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RE: Breath Support

Author: Margaret Copeland
Date: 1999-07-26 13:45

You can try reading some information from Arnold Jacob on how the breath works with a wind instrument. This is a web page with a transcript of his lectures, http://www.dana.edu/~trumpet/pedagogy/jacobs.html. My current favorite breath and tone builder (besides Yoga) is this excercise. I set my metronome to 64 and get out my tuner. I start on my lowest and easiest-to-play note and go from ppp to fff in six beats keeping the needle on the tuner centered on the note. I then go fff to ppp for six beats keeping the needle centered. This is hard to do ! Then I play the note at an ff for 20 beats. I then go up the scale chromatically, doing this on each note, and go to my lowest note and back to where I started. This takes a while but you'll see marked improvement by doing it each day for a week. You'll find that when you first start that you'll probably start notes either flat or sharp on the first breath and then you'll settle the note on the tuner. After doing this excercise for a few days, you'll be able to get the note in tune immediately. This excercise enforces good breathing because you can't do it right if your breath isn't well supported and moving at a steady rate.

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