Ocarinas United

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Awsome post Moonsyne.

Just to add a bit to the throat constriction section. Another way to exerpience the feeling of opening the throaght is to take the tube from a roll of tissue, and try breathing through it (with your lips around it). It seems it's impossible to constrict the throat when doing this. Leaning back a bit can really emphacise this too. As a trumpet player, I can't help stress enough how important this section is to proper playing of a wind instrument.

Gerald

Circular breathing
A technique used by players of some wind instruments to produce a continuous tone without break. It is accomplished by breathing in through the nose while blowing through the mouth using the air stored in the cheeks. The person inhales fully and begins to exhale and blow. When the lungs are nearly empty, the last volume of air is blown into the mouth, and the cheeks are inflated with this air. Then, while still blowing this last bit of air out by allowing the cheeks to deflate, the person must very quickly fill the lungs by inhaling through the nose prior to running out of the air in the mouth. If done correctly, by the time the air in the mouth is nearly exhausted the person can begin to exhale from the lungs once more, ready to repeat the process again.

i wonder if anyone tried this with a ocarina?i can circular breath for a bit but i don't know yet if it works well with an ocarina hehe^^And i am waiting atm for my ocarina of stlocerinas. And i can already fluttertongue asswel(yust a technique i found myself while whistling didn't know what its called hehe )

Circular breathing is easy enough to practice.
Just see how long you can play one continuous note.

I try it once every time I play.

circular breathing isn't really intended for an instrument like the oc, I've done it a few times with my practice chanter (bagpipes) and can keep it up fairly well.

Great post moonsyne!

Great post, gave me lots of info and I now know what circular breathing is. I knew about it before, just not how to do it. Good stuff, good stuff.

good stuff dude.

stickified.

Good stuff, couldnt have explained it better! Im sure this will help people learn about breathing but I already knew from band =D

Great guide.

Breath control is very important when playing any wind instruments, so a guide explaining those new to such instruments is very important.

Oh, and speaking of circular breathing, doing it on an Ocarina, which really requires little breath, is one thing. I've heard one of the teachers I've been learning from hold a pitch for several minutes. On a Tuba.

Th fluttertonguing canbe done with both the tip of the tongue(rolling your "r"s) and with your uvula, which I primarly use for trill notes.

Great post! I have trouble with my new soprano. I take in too much air, and by the time I use it, I need to exhale just so I don't pass out. I guess I should take smaller and more frequent breaths...lol

I think that some attention should be paid to inhaling also. For example, when you inhale you should not raise your shoulders when you take in the breath. It tightens the throat and makes it impossible to properly control the expulsion of air from the lungs. It also causes a few problems in flute playing that I am unsure as to whether they would or would not translate to ocarina playing (bad-sounding vibrato, grunting noises when you play, and bad tone development on the flute).

Never take a breath through your nose unless you're doing circular breathing. If you're going to breathe correctly before you play, you should open your mouth to an "o" shape and pull the air in with minimal sound (if you're making too much noise you've either got asthma or you're constricting your throat). This breath should feel like you're filling your insides up from the stomach up and not take much time. Learn to breath in quickly and quietly without moving the shoulders and make sure it's a deep breath. Pretend like you're sight-reading in front of hundreds of people and don't know when the next spot to breathe will be (better to have too much air than not enough).

Now, keep in mind I'm a flute player but all of that sounds like it can be applied to any wind instrument.

I think it would be nice if someone listed some exercises to help improve breathing techniques.
I for one would really like to know some
I'm getting one of those things you have to blow in until all the plastic balls go up(no idea what they are called).
Anyways they're for increasing lung capacity, wich is always a good thing!

for one exercise is take a regular balloon with no air in it. Take the BIGGEST breath and blow into the balloon, do this one more time inside the balloon. Then let the air from the balloon go into your lungs fast. You will feel a pressure inside your lungs. that means it is working ;D

i don't know what do you understand for "circular breathing", but it has nothing to do about "how long can you hold a note..." and neither is easy...
i've seen this only once, playing an instrument known in basque country as "alboka", i'll try to explain:

first, and the most important (and weird, since we are speaking about wind instruments), you don't need the lungs!
now there are two parts:

all you have to do is to push the wind on your mouth with the tongue to the instrument helped out by the chubby cheek muscles (i don't know if this is the correct way to call these muscles) WHILE you are taking air to mouth from the nose (this is the meaning of "circular breathing").
it's hard to learn to do it correctly, and very hard to get a constant air stream out of your mouth. after you master this you can breathe from nose normally while doing this.
the other side comes to the instrument: you can't do this with any instrument, as it requires a specific resistance, i mean the amount of air you need to play the instrument. usually, these type of instrument needs quite much amount of air, while the "alboka" i mentioned before doesn't... the transversal flute for example has no resistance since you blow out of the pipe...
the fact is, you have to get a balance between your instrument's resistance and the air stream out of the mouth: the more air your instrument needs, the less resistance, so the faster you have to blow, keeping the balance, and breathing, all in one...

now you can try, but i'm not so sure you can apply this technique to the ocarina... maybe on soprano ocarinas, or very small ones...

it's hard to get the hand of it... and (in my opinion) way too hard to do it with a, for example, twelve hole tenor ocarina....