Um, suddenly I seem unable to breathe properly while playing. I started focusing on my breathing technique and now I can’t seem to breathe at all. I think I never really could, and I’m just realizing it. My technique seemed to be to just run out of air and then gulp it in before continuing on. This works fine when i’m playing with someone else, because it’s not so noticeable, but that’s no way to get along with things. Also I think I’ve just recently been gaining speed in my playing, so if I did have the breathing worked out on a tune, it doesn’t work anymore.
Is is better to breathe frequently and be always pulling in small breaths, or to play a little longer and take a deeper breath? Better to breathe between phrases, or try to work it in somewhere in the middle? Some videos on youtube the player doesn’t seem to breathe at all. How do they do that?!
Hi..Are you playing by ear or doing some tunes from sheet music? Robin Williamson’s “The Penny Whistle Book” (which I bought BTW because I used to a fan of The Incredible String Band) has breath marks written in. They are comma’s written above the staff line to show the best place, in his opinion, to take a breath. Perhaps using a “tool” such as that will give you a better idea of when in a song to take a breath and how often, depending on the tune.
Hi Nomi,
I’ll offer something from my Grey Larson book. His comments on breathing are to do note shortening or note omission. Well before you run out of breath, you can either omit a note and take a short, deep breath, or shorten a held note (either by a beat or two, or simply making the note staccato). If you examine your song and locate good places for rhythmic pauses, you can usually find some places to take breaths. You always want to take a breath before you feel like you’re really running out, otherwise your playing will sound asthmatic. That said, I still have trouble on some of the flowier sections of Lord Mayo that just don’t want to stop. If you practice this ‘musical breathing’ technique, you can last longer on a single breath knowing where your next one will fall.
I have this problem too when playing dance music. I found the generalised advice interesting but hard to put into practice. What I found much more productive was to ask on this forum about a particular tune. If you are lucky then one or more of the experts will give concrete examples of where to breathe, and often they will explain why. You will sometimes get a discussion of the relative merits of different breathing places - which is doubly useful.
One way to make things easier for yourself in the long run is to make them harder in the short run. So, you could get yourself a low D whistle and practice things on that. Once you are able to play that fluidly, any high whistle will seem relatively easy. This works for fingering, ornamentation, breathing, etc. A low D is a great practice instrument for playing higher pitched whistles.
Another approach, mentioned previously, is to methodically mark breathing spots, as one does in “classical” woodwind music. This is good not only because it helps you breathe comfortably, but also because it makes you think about phrasing and how a set of (usually) 8 bars naturally falls into shorter phrases of 4 or 2 bars each. Some people will say that you should vary your breathing spots, and that’s not totally wrong, but there is such a thing as punctuation in music and if you don’t respect it, your playing can sound very inarticulate. Breathing can be a way of punctuating a melody. So your limited supply of breath can be of benefit to your musical expression.
In your video, you appear to be a young, healthy person, so I don’t think you should be facing breathing issues in the same manner as us elderly, infirmed folks. My two cents is that your posture may be impeding proper breathing or you just need to become more efficient through practice in not wasting breath. Aren’t you pretty new to whistling?
@mutepointe- I learned my first tune when I was about eight, but quit when I was around 13. My parents both played in an irish band on fiddle and harp/whistle, so the music was just around all the time, but I never really took it seriously or paid much attention to what I was learning. So now it’s 17 years later and two months into my own personal whistle revival. A lot of stuff is just in there, a bunch of tunes floated to the surface (hence my mystery tune postings, that was fun to solve), also I can do slides and rolls to some extent, but I was a sloppy player then and now I’m trying to sort of re-learn all the technique and nuances I missed as a kid. I don’t remember ever questioning my breathing back then, that’s for sure. I learn exclusively by ear, which has it’s drawbacks, but maybe if I listen for the breathing on albums and such I can learn something that way.
Thanks for all the advice folks, I don’t have any other whistle players around to talk to (I live on a fairly small island) and I’m like a dry sponge for feedback.
Hi Nomi. There is nothing that makes me lose the rhythm or lilt of a tune so much as running out of breath. I and others have posted about the example of gassing (airing) up while your at a place where you can do so before running out of gas (air) where there’s no station to refill. I personally don’t think trying to increase your overall breathing capacity somehow generally by playing a low whistle (when you’re having some issues with a high whistle) is a sound (no pun intended) idea; everyone can run out of breath on any whistle at any time if one doesn’t early on pay attention to places to naturally (i.e., without disrupting the rhythm of a tune) breath. This is, as stated above, generally by shortening the longer notes and/or dropping out notes (e.g., middle of triple). This not only is often necessary but also really does enhance tunes so that you can vary them in acceptable ways and even add a bit to the lilt. Some places sound better than others and it’s probably best not to get overly robotic in how you approach this.
For example. Look at your sheet music or tutor or whatever and listen to the piece at hand being played. You will come to understand where the notes are shortened or dropped and what that does for the tune. (In addition to making it possible to play to the end without losing the rhythm)
In retrospect, this may be the single most important thing I was taught about playing the whistle. It also removes the anticipation of running out of breath - a real mood killer!
Enjoy and if you have specific tunes you’d like to ask about or want specific examples feel free to ask us (I guess you already did).