Author: Oboe Craig
Date: 2011-02-24 14:13
Robin,
That description of overfilling your lungs and breathing through a staple gave me a flashback to childhood asthma...
and then later when I went into a drug study at Walter Reed Army Hospital for a new asthma drug.
They did tidal volume studies where I really had to breath in and exhale as extremely as possible. Then they'd induce an attack and repeat the measures, placebo or not.
And the oboe connection was that was kind of how I used to feel playing oboe, reeds way too hard and requiring biting to work.
Problem was, I got a nice tone and lots of positive feedback about that kept me doing very bad habits for years.
Flipping forward to graduate study, and this at a time I was teaching oboe at conservatory, my last teacher finally got me to really understand relaxation techniques, and since then, for the past 25 years endurance has not been a problem. Lighter reeds, forward embouchure, no biting and no more than 1/2 a lungful of air taken in.
The real problem is getting the co2 out of the blood, and that requires exhaling with practice to quickly exhale and refresh 1/2 a lungful.
Provided the player is not fighting a hard or flat reed, I think the sensation of fatigue is mostly related to the co2 buildup in the blood.
An excecise that helped a lot on oboe actually came from flute studies where the goal was to move the leaves on a fern in the flute studio from 6 - 8 feet away. Its very different from how we move wind for oboe, however, it had a really positive carry-over benefit related to the quick exhale needed to clean up the blood.
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