I’ve bought meself a Tin Whistle Generation D and it arrived past thursday. Since then I started to play basic musics (such as “Down By The Sally Garden” and “Concerning Hobbits”) but, even these musics been short, my air isn’t enought to play it “in a row” (and by “in a row” I mean “without taking a deep breath”)
Do you guys know some technique to make my blowing/breathing last longer?
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Btw, “N.A.F.H.” means “Newbie Asking for Help”. I though: “if they don’t get it, they’ll have to, at least, read it”. Nice move isn’t it?
You could probably improve matters by learning to breathe from the diaphragm. I’ll let others who know more about it tell you about that.
But in traditional whistle playing you don’t need to play an entire tune, or part of a tune, or sometimes even a musical phrase, without taking a breath. There is an art to taking breaths in such a way that they won’t interfere with the flow of the tune - but will in fact help the flow.
Breathing (how deep, and where in the tune) is one of the parts of whistling that one learns by trial and error. Sometimes a breath can serve as a rhythmic accent. Sometimes it can demarcate the end of a musical phrase.
Deep strong breathing can be learned and trained. There are exercises. Here are two:
Paranayama: a breathing exercise from the world of yoga. It differentiates between (and strengthens) lower abdominal breathing and upper chest breathing. It’s a good “breath awareness” exercise. There are plenty of references on the web about this, even Youtube videos.
Book Breathing: lay down and place a heavy book on your abdomen. Use your abdominal breathing to lift and lower the book as far as possible, i.e. as high as possible and as low as possible. Try it slowly, and really focus awareness on the feelings in your muscles. Gradually ramp up the speed once in a while.
With a slower tune, like “… Sally Gardens”, find an on-line video of someone playing it and follow them on the sheet-music. Mark where they take their breaths (assuming you like the way they do things) then try taking it from there. As others have said, the “breath-silence” can be as much a part of the music as the notes themselves … or you could take up circular breathing … or the bagpipes
All the tips here are good ones. Breathing is a skill that takes time and practice to develop. From my personal experience playing whistle and flute differ from other wood winds and brass because of the amount of control it takes to play the instrument. Going from trumpet to flute for example is an eye opener, because of the common misconception that it takes more air to play brass. The key then becomes resistance, because the flute has literally NO resistance, while all other wind instruments (including the whistle) have at least some. With the flute, almost all the air is expelled into the open, while when playing the trumpet it is focused down a tube. The whistle is similar, in that it takes far more control to keep from over blowing. I say all that to say: Don’t get frustrated! Each instrument is slightly different, even within the same family! One thing that might help you is to play the same tune on a few different whistles, as they tend to vary from make to make. Speaking only from personal experience once again, beginners may benefit from a whistle with more resistance, so you have something to blow against. this back pressure will help you develop the muscles used to control your breathing.
The exercises listed above are great and I highly recommend both. Another important aspect to breathing, as stated above, is phrasing. Rarely will you have to go extremely long periods without taking a breath. much of the music written for wind instruments like the whistle, take breathing into account. Look or listen for spots in the music where the music comes to a break. Those would be the appropriate places to take a breath. Part of controlling your breathing means getting used to taking quick but deep breaths. That’s not an easy task and will take practice. As stated above, watching other players and mimicking their breathing can be very helpful. just make sure they are setting a good example!
Good luck and remember it will take time and effort!
First of all, I would like to thank you guys for the help.
I read everything you said and I’ll start to train right know.
I believe that the “bad sound” coming out my whistle is caused by my “bad breathing/blowing” too, for I keep trying to economize my air.
Thanks Very Much!!!
(If someone has something else, please post it. As more information as better, not only for me but for other users )
This is a common difficulty for any beginning whistler. There are many different suggestions for improving your breathing skills, but it all really comes down to two things: One is knowing the tune you are playing - you must be able to play in mentally (hear it in your head) to be able to play it on an instrument, and that means knowing the tune and how it should sound. The second thing is practice - and this really is the most important part. Regardless of what you do to improve your breathing and breath control, nothing will help you to master the skills required to play an instrument more than actually playing the instrument.
A bit of advice that I often give to other musicians who are new to their instruments is to “stick it through.” That is, don’t let yourself get tripped up on every mistake you make - just keep playing. I often see people struggling with an instrument or a new tune who will stop playing at every mistake and start over - and this in itself is a mistake. Don’t do this - just play it through. This especially ties in with learning the whistle - and with breath control - because often your mistakes will be caused by improper breathing technique. Playing the tune through, with your mistakes, will help you to develop a more natural sense of when and how to breathe, and also help you to master the rhythm and the tune more quickly. Part of knowing when to breathe is knowing the time signature you are playing in - instead of simply trying to play from one note to the next. If you have to skip something to breathe, then skip it, but don’t lose the time or rhythm. And so, to return to the beginning, you don’t neccessarily need to know how to read music, as long as you know “how the tune goes,” to be able to maintain the rhythm and follow this advice.
Caveat: I am still a beginner, and have no business advising others, but I can tell you what I am doing. The elders will shoot me down if it is wrong…
I had (and have) problems finding where to breath in tunes. Slow tunes are easier if they are also songs and you can listen to to them being sung, because you can imitate the singer’s phrasing (they need to breathe too!).
I have read lots of advice about where to breath, which notes could be shortened or omitted, but my mind does not work that way. What I found really helpful (initially for faster tunes, but now for slower ones too) is a metronome. I much more quickly build a ‘feeling’ for the tune. I can ‘hear’ in my head where I need to be and find that I am taking breaths - probably by shortening or omitting those same notes - but without the need to understand what I am doing. The rhythm of the tune ‘takes over’, if that makes sense.
I also find that recording myself helps - I can hear more clearly what my breathing is doing to the tune, and hopefully correct my mistakes. It is a slow process, but it seems to be working for me.
That’s not really so. The perceived backpressure of flute with a correct, focused embouchure can actually be higher than that of most whistles at the equivalent pitch. The absolute air requirement of a whistle may be lower than flute, particularly in the first register. But low whistles with a large windway, for example, may take quite a bit more air and have less resistance than the equivalent flute.
Well, that’s true of the whistle, too, via the window. Very little goes down the tube. Different resistance and backpressure come from the specific voicing and the behavior of the air reed, and the fact that whistle geometry is fixed at the fipple and can’t follow the pitch as on a flute.
Sure, there’s no harm in experimenting. But it’s up to the whistle player to adjust breathing technique to the whistle, not vice-versa, and beginners shouldn’t hop around from whistle to whistle. Differences in whistle resistance are really far too slight to have much influence on muscle development and control, which needs so be approximately the same for any whistle. But yes, whistles with higher backpressure can be more forgiving and require fewer embouchure tricks.
When it comes to trad tunes, there are few “written for wind instruments” (or written at all, per se). Many common tune settings tend to be strongly influenced by pipes or fiddle - both of which are continuous and require no breath stops. Hence the character of many tunes as continuous runs of notes.
In fact, going for long periods without a breath on whistle or flute is common, and a necessary skill to develop to maintain the flow and “keep it going”. Ideally, you should be able to get through an entire A part or B part of a dance tune at tempo without taking a breath. Once you can do that, the choice of inserting closer breath points is a matter of convenience and aesthetics, not necessity. In practice, of course, the complex interaction between stamina, phrasing, breathing and tempo is a part of performance. At which point, the kinds of considerations Brother Steve mentioned above come into play.
Often there are no overt breaks to look for. So you need to create your own rhythmic skips, as AvienMael says. You’re right, that quick deep breaths are important, often in the space of an eighth-note. But, for example, places in the tune that can accommodate 2 or 3 beat rolls are often good spots to allow you literally more breathing room.
Sorry, I’m not trying to give you a hard time here. But when it comes to giving advice to beginners, it’s good be fussy about details.
There are times when I’ll be asked to play a song or hymn I’ve not heard. I’ll get the sheet music and play through it. But then I’ll go on YouTube and listen to somebody sing it. Nearly always, the points where the singer takes breaths creates a phrasing different that I would imagine just looking at the sheet music. So I mark these breathing spots into the music (using a comma in the usual way) so that when I play it I get the phrasing right. I do this even when I’m playing the song on uilleann pipes. It’s more musical when the pipes appear to take breaths too.
If I don’t have a YouTube reference, sometimes I can find music with the words included and I can infer the breathing spots from the text.
In hymns in particular oftentimes the phrasing of the words seems very much at odds with the phrasing implied by the melody.
It’s predominantly songs that have built-in spaces for breathing, partly because singers need it and partly because it’s necessary to have breaks in the lyrics in order to preserve meaning. The above-mentioned ‘Sally Gardens’ for example has very obvious phrases, so obvious that it’d be easy to overemphasise the breaks between them, in my opinion.
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But when it comes to giving advice to beginners, it’s good be fussy about details.