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An Observation On Air Support

Author: Exiawolf
Date: 2018-07-07 12:21

After a productive practice session where I’ve regained a lot of my chops after taking a short break to enjoy the start of summer, I realized something about air support that I wanted to share with others.

For the longest time I equated “supported air” with tensing up in my stomach/abdominal region and blowing hard. At some point I realized that this was not producing the sound I wanted so I looked to change my thought process.

From there I focused less on the blowing hard and more on just tensing what I thought was the diaphragm. This helped a little bit, however I found I actually had lots of trouble on altissimo notes in general. I thought I was biting, but it turns out that was not the case.

Fast forward 4 years and I read something on the board that said something to the effect of “just relax and blow there’s no science formula” and realized that just in general I was trying too hard. After practicing just blowing in and out and focusing on the relaxation of my air stream, my sound has improved ten fold (rounded out, warmed up). I’m not advocating for slow or unfocused air (the air you put in should still have speed and high tongue position), however if you’re struggling with achieving a warmer more relaxed tone, then perhaps “relaxing” may just be the way to go.

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