Just to be clear, nobody has said that aerobic fitness is required for playing flute. Obviously there are people less fit than me who play much better than I do. The claim is only that it can be helpful, including for beginners. A vigorous occasional workout of the respiratory system, as in walking, swimming, jogging, bicycling increases strength, capacity and control (improves the wind, as it were) and thereby can help meet the breath demands of playing a wind instrument. Voice teachers I’ve known have instructed their students to swim laps for this reason. Also my voice teachers have given me abdominal exercises on the ground that it increases control, their idea being that multiple muscles are involved in breathing/blowing, including muscles in the lower back. I don’t claim to KNOW this is true, and it does seem to work and I suggest it can be of significant help to newbies dealing with the OP’s question. And of course what have you to lose?
Same here. Dizzy. But is that lack of fitness? Or hyperventilation ? And if it’s hyperventilation - breathing more than you body needs and flushing out too much CO2 - is being physically fit going to help all that much?
FWIW I think practising yogic breathing (only once a week - I’m a lousy student between classes) helped my ability to take a full breath without it being a big deal. Strenuous exercise it is not.
Thanks, Loren, for writing with such clarity. I’ve played the flute since the late 60s and played the recorder before that but have never read a clearer exposition of the breathing process as it occurs in flute-playing. I forgot to mention one other thing, which doesn’t have to do with the diaphragm muscle as far as I know but rather with the muscles on the surface of the stomach. I’m not sure what they are called. When I started to play the flute I took a couple of lessons with an opera singer for advice on breathing. I no longer remember what she taught me except for long notes, but I remember that she had me touch her stomach and what I felt was steel. Those muscles were very strong. I would think that this aided breath control, not breathing.
I play better standing up. I assume I get the whole mechanism better aligned that way: also my attention is focused differently.
At some point early on I came across an article on wind players and aerobic fitness, and the article–sorry I can’t find it–said that professional horn and woodwind players are no different from the general population in terms of aerobic fitness. It was all technique, not a substantial difference in athletic fitness.
I remember being surprised by this and thinking “that can’t be true” because at the time all my struggles were with not being able to play long enough to complete a phrase. But it’s true that professional singers and musicians, people who perform at an extremely high level, come in all shapes and sizes.
Is it possible to exhale a decent volume of air at significantly above atmospheric pressure - blowing up a party balloon, playing an oboe, bagpipe etc - without using abdominal muscles?
This is strictly anecdotal, but in my personal experience of learning to play flute starting 6 years ago from scratch, I’ve gone through all these stages:
- Initial dizziness after just a few minutes of playing.
- Dizziness gone, but can’t seem to get enough air to make it all the way through 3 play-throughs of a tune.
- Can make it through 3 play-throughs, but have trouble with a set of three tunes.
- Current status: No trouble playing full sets of tunes, but I’m still working on finding the right places to breathe that enhance the tune, rather than detract from it.
During all this time I haven’t changed my normal sedentary lifestyle at all. The only exercise I get at the age of 67 is walking up and down the stairs in my house and occasional walks; short hikes through the local woods. Noting really aerobic. I’ve just been working on embouchure and technique. Maybe some of this could have come along faster with aerobic workouts, but it seems to me that most if not all of this progress is due to embouchure development. I’m now wasting less air with a more focused airstream.
One of the flute tutors I bought, not sure if it was the one from Conal O’Grada or Fintan Vallelly, mentioned that playing the flute shouldn’t require more air than normal conversation. We don’t do special exercises in order to speak at a conversational level of volume. I think what mostly frustrates beginners is how long it takes to get your embouchure in decent shape.
I think the physics in that article is a little dodgy. Anything that uses the phrase ‘partial vacuum’ raises my suspicions so I would be cautious of using it as a source for something haven’t studied such as anatomy. I bear Loren’s cautions about such articles in mind.
However, what I was fishing for was something along the lines of
I think this is the business of ‘breath support’ for playing a flute using abdominal muscles. Exhalation just by relaxing the diaphragm is not particularly controllable and is what we do mainly during physical exertion. I find ‘voice production’ during such exertion unhelpful. YMMV.
The article is good by me, as it pretty much reminds me of what I was taught in college.
I may have missed the phrase “partial vacuum” in the article - did you mean “partial pressure of gases”?
I thought “forced exhalation” would be of interest to you. I should have just directed you to that part exclusively.
Edit: upon review, I did find the phrase in this snippet here:
“The negative pressure in the pleural cavity is enough to hold the lungs open in spite of the inherent elasticity of the tissue. The thoracic cavity increases in volume causing a drop in the pressure (a partial vacuum) within the lung itself.”
Curious, why is this considered dodgy?
gwuilleann had already linked the full article up thread. And no way am I going to not going to read a whole article - how else to make an assessment of how good it is? I looked elsewhere for a couple of things that seemed odd. I’d bet a small amount that Wikipedia’s description of the roll of the pleural cavity (involving surface tension) is closer to the mark.
However, the article does highlight the many muscles that can influence the volume of the thoracic cavity and so cause air to move into and out of the lungs. Most of that becomes apparent if taught ‘yogic breathing’ by someone who knows their anatomy.
Grey Larsen writes about breathing for flute playing. I don’t have it to hand but as I recall it he recommends abdominal breathing with the chest expanded but the extra air that can be exhaled with the intercostal muscles being a ‘final reserve’ not normally drawn on.
edit in response to your edit - explain ‘partial vacuum’. And that bit about negative pressure (and more higher up) was what sent me to Wikipedia. I wondered what gas was in there to have a negative pressure.
A “negative pressure” is a pressure that is lower than atmospheric pressure, which is taken to be the average pressure outside one’s mouth. In disciplines where we are more interested in pressure change than in actual pressure (e.g. acoustics), pressure is often calibrated in this way for convenience, with atmospheric pressure = 0 Pascal.
I am glad you found it helpful 
I forgot to mention one other thing, which doesn’t have to do with the diaphragm muscle as far as I know but rather with the muscles on the surface of the stomach. I’m not sure what they are called. When I started to play the flute I took a couple of lessons with an opera singer for advice on breathing. I no longer remember what she taught me except for long notes, but I remember that she had me touch her stomach and what I felt was steel. Those muscles were very strong. I would think that this aided breath control, not breathing.
If you were touching the muscles on the front of her stomach, those would be the rectus abdominis muscle, what most people know as the “six pack”.
Do these muscles help with breath control? Well, no, at least not much, most of the time. The answer really depends largely on what one means by the terms “breath control” and/or the oft used term “breath support”.
The primary function of the rectus abdominis is flexion of spine and tilting of the pelvis. However, this is a gross over simplification because the functional anatomy of the torso is wicked complicated, as we’d say here in New England 
Lots of muscles working together, to varying degrees, to accomplish any given movements of the torso, as well as functions that occur within the torso. And muscles tend to have a primary function as well as 1 or more accessory functions as stabilizer/helper muscles.
With regards to “breath control”, the rectus abdominis muscle plays no significant role in flute playing: It doesn’t control how fast/slow you breath in or out, how loud or soft you play, how much or little air you move…the exception to all of the above would be the caveat “unless you are going to the extreme ranges of your total physical capacity”. So, if you are trying to expel as much breath as humanly possible, you may have to use rectus abdominis as you crunch forward and pull your ribcage down as far as possible, but who’s going to play flute like that? 
What you describe though cac, having the abdominal muscles firm during playing, is what I am guessing many woodwind teachers players mean when they say “breath support”. I can’t be sure what they mean though, because often woodwind teachers don’t even seem to be certain themselves, as they can’t seem to define “breath support” specifically. But then I haven’t queried large numbers, so maybe some do have very specific and accurate explanations of what they are doing while executing breath support.
@Loren. So if I am standing up and exhaling what is causing whatever my diaphragm displaced on inhalation to go back where it came from. Is the diaphragm doing all the work in both directions?
To inhale, diaphragm contracts and moves moves down under under the lungs causing negative pressure, the differential in air pressure causes air to rush into your lungs. When we relax the diaphragm it moves back upwards which causes exhalation.
So yes, the diaphragm is the prime mover of air both into, and out of, the lungs.
So the work of maintaining pressure greater than atmospheric against the vocal chords of a singer or the embouchure of a flute player is being done by a muscle which is relaxing?
Forgot to address the “doing all of the work” part:
No, the diaphragm is not doing all of the work. As stated in previous posts, accessory muscles play a role in breathing, and most other movement processes, however accessory muscles play a relatively small role in breathing for flute playing. Also, the issue of learning to identify and control accessory muscles consciously… let’s just say that’s not low hanging fruit for the beginning flute player.
If one gains good diaphragmatic control, can maintain good posture, and chooses appropriate places to to take breaths within a tune, one will have all one ever needs to play the flute.
High level athletic performance, breathing under high G loads, breath holding for Free Diving, this is where the accessory breathing muscles really become important. Also during medical respiratory emergencies like asthma attacks, but few people train for that, although as an asthmatic I suppose I have through my years of competitive distance running, cycling, and boxing/kickboxing, which uses all the breathing muscles more forcefully than any other activity I’ve personally experienced. Flute though, not so much 
Singing and flute playing have somewhat different requirements, depending on what is being done. I don’t really want to put in the time to get into different types of vibrato, the difference in vocal cord back pressure vs. embouchure back pressure, the function and use of the muscles of the throat and tongue, not to mention other muscles of the torso like the internal and external obliques, the transverse abdominis, and others that have been previously mentioned by myself and others.
You seem to have a particular view you want to believe and or prove, which is fine. I learned a long time ago that trying to convince people on the internet of something is a waste of time.
Thanks.
I, and I think some but not everyone in this thread, am not thinking of it has ‘high performance’ breathing. The pressure behind an embouchure is not much different to speaking (and I guess a lot less than a fortissimo opera singer). ‘Breath support’ usually comes up in the context of control, not force. What I had been told was that it was the diaphragm and (unspecified) abdominal muscles working in opposition for fine control during exhalation.
Just because we haven’t been trained to use these muscles doesn’t mean we are not using them. Evolution doesn’t work that way. That flute and singing teachers talk about abdominal muscles suggest to me a benefit in doing something that doesn’t come naturally, at least not optimally.
[crossing but just going out for a while - that was to Loren’s earlier post]
No, I read to learn but have professional experience of questioning explanations that don’t quite add up and noticing answers that don’t quite answer the question.
In this case the puzzle is the reason for the advice about abdominal breathing from teachers. One aspect is that in person, but not always on the internet, it may be prefaced by advice on posture such as yours. So advice to ‘completely relax’ abdominal muscles can’t be followed literally. Another aspect is geometrical. If Iie down and breath abdominally (no active use of chest) when I breath in I see my gut go up and when I breath out is goes down again. This is because when I breath in my overall body volume goes up to make space for air and my abdomen is the only thing that can expand. I doesn’t take anatomical details or discussion of pressure changes to understand that.
So standing in my flute-playing posture if I do any abdominal breathing the surface area of my gut still has to increase to make space for air. That’s the missing part of the explanation. The diaphragm displaces squishy bits downwards to allow the lung volume to increase. How does it do this without muscles on the front of my abdomen relaxing (the flute teachers say they do) and how does it reverse this when I breath out (when the flute teachers the muscles work to give ‘breath support’).
That’s the bit I don’t get. Observation and simple geometry suggests that the flute teachers are correct. If we are going to breath with our diaphragms.
That’s a good policy, I was taught to think and examine info with the same mindset, however problems occur when you don’t yet have enough knowledge and or experience with a subject to know if the numbers add up or if the answers truly answer the question.
In this case the puzzle is the reason for the advice about abdominal breathing from teachers.
Music teachers aren’t experts in anatomy, physiology, or kinesiology. Few have any idea whatsoever how the muscles of the torso work. They generally can’t name them, don’t know their location , primary and accessory functions… basically what they say about breathing and breath support is largely just a retelling of what they were told by others who were also not well informed.
One aspect is that in person, but not always on the internet, it may be prefaced by advice on posture such as yours. So advice to ‘completely relax’ abdominal muscles can’t be followed literally.
To a certain extent this depends on which specific abdominal muscles we are talking about, and what posture.
Another aspect is geometrical.
Huh? 
If I lie down and breath abdominally (no active use of chest) when I breath in I see my gut go up and when I breath out is goes down again.
Gravity works in not so strange ways 
While lying down, one can choose to breathe in while raising the abdomen, and out while allowing gravity to pull the abdomen down.
Or, one can raise the abdominal wall and hold it there while inhaling and exhaling.
Or, one can draw the abdominal wall in towards the spine and breathe in and out while holding the abdominal wall in.
All can be done, try it.
This is because when I breath in my overall body volume go up to make space for air and my abdomen is the only thing that can expand.
Apparently not, as evidenced by my experiment described above.
It doesn’t take anatomical details or discussion of pressure changes to understand that.
Because what you stated isn’t true.
So standing in my flute-playing posture if I do any abdominal breathing the surface area of my gut still has to increase to make space for air.
Nope. Stand up straight, make your abs flat (if you can see them), breathe in and down as deeply as you can while keeping your abs flat. When you can’t inhale anymore, let your abs go out and see if you can inhale more. I can’t.
Next try this: Breathe out, suck your abs in towards your spine, suck them in as far as you possibly can…now inhale while holding your abs way in. Miracle of miracles! You can still take a full breath!
That’s the missing part of the explanation. The diaphragm displaces squishy bits downwards…
You seem to want highly technical and accurate explanations, but then you say things like that. Makes you hard to take seriously.
to allow the lung volume to increase. How does it do this without muscles on the front of my abdomen relaxing (the flute teachers say they do) and how does it reverse this when I breath out (when the flute teachers the muscles work to give ‘breath support’).
That’s the bit I don’t get. Observation and simple geometry suggests that the flute teachers are correct. If we are going to breath with our diaphragms.
I’ve done all I am willing to with regards to addressing the issues at hand. I wish you luck in your search for answers, the truth is out there.