How to Practice Circular Breathing for Woodwinds

Do you ever wonder how people hold a note for a long period of time without taking a breath? Well the answer is circular breathing. Circular breathing is a techinque that has been around for thousands of years. The thing with circular breathing is that it takes a lot of practice to master and learn. I will teach you how to start out in order to practice circular breathing.

First, take a very thin straw, take a cup and fill it up with water. This is how circular breathing works. When your lungs start running out of air, you gather air into your cheeks by puffing your cheeks. You are going to than use your cheek muscle and push the air in your mouth through the instrument while you take a breathing using your lungs. This sounds like a simple concept, but getting your cheek muscles to push air through the instrument is the hard part people have to practice constantly.

Put your mouth on the straw and blow into it. That should create bubbles in the cup of water. As your starting to run out of air, puff your cheeks. Then, push air through the straw using your cheek muscles while you breath through your nose. Some people get this concept in 5-10 minutes while others take a longer period of time to understand. Once you have mastered this with the straw and the cup, it's time for you to practice on your instrument. At first, this is a very hard process because your instrument requires more air in order to sustain a noise. You probably won't get this at first, but practcing this everyday will help you perfect this. Also, it's a lot different when you try to play a different note since different notes require different amount of pressure applied to the note. If you practice circular breathing just 5-10 minutes a day, you will be able to do this within a few weeks or months. Some of the more difficult techniques take a longer period of time such as triple tonguing while circular breathing. These are very difficult techniques, but if you practice it enough, you will be able to master them eventually!