Stamina!

[bradster]

Hi folks , Im just wondering about how to build up stamina.
At the moment after 6 months learning , Im lucky to get through a 2 part jig twice without stopping and I'm dizzy after it.
I need a breather before I can barge into another tune.
Is it worth deliberately foucsing on this ( and any tips for doing so ? ) or does it get better with time?

Thanks for the help,

Brad

[Congratulations]

Stamina will improve with time, because your embouchure will get tighter and your lungs will get stronger. You might try breathing excercizes, but really as your embouchure gets better, the issue will begin to resolve itself.

[Loren]

I'd suggest that you may A) Not be taking as full breaths as you might, each time you breathe, and/or B) Not be taking breaths as often as you need to. A more developed embouchure will help as well, but that takes time. These other issues you can address directly.

Playing at a reasonable pace, through several sets of tunes, really shouldn't require much in terms of stamina - I've seen plenty of "Old" players around here who wander into a session practically wheezing, and then have little difficulty playing straight through more tunes than you can shake your flute at. Really, playing though tunes shouldn't require any more stamina than having a conversation at the pub.

Work on taking the fullest possible breath at each breathing opportunity (breath in faster and deeper), work on your loooooong tones, which will improve both your breathing and emobouchure, and actively work on taking breaths more frequently, where apropriate, during each section of each tune.

If you're practicing your ornaments, take the deepest breath you can, and then work your rolls at a leisurely pace, in succession, from low to high and back down. If you still have air left in your lungs, finish that roll on E, cran on the bottom D (of you know how, if not skip that step), and then stand on it, playing a hard D as long as you possibly can, until you completely out of air. Take a huge breath, and repeat. Do this for at least 15 minutes a day, trying to extend how far up and back down you can go playing strongly. At first you may have difficulty getting from the bottom E roll, up through the first B and back down (avoid the temptation to rush the rolls, since the primary objective is to improve them), with some practice, you'll be able to work through two octaves and back down to the bottom D, plus hang out there for awhile to boot.

Try it for a few weeks, I think you'll be surprised at the improvement you'll see in your "stamina"

Loren

[bradster]

Thanks guys , great advice.
Good breathing is a big thing for me!
As a matter of interest , could anyone say how often they breathe , in general?
Say at a medium pace in the first 8 bars of a jig , would you need to catch a breath at all or would you be able to blast on and repeat it?
On recordings its sometimes hard to tell.

[monkey587]

Thanks guys , great advice.
Good breathing is a big thing for me!
As a matter of interest , could anyone say how often they breathe , in general?
Say at a medium pace in the first 8 bars of a jig , would you need to catch a breath at all or would you be able to blast on and repeat it?
On recordings its sometimes hard to tell.

Breathe as much as you need to. I'll often inhale one to three times in that much time. There's a really great player around here who inhales almost once a bar, keeping his lungs filled and playing with a lot of force... He sounds like a pack of wolves chasing you. IMO, playing a long time without taking breaths neglects the most interesting side of flute playing, the phrasing.

I think it's really important to try to breathe before you need to breathe. As a rule of thumb for a while at least, try keeping your lungs above (what feels like) 50% capacity and see what you can do with it.

[cocusflute]

Loren said

If you're practicing your ornaments, take the deepest breath you can

Never is this true. Never would you take the deepest breath you can while playing the flute- anymore than you would while talking. Even for the purpose of practising ornaments. Sorry Loren, but you are dead wrong. Seamus Egan said that playing the flute properly requires no more breath than talking. Bryan Byrne said it best when he said "Sometimes you sip but sometimes you have to gulp." But it is never the deepest breath you can take.
If you are running out of breath when you play it is because you are not sipping at appropriate places within the tune.
Another problem, which will go away with time, is that you are probably playing the tunes so slowly that you need to breathe more than you would if you were able to play faster. As you gain more experience you'll find you naturally speed up and need to take fewer breaths.
Parrick Olwell, who has a fantastic tone, said it best: "Not hard work- easy work."

[Lucas]

Loren said

If you're practicing your ornaments, take the deepest breath you can

Never is this true. Never would you take the deepest breath you can while playing the flute- "

I'm sorry, but this is ALWAYS true. Taking a deep breath does not mean you have to fill your lungs until they burst, but it enables you to breath very, very quickly. Just try it, take a breath in the same way as if somebody just sneaked up on you and see how fast you can breath and how far down in your lungs the air went. That's taking a *deep* breath.

Luc

[lixnaw]

I don't really know where everyone has his stamina, but mine's right in my belly.
I've developed a good bit of tension there, while the rest of my body is more relaxed than before.

[rama]

"breath control" is the key

[GaryKelly]

"breath control" is the key

Big breaths!
Yeth, and I'm only thixthteen!

[Congratulations]

"breath control" is the key

Big breaths!
Yeth, and I'm only thixthteen!

You are a naughty one, GaryKelly.

[Loren]

Loren said

If you're practicing your ornaments, take the deepest breath you can

Never is this true. Never would you take the deepest breath you can while playing the flute- anymore than you would while talking. Even for the purpose of practising ornaments. Sorry Loren, but you are dead wrong.

FWIW to those reading this thread, I didn't devise the exercise listed above off the top of my head - it's an exercise that was given to me by a reputable teacher of Ir Trad, a professional trad flute player with unimpeachable tone and technique. The only thing I added was the cran on D. So I'll leave the reader to decide on the merits of the exercise.

Honestly David, I'm shocked that you would find the suggestion that learning to take deep breaths is beneficial, to be"dead wrong.

Egan said that playing the flute properly requires no more breath than talking. Bryan Byrne said it best when he said "Sometimes you sip but sometimes you have to gulp." But it is never the deepest breath you can take.

The point I was making, is that folks who are relatively new to playing the flute typically don't know how to take full breaths. They are most often not familiar with "belly breathing" if they don't come from a woodwind or singing background, and so they stuggle along taking woefully shallow breaths, from the top of the chest, and naturally end up gasping for air and running out too soon, particularly when they still have an underdeveloped embouchure to boot.

So, the idea is, you practice taking the deepest breaths you can, while doing an exercise, so that it becomes more automatic to take fuller breaths while playing. I'm not suggesting one pause and do some sort of yogic deep breathing during tunes, nor am I suggesting that good flute playing demands always taking the same amount of air into one's lungs between each phrase in a tune, but one must learn to breathe deeper and more fully, and learn to do so more quickly. I honestly don't see how you can, or why you would, dispute this? It's part and parcel of learning good breath support and control, and I don't see how someone is going to develop excellent breath support and control without learning how to take full breaths?

If you are running out of breath when you play it is because you are not sipping at appropriate places within the tune.

Certainly this can be one problem, but beginners, even given reasonable places, and numbers of breaths to take, often have difficulty because they're barely inhaling each time they "sip" and they've not yet learned to "gulp" (although I don't particularly care for that term.) Combine this with a fairly open embouchure aperture, which takes much time to improve.......

Another problem, which will go away with time, is that you are probably playing the tunes so slowly that you need to breathe more than you would if you were able to play faster. As you gain more experience you'll find you naturally speed up and need to take fewer breaths.

Which will takes months if not years.

Or you could solve the problem in a week or two by simply improving your ability to take in more air, more quickly, which will be working your Diaphragm in the process, so you're likely to find your breath support improving and thus your tone, control, and volume improving as well. All of that last as a more or less natural by product of learning to take fuller breaths.

Parrick Olwell, who has a fantastic tone, said it best: "Not hard work- easy work."

Well yes, it becomes quite easy, just as running 5 miles at a 7 minute per mile pace, while having a pleasant conversation with one's running partner can become quite easy when you've worked up to running the same distance at a 6 minute per mile pace or faster, but one doesn't start out at that level, and neither does one get there by simply stopping every time one gets winded in the beginning. Nor do great singers or great Boehm flute players devolop their abilities by focusing on simply sipping air more often. Certainly we all agree that, as you say, learning to breathe at apropriate places in tunes is important, but to say that learning to breathe fully from the diaphragm is not at least equally important is, well.... absurd, my friend.


Happy Thanksgiving By the way, to all who are celebrating the holiday today.



Loren

[Bart Wijnen]

I fully agree with Loren.

As I say to my pupils/students: "the hardest work is not the blowing, it's the breathing". Two colleagues of mine, who are playing saxophone, tried to learn the flute for doubling in their bigband.

They failed........not enough breath.....

Bart

[Congratulations]

Two colleagues of mine, who are playing saxophone, tried to learn the flute for doubling in their bigband.

They failed........not enough breath.....

As a sax-to-flute convert myself, I fully sympathize.

[bradhurley]

I had weekly voice lessons for five years from a professional opera singer and Alexander Technique teacher, and she always admonished me to take a normal breath, not a deep one, before speaking or singing, or taking a phrase on the flute.

However, I think a "normal" breath isn't quite the same thing for an opera singer or a flute player as it is for someone who doesn't do those sorts of things. Kevin Crawford took up swimming when he was shedding all that weight he used to carry, and I remember hearing him say that the extra lung capacity he developed really helped his flute playing. Certainly you don't want to breathe shallowly, but you also don't want to be gulping down gallons of air either.

However, I think the focus shouldn't be on how much air you take in but rather on how you let it out. That's really where "breath control" comes in. Once you train yourself to support the air column with your abdominal muscles and control the outgoing airflow with your windpipe and your embouchure, you can actually pull off quite long and powerful phrases with barely half a lungful of air. You can also put plenty of strong pulses into a phrase without breathing in at all.