Author: DougR
Date: 2018-09-03 18:46
This is a great thread! I routinely have to remind myself to take full, rather than partial, breaths when I play--so I'm constantly trying to re-train my muscles and also my concept of breathing, to avoid running out of air before the end of the phrase. This is a great thread because it's full of reminders for me of what to do.
First of all, the diaphragm is not a muscle, it is a membrane (similar to the Saran Wrap you put over a bowl of mashed potatoes, or the balloon Bob talks about). It has no muscular function. So you can't 'use' it, because it's not under your conscious control.
What you can use is the musculature of breathing, (the suggestion above of checking Youtube is good; a tuba player named Arnold Jacobs--who only had one lung, imagine playing tuba with only one lung, it's hard enough with 2!!--I think has some material up on breathing. Also trumpeter Jerome Callet addresses breathing pretty thoroughly.)
It's SO easy to over-think this stuff. Youtube videos help.
Yehuda Gilad, the renowned clarinetist/teacher, recommends 'breathing INTO the small of the back.' You take a full breath with this in mind, you notice the belly expands outward, so do the ribs. The shoulders do NOT go up, but the ribs definitely lift and expand outward; the diaphragm, being a membrane, does its thing but you don't control it so it doesn't figure into the equation at all.
To put the stored-up air back into the clarinet, Gilad uses a hollow coffee stirrer, has the student exhale into the coffee stirrer, using some pressure (the clarinet requires pressurized air, unlike say the flute, which requires more gentle exhalation). The muscles that come into play when exhaling pressurized air through a coffee-stirrer, THOSE are the muscles to use when putting the air into the clarinet.
Incidentally, Gilad has a 'play with a pro' lesson on youtube, I'm told it's a very good investment of your time and money. (You can re-view lessons you pay for so it's a good long term investment.)
Anonymoose, when you say 'difficult if not impossible,' are you talking about discomfort? Or rather some more medical issue? I have found that increasing the depth of my breathing over time can cause discomfort at first, but (like using any set of under-used muscles) the discomfort decreases over time, as ability to play longer phrases increases.
(A lot of what I've written has already been said, above, in different ways; but I'm trying to set this stuff down, partly for myself, as clearly and simply as possible; as I say, breathing technique is really easy to over-think. I hope this is useful.)
|
|
The Clarinet BBoard
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
