Breathing and Breathing techniques on Oboe

Breathing is no new concept to even non-musicians -- you must breathe in order to play a wind instrument afterall. How to breathe is something that even non begginners have to review time and time again. 
So, naturally, as I had my oboe lesson this week, my professor reminded me of how to breathe. And I did learn some helpful new things about breathing, but for me and those reading it, it won't hurt to cover the basics one more time. 

Now, for any wind instrument or voice, it is obvious one needs good air support. The most common mistake begginers make is breathing with their shoulders. Take a deep breath. Did your shoulders go up? If yes, you're doing it wrong.  Breaths should make the stomach, rib cage, and lungs expand. Pushing out the air should make your stomach feel tight . In his Oboe Art & Method, Martin Schuring points out that "The idea [of breahing] is to expand the torso -- to make it wider, not taller. If breathing makes you taller, reexamine your posture..." (7). Something my oboe professor (Jan Eberle) has helpfully pointed out as a test for proper breathing is to place three fingers spaced out on your sternum. Take a breath. The three fingers should not move.   

Another important aspect to breathing is the diaphragm.

A lot of music students know the diaphragm plays an important part in in the breathing process, but, as I embarassingly discovered this week in my lesson, the function and location of the diaphragm is unclear. As shown in the diagram above, the diaphragm is right before the lungs and rib cage. A lot of people think like I all to recently did, believing that the diaphragm was beneath the stomach or at least farther down from its actual location. The function of the diagphragm is to push the air out from the bottom of the lungs, which uses all the air in the lungs instead of the air in just the top half of the lungs -- using only that top half of the lungs is much less effective and what is internally happening during "shoulder breathing".

Now, just as important as breathing in on oboe is breathing out -- this involves using a technique called puffing. This is a technique most common and essential to playing the oboe. Puffing involves breathing out small puffs of air during the course of the piece. The structure of the oboe and the reed creates a build up of air that must be exhaled when playing. The puffing technique is a better alternative to breathing in and out at once.

Something new I learned in my lesson this week is that you have to breathe in less than you think, and you have a lot more air stored in the lungs than you think. My professor demonstrated an exercise to exemplify this. Breathe out. Then hold a note on your oboe for as long as you can. She can sustain a note for 45 second after emptying her immediate air supply. She even noted that when you breathe out before playing, tone production is often better -- you use a lot more support when you have less air, which supports the note much better. 

Another last point on breathing is PLAN. Plan out a breathing schedule in whatever piece, etude, excerpt, etc you are playing. This goes for any instrument. (In fact, and I speak from experience as a pianist for 11 years, non wind instruments should even breathe and plan out where they are going to. But that is another rant for another time.) A breathing plan helps you stay consistent with your breaths as well as allows you to figure out beforehand where the best places to breathe in and out are. I have also found that a breathing plan helps during an audition or performance, because I get very nervous and want to take more breaths, which messes up phrasing, tone, etc. With a breath plan written in, I can't forget and I know where to breathe. 

After reviewing and learning more about breathing techniques, I was left very enthusiastic to practice. I wanted to test my breath limits. I wanted to get right to practicing and marvel over the improvement in tone production. Writing this post, I feel the enthusiasm all over again. Breathing is of course a very crucial element to being a musician, and I think sometimes we, myself included, forget to review the basics. And sometimes when you do, you'll find out something you didn't know before.

Works Cited:

Wikipedia 


 Schuring, Martin. Oboe Art & Method. New York. Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

"Thoracic Diaphragm." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. 27 Aug. 2012. Web. 18 Sept, 2012.