Okay I heard this from the same guy who wanted to know about the echoing of a duck’s quack. Thanks for the answer’s by the way.
Okay my friend says that horn blowers practice a technique called Circular Breathing. Which, he says, is being able to inhale and exhale at the same time, therefore allowing to horn blower to keep a note for long periods of time. He said that it was proven by Dizzie Gilespie once when he held a note on hos horn for 3 minutes.
I checked a few places before asking this question to you guys. I may be wording it wrong or this may be a whole lotta hoey. Has anyone ever heard of this???
It’s possible to inhale quickly through the nose while using the cheeks as “bellows” to maintain a note. I’ve never tried it, but a number of music teachers claim to do it. It is impossible to simultaneously inhale and exhale with the lungs, however.
Kenny G held a note on his instrument for over 45 minutes by using circular breathing. Because he could not swallow during that time, his throat dried out and he damaged his tonsils. Now someone else is claiming they broke the record by playing a note for an hour and a half.
I can do circular breathing. I found out I could when I was blowing the flame of a candle and seeing how long I could blow without actually blowing the candle out, as you do.
I doubt I could play a digeridoo but I can blow a candle flame with the best of them!
Circular breathing is very possible and most good horn players (and ALL good digeridoo players). As to how to do it, I couldn’t tell you as in my trumpet playing days I never really got excatly how it was done.
I’ve tried to do it (on tuba), but never had any real success. I can almost do it blowing air on my hand, but there’s a perceptible break in the airstream when I re-engage my lungs, so to speak.
I’ve heard a number of professional wind players do it, on a variety of instruments - it’s kind of freaky, for some reason (When’s he gonna breathe!?!?). Sam Pilafian, formerly the tuba player with the Empire Brass, stated in a clinic I attended a few years ago that he used the technique quite a lot.
David Payne, then the tuba instructor at Texas Tech, cautioned me once about over-using it. He said that he’d seen some players become dependent on the technique once they’d learned it, and their playing suffered because they never took “real” breaths, even when it would be more musically appropriate. (It’s difficult/impossible to take as deep a breath this way as you could in the usual fashion.)
There are some orchestral tuba parts where it would be convenient. Mahler’s First Symphony has the tuba holding a single note with no breaks for some forty-odd measures IIRC - there’s no way anybody could do that on one breath. Many (most?) players quickly sneak breaths where it’s unlikely to be noticed, but I’ve heard that you can win points in an audition by circularly-breathing the whole passage, should it happen to come up. (Gene Pokorny of the Chicago Symphony makes joking reference to this in his orchestral excerpts CD.)
In correspondence online with one of his former band members, I learned that the acclaimed saxophonist and singer Edgar Winter used to amuse the guys and while away the miles on the road by holding a sustained note for two or three minutes at a time, imitating the sound of the tour bus’s air conditioner–with his VOICE.
Now that’s amazing. Some sort of circular breathing while singing. I can’t imagine how it’s done, and I’ve known the source for a long time to be extremely honest and reliable. As it happens, Edgar is cordial and forthcoming with his fans, and if & when I get to meet him again I will ask about this phenomenon.
I “play” Didjeridoo, without the circular breathing. I’ve yet to really sit down and work it out, but the exercise I was taught involves putting a straw in a glass of water and keeping a constant stream of bubbles going. It rocks to hear someone who can do it right. I just make rude noises into tubes.
The technique is also used for some primitive pipes. There are some double reed pipes where the reed is exposed, sticking out of one end of the pipe. The player puts the end of the pipe with the exposed reed into his/her mouth. I understand that this type of pipe relies mainly on circular breathing (but I’ve never seen it myself, just read about it).
the classic method of practicing circular breathing is similiar to above only you fill you mouth with water. As you expell it through a thin straw using your cheek muscles, breath in through your mouth.
When I play didge, my circular breathing involves grasping quick breaths of air through the nose as my cheeeks push air into the instrument. You can thus create a constant stream of air indefinately.
This is not that dificult to learn. Blowing bubbles via straw into glass of water is a good start.
Woot, we can start a didj society or something. Yet another didjeridoo player. It isn’t too hard really if you have a modicum of resistance in the exhalation airflow. If you don’t have that resistance you are likely to exhale to fast and lose the breath.
Mahler’s First Symphony has the tuba holding a single note with no breaks for some forty-odd measures IIRC - there’s no way anybody could do that on one breath. Many (most?) players quickly sneak breaths where it’s unlikely to be noticed, but I’ve heard that you can win points in an audition by circularly-breathing the whole passage, should it happen to come up. (Gene Pokorny of the Chicago Symphony makes joking reference to this in his orchestral excerpts CD.)