look at the itea site, a recent tuba journal has info about the methods, including exercises, of eupher Jukka Myles (sp?) which also focus on the concept of using your air efficiently.

Regards,

Bob Sadler
Edmonton, Alberta

PhilW. wrote:I was always under the impression that circular breathing would result in an inferior tone, because you have to really puff your cheeks out to do it. This is doable on woodwinds becuase the shape of the oral cavity does not affect the sound as much, but it would result in an inferior tone on a brass instrument.

Correct me if I'm wrong (which I probably am)

Well, as Henry said, many top players can playing with beautiful tone and melodic line while circular breathing. Yes, they relax their cheeks to store air. So, I must conclude that relaxed cheeks are not, in and of themselves, a bad thing. The bad thing is that they are usually accompanied by (or indicative of) weak corners of the embouchure.

Personally, I can't do it, but I would never suggest that my inability would transfer to Mary Ann.

MA, the standard trick to learning it is to drink water while standing on your head. Apparently, you have to go through the same motions as circular breathing to avoid choking on the water. Good luck.

But I think Bob has hit on a bigger point, and one more likely to relate to me. While some top players can circular breather beautifully, many others cannot, yet they still manage to play the music. I'm convinced that in many cases I'm using enough air, but where I know I can improve is getting more effect out of the air I'm using.

Rick "whose teacher can do, causing no end of frustration" Denney

Well it's too bad the the BN was so emotionally immature as to still be mad at his Mommy and aiming it at all women.

I don't think I want to try drinking water upside down because I'm pretty sure I'd drown myself or end up in the emergency room with a suction tube down my throat!!

So I see no old farts have answered. Oh well. Maybe I'll try the straw method for a while.

MA

MaryAnn wrote: So I see no old farts have answered. Oh well. Maybe I'll try the straw method for a while.

MA

Still too young to be an ol' fart . . . but I'll chime in anyway.

1. Use the drinking-straw, glass of water trick to figure out the correct motions.

1b. Use your tongue to assist your cheeks in pushing out the air.

2. Start on an easy note that doesn't take too much airflow. D in the staff? In one sitting you should be able to make it work.

3. See if you can sustain the sound. The pitch will probably dip when you start messing around with this.

4. If your cheeks are tiny, you may not have enough air to squeeze through the tuba mouthpiece and still sustain a sound while inhaling.

5. Once you can do it on one note, expand your range and dynamics.

6. It is a skill like anything else. Practice makes it workable.

7. Circular breathing is usually distracting, as the dynamic level dips down to a mp or less when you do it.

8. Sam Pilafian and Scott Hartman worked on the technique while in the Empire Brass. After hearing Scott use the technique repeatedly during a concerto with orchestra, I was turned off. It is impressive as a party trick, but distracting from any kind of musical line. Perhaps in the texture of a brass quintet, they were able to hide the circular breathing.

9. Flautist Robert Dyck teaches circular breathing. He presented a masterclass this past summer and suggested that flute players should circular breathe on orchestral excerpts. (He is way out there in left field, but is a great performer of 20th century works.)

Circular breathing doesn't need a straw to figure it out. I had an epiphany when I was sitting around watching TV, and within five minutes, I could do it.

The way I picture it, you'll have to use mouth air, which can only really be used if you separate it from your lung air -- and the best way I know to visualize it is to think of it as breathing while chewing food.

Instead of food, you'll have air in your mouth.

Eat something, and while you're chewing, notice that you can breathe in & out through your nose.

What you'll have to do to begin learning is to keep the mouth & lungs separate while squeezing air from your cheeks.

The hard part comes when you have to switch between "mouth air" and "lung air". It has to be really fast and really smooth, otherwise the wind going to the lips will simply stop.

It's easier on lower-airflow instruments and instruments where the oral cavity doesn't make much difference. It's easiest on reed instruments, especially clarinet and oboe (I had to circular exhale-and-inhale on oboe just to keep up my body's oxygen supply!). It's quite difficult on tuba, and especially difficult to keep the tone color consistent.

** BACK TO the real-world application of the long, low, loud piece mentioned in the first post:

Yup, agreed, you'll have to work on efficient sound. You may also have to work on letting resonance do your work. I don't know anything about this Death and Funeral Music, however, so I can't be very specific.

O.k.Mary ann,you wanted an old fart-you got one.The technique sounds interesting but I wonder if the huge volume of air it takes to play low and loud can be maintained with two cheeks full of air-long enough to take a useful breath.I experimented with it on trumpet but I just tried it on my tuba and I am doubful that I can play low and loud without breathing real often.Of course I smoked for 45 years but I have learned that being real slick and sneaky can fool a lot of folks into thinking I still have lungs.However there comes that odd passage that leaves me breathless(not in a good way)and I just have to stop and breathe in the wrong place
and come back in as seamlessly as possible.An experienced player will drill those passages over and over until a compromise can be found.I wish you luck with this project and I hope you find a devious way to to make it sound allright.
Your friendly Fart Man

I think being able to circular breath very much depends on the actual physical dimensions of ones oral cavity and mouth. Although I have been able to do it on sax and have impressed my friends when driking green rivers at the diner, I have never been able to circular breath on the tuba. I have small cheeks that don't puff up or appear to move at all when I play, and a tongue that could fill up a size 13 cowboy boot. I'm guessing that I can fill my entire mouth with .1 Liters, if that. It's enough to sustain using a straw but not when buzzing.

Not taking away from the skills of circular spin-doctors, I do suspect they have a little more built in, God given Dizzy in them than your average bear.

I've heard Michael Lind performing an absolutely stable and clear tone for minutes during a clinic some years ago. One couldn't hear any variation in the sound due to breathing. It was amazingly.
For sure, circular breathing is possible also for tuba. Now Michael is a very big man, in all aspects.

Okay, some of you didn't read my post on high range. If you think it's going to be hard - IT WILL BE HARD! Learning to circular breathe is like learning to walk as a child - it takes time, practice and patience. Mr. Schmidt, I am told, can circle breathe on a pedal C. I've used it effectively in auditions and in solo performance as well as with the quintet. If you work at, it the change can't be noticed except by someone paying close attention. Yes, it involves turning the cheeks and the area under the tongue into a second set of lungs and using the tongue as the diphragm to move the air.

What is wasting the air is embouchure inefficiency. Work on your buzz with the mouthpiece, getting it crisper and cleaner (I mentioned the 60%/40% to MA in the past - pay attention). Practice in the low register A LOT - you will, for a while hyperventilate into oblivion in about 2 minutes but eventually the brain learns the "trick" and your embouchure becomes more efficient and you can play very long, melodic/musical phrases in that register with ease, without lacking for air. Have your lungs become bigger? - NO! The embouchure is using less air in the creation of the buzz so you are not "bleeding" air/energy all over the place and the embouchure can do more with less.

The caveat to circular breathing - and this is from my own experience - is that you need to fully understand what you are doing and the physiological changes that are going on to avoid one of the worst bad habits in the business - what I call the glottal attack. You get into the habit of closing off the throat to change from lung air to stored air and re-attacking. Eventually if you are not aware of the other things that go on you begin attacking by using the throat and the tongue is only going through the motions. I see this all the time in my teaching and it is a very tricky habit to change. You have to watch for this change in attack when you are practicing this gimmick and make sure you don't do more harm than good in the process. It took me a year to get out of the throat attack habit and it was not fun.

There - I'm done now.

thanks all for the advice. I will work on efficiency, and also play with the straw trick. Not sure how the glottal thing works; if I close my glottis I can't get air into or out of my lungs.....and I thought I was supposed to be breathing in while pushing air out with my cheeks. Was not aware that the tongue had any action.

It has seemed to me in the past that the higher air pressure one needs that the more difficult the "mouth air supply" would be, which would make trumpet, high horn, and oboe the harder ones. Doesn't sound like that is a correct concept.

I will likely go to an annual local horn conference in January where Sam Pilafian is always a presenter; he was very, very encouraging last year and maybe this year I'll ask him to show me circular breathing. Showing works about a thousand percent better than telling.

And a reminder to you normally-sized tuba guys that I have 1.5 liter lung capacity, and that is all, even if I bug my eyes out in the inhale and push out lung tissue on the exhale. I do pretty well with efficiency on french horn, lasting more than half as long as people with twice my lung capacity. So what IS an efficient air flow for an FFF octave-below the staff note, per second?

MA

MaryAnn wrote:thanks all for the advice. I will work on efficiency, and also play with the straw trick. Not sure how the glottal thing works; if I close my glottis I can't get air into or out of my lungs.....and I thought I was supposed to be breathing in while pushing air out with my cheeks. Was not aware that the tongue had any action.

However it works (I really should read up on physiology!), the piece that allows you to chew food (there I go again) while breathing is the same thing that separates the two air supplies -- the pocket inside your mouth, and the fully open passage from the nasal cavity down to your lungs.

Unless you have a birth defect or injury, this is something that you should be able to do. It's how you can even chew with your mouth open and not breathe through it, but breathe through your nose instead. It's an evolutionary device that prevents humans from choking.

It has seemed to me in the past that the higher air pressure one needs that the more difficult the "mouth air supply" would be, which would make trumpet, high horn, and oboe the harder ones. Doesn't sound like that is a correct concept.

Yup, correct in assuming that it's.. um, incorrect. It's the high-airflow, loose-embouchure instruments that make circular breathing difficult. The oboe, as an extreme example, doesn't require much from your lips besides squeezing the bejeezus out of the reed and creating a tight seal, so it's not really going to be disturbed by mere cheek-puffing (at least not as much as a low tuba note). Plus, its airspeed requirements are so low that you'll have a couple seconds' worth of sound from the mouth air alone.