Circular breathing

Whistle
1

Hello,
Does anyone use circular breathing when playing the tin whistle? And, can it actually be used effectively?

2

Well, how do you do it? I understand that it’s very difficult. I would think it unnecessary with the whistle which needs little air - it’s used with didgeridoos, though I know not what else.

3

It can be used indeed. I’m using it sometimes on bass tuba and bass trombone for very long notes. The American trumpet player Wynton Marsalis is an absolute ace in it, he’s using it whenever he wants.
And as for the whislte, Colin Goldie gave me a demonstration once, he’s actually using it effeciently on the whistle, I find it very difficult cause there’s very little resistance from the instrument, that means it’s difficult to blow out the air you contained in your mouth while breathing new air through your nose. If you have any doubt our questions I would suggest you contact Colin, he’s a very kind and helpful bloke.
All the best
Erik

4

So that’s how Wynton Marsalis does it? His version of Carnival of the Animals is still mind boggling.

I have tinkered with trying to learn circular breathing and envy those who have mastered it.

5

This is the bible for those who want to learn:

“Circular Breathing for the Flutist,” by Robert Dick.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0939407019/qid=1050068551/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-7522654-7553418?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I haven’t attempted it, because I don’t play any pieces that would require the technique. This book has helped people I know to learn. Mr. Dick is convinced anyone can do it.

Hope that helps!

Cara

6

I can manage to circular breath on my didgeridoo, but I havn’t managed to do it with a whistle yet. Too many reminders from music teachers to not puff out my cheeks when I play wind instruments has given me a hard habit to break.

There are a bunch of tutorials on how to circular breath on the net. Just get googling on didgeridoo and circular breathing. One of the best excercises is to try to squirt a steady stream of water out of your mouth while breathing normally.

BTW, isn’t Kenny G the acclaimed master of circular breathing; being able to hold a single note on a flute for the longest amount of time?

7

Another exercise I came across for circular breathing is to use a straw to blow a continuous stream of bubbles into a glass of water while breathing normally.

8

Spooky :astonished: -Just last night I met my cousin Colleen(there’s a good Irish name!) and her partner Phil, at a family get together and we got on talking about musical instruments.Turns out that on a trip to Australia two years ago,he bought himself two Didgeridoos and a tutor book.
We talked about circular breathing,and he mentioned this very exercise(!).I mentioned that some oboe and sax. players used this technique.
Anyway,he’s promised to bring his Didg’. along next time,so I can have a go! :boggle:

9

I learned the technique as a brass musician, and use it now with other windinstruments, including whistle.

Works best with instruments with backpressure, as noted above. It’s very easy for me to do on an Overton, which has tons of backpressure. It’s very hard to do on a Shaw or similar, with little or no backpressure.

I don’t know about Marsalis and “Carnival of the Animals” (maybe g4m means “Carnival of Venice”, the famous trumpet piece?), but you can certainly hear Marsalis use this technique in “Moto Perpetuo”, on his CD “Carnival”, with the Eastman Wind Ensemble; he plays this quite fast piece for about 4 minutes, without stopping to breathe. (Lots of carnivals in that paragraph…)

It’s a good party trick; in college, I’d keep a napkin pinned against a wall through circular breathing, or a steady stream of bubbles in a beverage, in exchange for free beer. Free beer is good beer. It’s worth it to learn just for the drinks. . .

–Aaron

10

I learned the technique for dijeridu (how one spells it depends on which part of Oz you’re from), and it works nicely there, and with my low-air whistles, though they’re a bit more difficult to control without jumping octaves.

But there is a caveat:

True “circular breathing” involves more than merely puffing your cheeks out. It also involves maintaining high pressures in the chest cavity, which in turn, elevates your blood pressure. This is really easy to check, BTW, with a sphygmomanometer, so if you want to argue with me, get your BP taken just before, and during, and see for yourself, first. Bottom line, if you have high BP or any sort of cardiopulmonary condition, I’d chat with the physician before doing it.
Cheers, :smiley:
serpent

11

What you do is use the muscles of your mouth to push out the air. I don’t think that it’s really worth it for whistles, mostly because using breathing in the notes can sound really cool; I always try to work out cool spots in which to breathe which “articulate” the music in general.

12

My whistle teacher, James Conway, uses circular breathing on the whistle and harmonica. Coincidentally, at my last lesson I taped him demonstrating it on a new whistle of mine, a Reyburn low F, with just intonation. He thought it was an especially good whistle to learn how to do circular breathing on because it requires relatively little air. I might add I have gotten as far as exhaling through my mouth while inhaling through my nose, but I can’t yet sustain a whistle tone. Maybe the Reyburn will help me with the breakthrough.

Here’s the clip: Give Me Your Hand

Take a deep breath before listening to it. :wink:

Carol

13

Actually, I think one uses “didgeridoo” or its variants if one is white, or doesn’t speak one of the native Aussie Aboriginal languages; at least in northern Australia, the aboriginal people we spent time with used “yidaki”, and complained about what they called the “white name”, or “Balanda word” which they claimed was just a description of the sound the thing makes. The guy who taught me tried to make me promise always to call it “yidaki”, but the “didge” name is too ingrained in me, now. (And maybe they were having me on: maybe “yidaki” means “funny white guy trying to play our music” or something. . .)

Who knows – folk instruments have all kinds of tales (and sometimes tails) attached, and people are always calling my whistles “flutes”, so. . .

But Carol, that just-intoned whistle sounds great (I thinkI’d like the tune better if your teacher breathed, though!). The just intonation sounds wonderful with this style of music; have you tried playing the whistle amongst other musicians, and if so, does it clash badly with instruments in other temperaments?

–Aaron

14

Aaron,

I haven’t yet tried playing along with others–curious about that myself. I’ll keep you posted. And, for the record, that clip was just a demo of circular breathing: my teacher plays that tune beautifully–with breaths and all–on his CD, Mouth Box.

Carol

15

The late, great jazz saxophone and flute player, Roland Kirk, used circular breathing to very good effect. His album ‘Rip, Rig and Panic’ contains some particularly fine examples. He could almost induce a trance with endlessly long fluid runs.

16

Dude! Interesting stuff! :slight_smile: Actually, I use the spelling of a friend of mine in Adelaide. He sent me a signed didj from the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, which spells it “didjeridu” in their literature. I don’t recall the literature from there saying anything about the aboriginal name, and “dijeridu” without the extra “d” falls easily from my fingers, and I can pronounce it in English, kind of like I can pronounce “Native American Flute” (NAF) though I’m pretty certain the Native American languages would have it otherwise. :smiley: What’cha gonna do?
Cheers, and thanks for the cool info! :smiley:
serp

17

You eeeeeeediots!!! YOU Knigggggggettts!!! YOu’ve done it to me yet again!

Weezels I can do circular breathing on

  1. Busman high D ebony… piece of cake
  2. Original high D Tunable Brass Serpent (D windway)
  3. New high D Serpent Copper Viper Session (curved windway)
  4. New model Village Smithy

Weezels I cannot do circular breathing on

  1. Serpent high D Dreadnought
  2. Alba SE high D (almost!)
  3. Gen - any flavor, but most especially Bb
  4. Old model Village Smithy
  5. Any low D I own (Brand X India, Serpent WMD, Alba)

I think that, by figuring out how to hold the mouthpiece so the airflow can be controlled properly, you could probably do it on all but the Dreadnought and the Alba. If you have fatter cheeks than I do, maybe even on them. Actually, I can almost sustain all of them, but getting the right amount of air to keep low-register notes running without dropout or popping up an octave, is very challenging for the higher-air whistles.

Further observation - I don’t see that it would enhance much music I play. The ability is an interesting novelty on the whistle, but really only lends itself as an enhancement, to a small percentage of music, as I see it.

My opinion, and if you don’t like it, well, darn! Maybe I’ll state one you do like… someday… :smiley:
Cheers,
serpent

18

Australia is a vast continent. There are many different aboriginal tribes and many different languages. The idea that a commonly used implement would have the same name in all of them is wildly improbable.

19

I have that book by Mr. Dick. Cool stuff, but my cheeks don’t offer a lot of leeway. My interest has been rekindled, though…maybe with practice, eh?

20

Now ain’t this weird: a quick search of the web, and the very first Google hit brings up the possible Irish roots of the word “didgeridoo” (which word appears, according to these people, in not a single aboriginal language).

Does this mean I can bring my didge to the next session I attend? No, didn’t think so. . .

Here ya go:

DIDGERIDOO
An Australian Aboriginal musical instrument.
What could be more Australian than the droning sound of this native instrument? Yet there’s a linguistic mystery about it. Firstly, the name isn’t recorded in Australian English until 1919, astonishingly late. And it isn’t Aboriginal—native names include yidali, illpera and bombo, but nothing that sounds even vaguely like didgeridoo. Lexicographers have traditionally got round this by saying it is imitative, but didgeridoo bears scant relation to the noise the instrument makes. Now Dymphna Lonergan, currently working on a PhD thesis concerning the Irish influence on Australian English, may have solved the problem. Her theory appeared in Australian newspapers six months ago, and is reported in more detail in the current issue of Ozwords, published by the Australian National Dictionary Centre. She points to a possible Irish source in two words dúdaire and dubh. Gaelic spelling is in a class by itself: Ms Lonergan suggests the words are actually said rather like “doodjerreh” and “doo” (though some native speakers dispute this). The first means “trumpeter”; the second means “black”. Put them together (adjective following noun in Gaelic) and you get a phrase that means “black trumpeter” and which sounds remarkably like the instrument’s name.