Can someone explain circular breathing to me?
If you search the archives, I think you’ll find a lot on this topic. Here is a link to one of the threads, but there are many more.
http://chiffboard.mati.ca/viewtopic.php?t=11155&highlight=circular+breathing
All the Best, Tom
In one sentence, it’s a way to keep the sound going by using air stored inside yuor mouth cavity (which you push forward using your cheeks and tongue) while at the same time you bring new air into your lungs through your nose.
It’s a technique that has been known for a long time. It was called “glass blowing” in Baroque times, because it’s a skill that’s needed for blowing glass. Aurele Nicolet and J P Rampal, just to mention a couple of famous people, know/knew how to do it, but only recently this has started to move into mainstream flute playing, thanks mostly to the efforts of Robert Dick, who also published the only book available. How’s that for a long runon sentence? 
It’s where you reserve air in your oral cavity with the back of your tongue closing things off so that you can play, using that small air supply, while inhaling thru your nose to get nonstop playing.
One exercise uses a glass of water and a drinking straw. As you gently blow bubbles, you let your cheeks inflate. When it’s time to take a breath, you close off the back of the oral cavity and blow using what’s in reserve (it’s sorta like a bagpipe that way) while breathing in thru the nose. Lungs full, repeat the process. It take practice and coordination, and you have to really work with your embouchure once you apply it to a flute, as the inflated cheeks changes things quite a bit.
Timing, timing.
Yes, the water/straw exercise is from Robert Dick’s book.
That’s it, in a nutshell.
Most flutists don’t bother, because it’s a lot of work and really, if you wanted to play infinite-length phrases, you’d be playing pipes, right? But people who know how to do it say it’s very valuable “in a pinch” when you need that extra breath. IMHO, it became more important because the modern (Boehm) flute consumes more air than the Baroque and Classical flutes.
In fact, circular breathing should be slightly less harder in the wooden flute than in the Boehm, thanks to the added resistance.
g
Good luck.
It’s not an easy technique to master.
Although I can do it, I stopped because it made me sick at first, then dizzy. After a long time, I just bailed on it.
I admire those who can do it. I’d love to, but the results are too disagreeable for me.
yup
At Irish Arts week Paul McGratten talked for a while about it. He said that although it could be done it just wasn’t practical for Irish music because of the tone and breath needed. Also, he said that breathing and breaths are an integral part of the music.
He did expound for a while on an Eastern European technique of blowing both octaves at once. He demonstrated this for the class. He also has a tune on the “Within a Mile of Dublin” CD with this style. He said that it really wasn’t hard to do (for him maybe). Its just a matter of blowing two streams of air at once. I don’t even begin to understand how that might work. He said that after a while playing that way it would be hard to go back to the usual way.
i tried to learn it one time when i was taking up the didgeridoo as it is essential in order to play that instrument. i also studied dick’s book about adapting the technique to fluteplaying but i don’t think it really is suited for the tranverse flute at all. with a didgeridoo, the mouth is firmly pressed against or sort of in the instrument so that makes it practical. when the mouth or lips have nothing to press against, to create some pressure, like on the flute, i think it makes it impractical to keep the air stored in the cheeks as you blow into the flute at the same time, while also trying to create a robust reedy tone. plus there’s a snorty sound that happens when you sniff in quickly thru the nose. (on many didgeridoo recordings i can hear it the snort). it tends to get masked by the earthy, droney didgeridoo sound - but it is there.
if one can pull it off on the flute, then all the more power to ya!
try playing the flute after a round on the didgeridoo - talk about rubber lips!!
taytay05, do you plan to apply it to flute or whistle playing?
Circular breathing is usually employed on low flow, high pressure instruments such as trumpets, saxophones, bagpipes.
I heard a story once of a sax player holding a note and walking out the door, around the building and back in and had the nastiest looking drool ever coming out dripping around the mouthpiece.
Didn’t Kenny G clock the longest note in the saxophone, for the Guiness book of records? Something like 45 minutes, i think, on the soprano sax.
The amazing thing is, it sounded just like all his other tunes! 
circular breathing on bagpipes?
now THAT’s something i need to see to understand.
I understand that circular breathing is applied when playing the ney. But then, both lips are used to get a tone on it, too. Altogether too much for me. One lip kicks my butt as it is, to say nothing of regular breathing.
Yeah, the bag does the work. No circular breathing necessary. A lot of GHB pipers use it on their practice chanters. There’s also the Sardinian launedda which is like a bagpipe without the bag and the player uses circular breathing.
But the breathing mentioned in this thread is protracted breathing in which the mouth is used as an air reservoir while inhaling through the nose. I believe there is a true circular breathing in which air is passing in the nose and out the mouth simultaneously.
Cheers,
Aaron
How would that work? Use one lung to push and the other to pull?
How 
I don’t believe that the physiology (how do you spell that?)
of the Human anatomy would allow such strange goings on
Eh? What about getting air into the lungs? A bit necessary, I’d say. Yet you describe the launeddas technique as circular breathing. This is exactly what I’ve been talking about, anyway.
nemmind 