The Virtuoso Breather

I’ve mentioned before that I’m not a fan of most breathing exercises. The reason for this is that it seems to me that people who do a lot of breathing “calisthenic” type exercises tend to have tight sounds. If you’ve been reading TuBlog for a while you know axiom number two (The Seven Axioms of Teaching) is always play with your best sound.  
 
Try this: go back to the beginning of this blog post and read it aloud. What do you notice? Now, if you've got an instrument nearby play something and notice your breathing. How is conversational breathing different from breathing as you play?

In a conversation your breathing is shallow, slow, and imprecise. Hopefully, when you play your breathing is deep, full, relaxed, efficient, and exact. A lot of players breathe conversationally as they play. Our breathing should be more like when you’ve been running sprints than conversational. As low brass players, we need to be breath athletes, a virtuoso breather. Breathing in context must be practiced in the same way you practice technical passages of notes.  
 
Here’s an exercise that I think is useful. Play it in every key, any range, all dynamic levels, and any tempo. The lower/faster you play it, the more effective the exercise will be.  
 
Here are the rules: 

1. Play with a metronome.  
2. All notes must be rhythmically accurate in time.  
3. All notes must be full-value
4. Only take the written breath. 
5. As the tempo increases, remove breaths as needed. 
6. As you slow the tempo down, add breaths as needed. 
7. Repeat the exercise as many times as you can and maintain note accuracy and breathing efficiency. 

 
Euphonium 

Tuba

Add this exercise to your routine and I think you’ll be pleased with the results. What do you do to work on breathing?  
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Thanks for reading!