I’ve been playing the same old feadog for about three or four years now and although it’s breathy, it isn’t nearly as much as the O’Brien I just bought. I love the O’Brien but it requires so much more air…is there any guide to good breathing or anything so I can make it through a song without turning blue?
Yeah, stop playing and breathe. This question might be better directed to the Whistle forum (just a suggestion).
djm
Stop smoking?
ya know…that might just help… 
I don’t smoke. 
I just didn’t know if it’s just a matter of getting used to the whistle or if theres a science to it.
How about the physical part first. Sit up stright and use your diaphragm.
Its under your lungs. You should see your tummy rise, and go in more than your chest. If a person stands or sits hunched over, their ribs are crowding the bottom of the lungs, and that is shallow breathing. Breath in deep seven times several times a day when you are not playing whistle
and in ten days you will have more air. This is a health thread right?
Thanks for the advice! 
Yogic Breathing (Pranayama) exercises are also quite useful.
These are all focused around being consious of how your breathing
works and how it is affecting your body, and purposefully breathing
from the diaphram.
Here’s some techniques I googled up, there are many others:
This being the Pub, and not the whistle forum, I think it’s only right that I recommend you begin by applying orange paint to your face so that when you begin to turn blue the color will at least be counterbalanced.
the O’Brien but it requires so much more air…
That’s quite a switch from the O’Brien’s (Cillian, right?) that came out about 2yrs ago. I have one that has no breathiness and takes only a tiny bit of air to play. Other board members at the time described similar experiences.
Anyway, (not to spoil the frivolities of this forum), different whistles come with a huge variance in breath requirements. Some take an uncomfortable amount of air to play and are often very breathy sounding at the same time, while others can take too little air, causing you to feel oxygen deprived. Finding one with the right balance is a good thing. The best balance for my set of lungs is a Freeman tweaked Generation.
Nevertheless, the advice about posture and breathing techniques is not to be discounted. Just watch that kundalini thing. I hear it can blow out the top of your head.
Tony
I’m not sure where I heard this anymore… but pretend that you’re breathing in through a hole in the bottom of your neck. For some odd reason this image causes many people to increase their air intake. I’m not sure how useful the previous tid-bit will be but I’ve noticed that I grow accustomed to the different air requirements of whistles eventually, even if I don’t put any effort into changing my breathing patterns.
You might think about good breathing places in the tune. I haven’t really heard of trying to get through a tune on one breath—but I am not that much of a whistle player. If you are talking about Irish Traditional Music, you wouldn’t breathe at the ends of phrases in dance tunes. You wouldn’t breathe between notes at all. You need to either shorten notes or leave unimportant notes out. You would vary the places that you breath on each repeat. I think it is better to breathe frequently than to be gasping for breath!
This website talks about this some:
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/breathe.html