I’ve been playing whistle for nearly four years now, and wouldn’t call myself a beginner exactly, but after all this time am still having problems with breathing. I say breathing, because breath control is a different thing all together, it seems that I’ve either too much air in my lungs where i should take a breath, or I leave it too late and run out of air at the wrong time. We all need to breathe whilst playing!
Of course i can play many tunes without too much of a problem, but at the end i feel exhausted, it’s a similar feeling to holding my breath under water and then surfacing.
Is it just a matter of knowing a tune so well that you don’t think about it?
For me learning to breathe for a certain tune is harder than learning to play the tune itself.
Have any of you had the same problem in the past and how did you get over the problem?
My guess is that your breaths are too shallow, so that you’re not taking in enough new air, and leaving too much old air in your lungs.
Get used to breathing from the diaphragm, not the chest, relax your airway, and breath quickly and firmly, but without gasping. With this technique, you should be able to take in at least half a lung-full of breath or more during the space of an eight note (quaver). Yes, it’s something you need to practice.
Also, if you breathe at the end of natural phrases, you can often shorten the last note of the phrase slightly, with a little emphatic final outward “push” that rebounds naturally into the breath that you’re about to take. This is harder to describe than to do.
Concentrate more on your phrasing, and learn when is the right time in a tune, for you to take a breath. You don’t necessarily have to follow somebody else’s phrasing exactly; in Irish music, there’s a lot of room for personalization. When learning a tune, you should find the right spots to take a breath FOR YOU that still fit into the tune. You don’t have to play a tune exactly like every other whistle player, and many (myself included) would argue that it’s not desirable to play a tune like everybody else.
Your problem sounds like lung efficiency. If you smoke, then you may have to make a choice between smoking and playing ability (I smoke, and haven’t had to make that choice). If not, then you may simply need to work on lung exercises to strengthen up your lungs. Athletes need to exercise to strengthen up, and so do musicians.
