Breath Control

[Tim Coffey]

Being a drumline/battery guy myself, the need for timed breath control is not an important consideration.

But you brass players, who have to move around fast and constantly exhale to play - when your lungs are currently demanding an inhale RIGHT NOW because of all that motion - have my utmost respect of your aerobic abilities.

Edited September 5, 2008 by Tim Coffey

[Medeabrass]

The first time I push all the way through the show, I started to pee myself and I had to stop playing briefly. Lesson learned: Take one pee right after the last rehearsal before the show and a second pee just before the bus leaves (and another if I could find a port o pottie at the warmup site).

[taters]

Yeah , you gotta learn and practice breath control. When you are running next time try breathing in for four and out for four as you run. Also do something to create back pressure as if you were playing a horn. We would breath out with a shhhhh sound. No need to tell you that usually finished. You do something as simple and non noticeable as pursing your lips into an armature when you breath out to create the back pressure. When I marched we did running blocks and I am sure they must still do some form of this today. Everyone runs in step and with the same timing and everyone must learn to control their breathing. Even more so today where there is much much more running around the field

[liebot]

It's all about the slow, controlled breathing when you're not playing. Those breaks are the best time to recover and set yourself up for the rest of the show.

[Gibbles]

Yep, slow controlled breathing is the key. In through the nose, out through the mouth, long, deep breaths. Slow down your heart rate and bring your breathing under control.

[TerriTroop]

Not a brass player, but a choral director here. While the physical demand is not quite the same, the principle is:

The whole barrel of the body expands and contracts with maximum air use. Most people tend to breathe into their upper lungs and rarely use the whole body, and it's easy to forget the other half of the breathing mechanism in our day to day work. Try focusing your mind on the back part of your barrel and expand/contract it. Your diaphragm will move more and your lower lungs will fill more. SLOOOW breathing, as others have mentioned, is good. For singing, at some point we have to work on quick "catch breaths" into that lower space. That requires a BIG intake of air volume in a very short amount of time, so nose breathing is out at that point.

Visually speaking, when I'm dealing with singers I try to have them breath low enough that their shoulders hardly move. I don't want to see the breath, as a director. (or hear it) Some have mentioned in through nose out through mouth. With singers that doesn't work as we have to open the resonators and aperture of the mouth in a certain way to prep the sound. I'm not sure if that translate to marching brass or not.

Ok, enough about breathing. I get to teach that all day in just a little while.

[MikeD]

So I don't know if this is the right forum to post this on, but either way... I was wondering what other marchers do to get through the show and not run out of breath.

One of these things usually helps... (my daughter and I in Bermuda in 2006)....

[Dave]

I could give better information in person watching how you work, but some general stuff: Stay relaxed, no matter what you're doing. Easier said than done of course, but it's a matter of trying to change the way your mind works through building habits. When you're marching and playing your brain will tend to drive your body into modes that make sense when running but make playing rather difficult. When you're practicing you just have to practice a certain mindset as well, focused yet relaxed. Like I said, easier said than done, and easier to demonstrate than describe. Lots of air is definitely key--but avoid toys and other gimmicks. I know this puts me at odds with a lot of other people here because some brass instructor they really trust has sold them on something like the AirMax breather or PowerLung or something like that, but the problem with all these toys is that they begin to focus us on methods of measuring our response that have nothing to do with how we actually play the horn. Search for both of those names in the Brass forum and you will find more discussion and information on why I and others recommend you avoid using them. Some toys can be useful in a private lesson environment and sometimes something as simple as a small piece of PVC tube fits into large group rehearsal needs, but too often these become targeted towards immediate results without the players learning the underlying principle and thusly either not really improving their playing or developing new bad habits.

[cowtown]

I still use condoms and I love putting on a show, so that’s not really a problem for me

Oh, he said breath control

Never mind

[Shannon98]

I remember when i marched there were a few breathing exercises the hornline had to do. alot of the exercises were stretch our lungs. From what I understand these exercises comes from the former tuba player for the chicago symphony. I can't remember his name but part of what made him impressive was that he only had one lung. To the point. We had to start blocks of with different techniques of holding our breathe. You would take your breath for four counts in or sometimes only on the fourth count. Then we would start in a standing poistion holding the breathe. then have to exhale after so many counts. Ususally building your counts as you get more use to it. Then we take our breath in and have to crouch down and rotate our body around in the crouched position. This would help stretch our lungs more because the air has to move around in the crouched position.

The other thing that I found very helpful was the field goal post runs. just before we would rehearse a demanding part of the show in which we had to be loud, Larry M. would have us run to the furthest field goal post and back and then immediately run the demanding part of the show. This taught us how to control our breath and sound. It seemed to work. We had a loud show in 98.

Shannon