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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000043.txt from 2005/12

From: "Miriam Williams" <mwquacker@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [DR-L] Length of breath - oboe
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 21:55:16 -0500

It's not holding the breath that gets to me, it's the back-pressure buildup
and stale air needing to be released. I think some people just naturally
handle it better than others, although I'm not against trying to teach (or
learn) better endurance and use of air.

Miriam

----- Original Message -----
From: <PhilFrei@-----.com>
To: <doublereed@-----.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2005 11:54 AM
Subject: [DR-L] Length of breath - oboe

> Hi -
>
> I saw a video a short while ago about dolphins (something like "Robin
> Williams talks to Dolphins") and in it there was one fellow, a young
> American
> scientist, who could swim with them, underwater, for something like 4
> minutes on one
> breath. We've also heard things about sponge divers and such. But the fact
> that this guy seemed like just a very intelligent, but otherwise average
> caucasian, one who didn't come from a tradition where such things are
> learned at a
> young age, makes me think we could probably play oboe without breathing
> for
> considerably longer than 20 or 30 seconds (my usual topping out point).
> After all,
> swimming is a lot more vigorous, and probably requires more oxygen than
> blowing air through a tiny hole.
>
> Yes, one can learn circular breathing, but if one could even approach the
> commonly stated limit of 2 minutes, there wouldn't be that many situations
> where
> one would need to do the circular thing. I'm finding, upon testing this,
> that
> in one instance I was able to reach a minute, and am wondering if others
> have
> tried pushing how long they can play on a breath, and what success they
> have
> had.
>
> - Phil Freihofner
>
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