I’ve seen many people playing trombones, saxes, and the like over the years, and it looks like they have a tough time of it. Faces red and swelled up, eyes popping out of their heads, and so on. (I’m talking about professional players in bands, not amateurs at home.)
Is it really as physically taxing as it looks, or are appearances deceiving? (What helps them out is that they don’t generally play non-stop, as guitarists, drummers, and keyboardists do. But still …)
A trumpet player once told me that many trumpet players eventually get a hernia. Don’t know if he was pulling my leg or not.
I don’t play a wind instrument, but can say:
Getting your breathing cycled/sync’d correctly with the music you are playing can be hard. This can lead to you playing outside your comfort zone as a breathing human ;). So if you want to play a long note or phrase past your normal breath range, you look strained. Expert breathers look much more at ease.
High notes can require powerful bursts of breath. They don’t wrack you unless that’s all you play, but again, you look like a straining grunt doing it.
I remember hearing that it takes as much breath - or more? - to play a flute as a horn like a trumpet; dunno if it’s true
Because oboes use a double-reed (that you have to ‘pinch’ with your lips) they can be tiring to play. You wouldn’t think they’d be difficult; in the bands/orchestras that I’ve played in, the oboe player is usually a petite cute young female. And although I have no direct proof, I’ve heard they are very good kissers.
I’m a tuba player. Yes, it’s work. Carrying the damn thing is work.
A lot of players put on a bit of a show when they play. For every player turning red and grimacing, there’s a guy playing cool as a cucumber.
In general, wind instruments use more of the body core. They’re whole-body instruments, much like singing. Your breathing is compromised, the instrument is awkward. (All of them, not just tuba.) In general, you learn strategies to keep from passing out.
As a tuba player, I often have to play bass parts in a band. There’s one tune I play that’s straight quarter notes (one note on each beat) at about 300 beats per minute. (stupid fast) for the whole song. I have to strategically drop a note here and there in order to get a breath. Hard work.
High notes on trumpet take A LOT of back pressure. Sure the players turn red. Some break blood vessels.
Flutes take just as much air as any other wind instrument, they just use it differently. There’s no built in resistance to the horn. Want a wind instrument that’s hard to breathe with? Try bagpipes. It’s like blowing up a vacuum cleaner.
I’m a former trombone player. While people see you moving the slide, there are only seven positions and most of the music is coming from how you blow into the instrument. If you are playing high notes then your lips must be tightly sealed with just a little opening. This means you have to blow really hard to get the air through your lips into the instrument. This can be really hard if you have to do it for a long time. It is not physically taxing like exercise but more like blowing up a bunch of balloons back to back.
What non-players may not realize is that the exertion involved in playing a wind instrument is not a matter of blowing air *into *the instrument so much as it is holding your breath back under pressure. With brass instruments the idea is to press your lips together with a precise amount of pressure and force air between them to set up the vibration. With reed instruments, you’re blowing air into a tiny aperture between reed and mouthpiece, or between two reeds. With flute, the player’s own lips form the tiny aperture to direct a thin airstream over the mouthpiece. In all of these cases the player is blowing against resistance, controlling pressure with the diaphragm while also manipulating tongue position, shape of the oral cavity, and lip position (embouchure) to fine tune the airstream, articulate notes, and get the desired resonance, which can contribute to the funny face effect.
I played trombone in high school. I don’t remember it being particularly taxing, so long as I practiced regularly. (I did hate having to march with one, though.)
In college, on the other hand, I learned to play the Scottish bagpipe. THAT is very demanding. It takes a great deal of practice before the muscles around your mouth are firm enough to form an airtight seal around the blowpipe. You also have to blow **very **hard to keep the bag inflated, and you have to coordinate your breathing, and squeeze the bag regularly, independent of the music. If you march while you’re playing, this requires an enormous amount of practice.
I think the OP is watching the wrong performers. I don’t see musicians acting like that.
Breath control is important for any wind instrument. I’ve played both trumpets and flute, and it’s possible to wear yourself out playing either, but you learn to control it or do something else.
For most wind instruments, it’s important to conserve breath; for double reeds, the opposite is true. An oboist can’t let it out fast enough while playing; a flutist has to learn to keep it in or get dizzy.
Here’s a relevant clip from Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show where he talks with Doc about hitting a high note with the trumpet:
I played trumpet (“cornet”) in high school marching band. For most march music, it’s not that much of a challenge. For really fast-paced stuff with lots of very high notes, it’s tougher, but not a killer.
On the other hand (or lip) I once saw a guy play the solo part of the Wood Up Quick Step, and his face didn’t turn red: it turned orange.
Did he also play “Trump, Trump, Trump, the Boys Are Marching”?
I play tuba AND flute (buncha other wind instruments as well) and I can testify that it takes a LOT more air to play the flute. As Jumpbass says at #6, it’s because there’s no resistance, so a lot of your wind blows out into the aether.
Also, I look fuckin’ SUAVE when I play. No popping eyes or bulging cheeks for me. The women are all “WHO is that FUCKIN’ SUAVE tuba player?!?”
“I am the very model of a modern major imbecile.” 
re jaycat and the hernia, I have had my eustachian tubes expand under air pressure. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but it feels really darn weird. You know when your ears pop after an altitude change? Like that, but more emphatic.
Is that you, Little Joe?
mmm
I tell you what, tho - you do get better/stronger with practice!
I get the band back together every year for alumni marching band and from the fattest (me on trombone) to the thinnest (Joe on tuba) we agree that we can either march or play but playing while marching is near physically impossible at this time. It’s not the keeping in step that’s the problem, it’s having air for both moving and playing. Nope.
That’s why you do all that band camp in college and high school. And those Drum Core kids are like elite athletes.
Somewhere there is a photo of a guy producing the highest recorded pressure by a trumpet player. I saw it a long time ago. It was one of the main guys, Louis Armstrong or whatever. His cheeks were wired with sensors and he looked like a freaking basketball with bulging eyes. I have searched for that photo before with no luck.
Dennis
Probably Dizzy Gillespie, famous for his mutant expanding cheeks.
“Louis Armstrong or whatever.”
Sigh. ;).
Dizzy Gillespie ? No sensors on this picture, though…
