Can anyone suggest any exercises that will hopefully improve my breathing. At the moment, im trying to play most tunes in the legato (one constant breathe) style , unfortunately im running out of breathe.
I appreciate any advice/suggestions that come my way.
From a very out of breath whistler!
Andy
Andy,
What type of whistle are you playing?
A
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Dropping notes to take a breath will not only sound good but keep the music flowing nicely.If your a note reader you can make breath indications on your notation.Breathing through your nose as opposed to gasping for breath through your mouth can also help although both ways can be considered as good sounding ornaments.Hope this helps…happy whistleing! 
Mike
Andy, assuming you are playing Irish music or something similar, you are not supposed to play an entire tune in one breath. Playing legato does not mean you can’t take a breath.
For more in-depth info, instead of me writing a lot of stuff, I will instead refer you to StevieJ’s excellent site, which luckily has a section on “Where to breathe”.
http://www.rogermillington.com/siamsa/brosteve/index.html
Cheers,
Jens
Also, aerobic exercise helps. And
playing whistles is very good for
developing breath. The more one plays,
the better one gets at this. Also playing
a breath demanding whistle some of the
time develops breath, rather like swinging
two baseball bats.
The best description of breathing technique I have found I learned from someone on this message board: “Make your breathing part of the ornamentation.” Dropping a note to breathe at the right spot can actually “lift” some songs and make them even more lively, as in the Kesh Jig.
Unfortunately, I cannot remember who offered this piece of very good advice or I would thank them personally.
Hi Andy,
While it’s vitally important you learn where to breathe (and that’s been covered well here), it’s equally important you make sure A) You’re taking full breaths, and B) all the air you exhale is going out your mouth - you don’t want half of it going out your nose.
My Suggestion for an exercise would be to pick an uptempo song you know well, Take a FULL deep breath and start playing it slower than normal. Every time you reach a breathing point during the tune, concentrate on quickly taking a FULL, DEEP breath, making sure you’re filling your lungs to full capacity before continuing to play. This will take some practice to do smoothly, but make sure you aren’t breaking the flow of the tune, this is the reason for starting out slowly.
Keep practicing until you can play the tune smoothly, at full speed, while still taking full, deep breaths throughout. You’ll be amazed how long you can actually go on one breath when you totally fill your lungs - especially on most soprano whistles. Many Low Whistles are another matter though…
Good luck and let us know how you progress!
Loren
On 2001-10-02 08:54, jim stone wrote:
Also, aerobic exercise helps.
Kevin Crawford (of Lunasa) talked about this at his flute and whistle workshop at Sebastopol on Saturday. He said that he used to be “big” (I think that was his term), but that he’d started swimming and found that it had improved his lung capacity enormously.
John
All of the above comments, plus: Make sure you’re sticking out your stomach as you inhale. This helps you fill the bottom of your lungs as well as the top, and, in my case, doubles (at least) the lung capacity.
The best “whistle playing aid” purchase I ever made was a bag pipe chanter! I can’t play it worth beans but it REALLY builds up lung strength. Just forget about the bottom hole and it can be played with whistle fingering (more or less).
Hi,
When I used to march in a drum & bugle corps, we used to do this exercise so that we could play in the upper altitudes, while marching, and not run out of air.
Take a balloon. Inhale all the way in in 4 seconds and then blow into the balloon for 4 seconds. Make sure you don’t blow too much on the last second, or too much at the beginning. Take the balloon away (let the air out) and inhale for 8, then blow into the balloon for 8, again, making sure you fill it evenly throughout the 8 seconds, so that on the last count you are trying to push the remainder of your air out. Take the balloon away and inhale for 12, then blow up the balloon in 12. Do 16, 20…until you can’t take it any more. Try not to breathe freely inbetween. This will help increase your lung capacity as well as develop your breath control. I remember almost feeling like passing out while doing this. We would do this on the bus while driving through the beautiful mountains of Colorado. We would spend about 5 minutes on this. It really takes control to reach 20 seconds. One thing to remember, empty the lungs completely, pushing every last bit out, and inhale until you can’t fill no more. -JP
Thank you to everyone who answered my posting. Now to answer some of your questions:
ADRIANH I play a Feadod sop D and a Howard low D
MIKE R I do actually when its appropriate drop a note or two
JIM STONE Yes i think an aerobic exer would help, its just that im quite unfit, and at the moment have no intention of changing that, sounds terrible i know!!! Are there any exercises that i can do at home, or stretching perhaps in a chair???
LOREN Im already working at filling up my lungs from the bottom up and really pushing out of diaphram to get maximum air in
THESACKRAT Nice name.HeHe, ill try the chanter if i can get one in, anythings worth a go
JOHN PALMER, Balloons, HMMMMM, again, ill try it.
Thanks to everybody, ill post back in a month or two, and hopefully there will be an improvement.
See ya
Andy
Andy,
You can always try a yoga regimen. Lots of breathing exercises with that. I find it helps me relax and breathe deeper. But make sure you have an instructor at first to watch what you’re doing. And you can always go at your own pace, all depends on your flexibility at the moment.
Tots
Or you could try Free Diving - the women’s world champion can hold her breath for over 6 minutes. Let’s see, the average tune is less than 4 minutes long…
On 2001-10-02 22:49, Loren wrote:
Or you could try Free Diving - the women’s world champion can hold her breath for over 6 minutes. Let’s see, the average tune is less than 4 minutes long…
I think holding your breath for 6 minutes takes less lung capacity than constantly exhaling for 4 minutes…
Though I’m certain some of our policiticans would be quite up to the task 
Greg
As a keen cyclist riding up very steep hills I may be able to offer some good advice. Before I attempt a steep climb I do a brething exercise as I am approaching. I push as much air out of my lungs as possible and then take a deep breath. I repeat this many times and it helps to build up your oxygen capacity. Maybe it stretches the lungs a little and opens things up to hold more air? The most important thing to my advice is the focus on purging your lungs of as much carbon dioxide as possible. It’s quite amazing how much carbon dioxide can remain in the lungs as a result of not expelling all the used air. Purge of carbon dioxide exercise before playing may help quite a bit. 
Can lung capacity be improved or is it just fixed by genetics? Miguel Indurain had/has an eight-litre capacity. I only had five, measured by using three two-litre bottles of water inverted with the openings just under the surface of water in a basin, then I blew into them with a bendy straw. That was when I was into cycle racing. I wonder if it’s still five litres now. No bottles or straw to check with at the moment, but it’s something I should try to do again some time. I wonder what the normal range is for flute/whistle/pipe players.
You won’t look back
I wonder if this might be of some help. I wrote it about the flute, not the whistle but I think the principles are probably the same. Anyway take it on board and see if it helps.
(It’s a shame that when I wrote it, so many years ago, I didn’t get around to putting the “slurps” into the second part of the tune. But hopefully by then you’ve got the idea.)
Out on the waterfront at Batemans Bay this morning with my box-player friend. Passers by sometimes ask do I ever stop for breath? The answer is no. I never run out of air!
There is a great temptation, especially among music notation readers, to breathe only at the end of parts of the tune. This usually means that a lot of the tune is played weakly for want of air, that breaths are long and loud and that parts of the tune get lost. Experienced players find smart places to breathe often, and turn the pauses for breath into punctuation. Smart places include long notes, which might otherwise be rolled. So, for example, a long G might be played as G…G, or rolled as GBGF#GGG, or used as a place to breath as GslurpG. In this way the need to breathe is turned into a virtue and the breath, instead of becoming a hole in the tune, becomes a statement, a rhythmical variation. Varying where the breath is taken can also add variety.
A good tune to try out some of these tricks is The Leitrim Fancy. Keep in mind that jigs should have a happy skipping rhythm (each bar will sound “tick-e-ty, tick-e-ty”). Rendered into “FluteSpeak”, the Leitrim Fancy might sound like this:
G roll, F# roll | E slurp B, B cut A B |
G roll, F# roll | D slurp A, A cut F# D |
G roll, F# roll | E slurp B, B cut A B |
G cut B, d B G | A cut B G, F# cut E D |
(repeat first part)
G cut B , d B d | e roll , d B A |
G cut B , d B G | A cut B G , F# cut E D |
G cut B , d B d | E roll , d e f# |
g cut f# e, d B G | A B G , F# cut E D |
(repeat second part)