Correct Breathing - Trumpet Solutions

Hello guys this is Wayne Cameron again recording another episode in my YouTube channel about problem solving for the trumpet. I want to remind you that I'm retired from playing so you won't see me screeching around on double high C's and all this kind of stuff. This is just for people who need help with certain types of problems. If you can't remember last time you missed a note then you probably don't need to watch any of this. But if you have trouble with certain things like a tight throat, lack of endurance, double triple tonguing, those types of things then this is this is a site for you. Today I'm going to talk about the correct way to take a breath and how to blow it out on the trumpet. First of all the prevailing idea with many websites and teachers is that when you breathe you breathe from your diaphragm. Well I know what they're meaning but they're saying it wrong. You can't breathe except from your diaphragm. Saying breathing from your diaphragm implies to a young student that there are several ways to take a breath. Well that's really not true. What they should say is breathe low, very low. The first thing you have to do is you have to relax your abs. If you play the trumpet or any brass instrument or actually any wind instrument actually when you take a breath your abs have to be relaxed. Having a six-pack playing a wind instrument is not very good for you. You may be good on the beach but it's not very good playing a wind instrument. So you relax your abs. You don't just stick your stomach out like your little kid trying to tell your parents that you've had enough to eat. You just relax your abs to where they're very very relaxed. Then you breathe from down here from the bottom around your navel. Now you can take a shallow chest breath up here which is what a lot of people do because it makes them feel like they're full because they see the chest rise up. But you need to expand in the bottom like that. Now your body already knows how to do this. Most people talk about breathing that like breathing is something that you only learn to do when you play a wind instrument. But your body already knows how to do this. So take advantage of what's natural. Now what can cause you some problems is when you try to breathe every molecule of air in the universe. See when I take a breath and right here I feel full. I can put more air on top. I can do this and fill up the top. The problem with that is it makes you tight. It makes your throat tight. It puts the air up here instead of down here. Some people say oh if you got to fill all in the back and expand well that's fine I guess. It's been my experience over 50 years of teaching with all my students and myself that breathing for the bottom nice and relaxed is how you take a good breath. You have to practice that because you can live without breathing that way. You don't have to breathe that way to live. Now when you fall asleep if you watch somebody sleeping lying on their back they breathe like that from the bottom. It's natural. Totally natural. But we learn at a very young age we don't have to breathe like that when we're conscious. So we breathe shallow most of the time. Now there are two ways to get the air out. Now watch very closely at my face. You can blow like this or you can blow like this. Now which way do you blow? Which one's correct? Obviously the first way is correct. You blow like this. Now when I do workshops sometimes I'll take a candle and I'll light a candle. I'll talk about taking a breath. I'll light a candle. I'll pick out somebody in the class and I'll put a $20 bill on the table and I'll go up close to them with a candle and I'll say if you can blow that candle out you can have that $20. Well you've never seen somebody blow it in your life. They don't even think about how to breathe. They just naturally breathe down low and they blow the way you do to play the trumpet. That's just the way it is. They don't have to think about it or anything. They just do it correctly to start with. Now to play a wind instrument, brass instrument in particular, it has to be refined a little bit obviously. But to get the air out that's the way you do it. Like blowing out a candle at a distance. If you feel what's happening here you'll see the abdominal muscles are squeezing the lungs blowing the air at a constant rate. Now another concern that many young students have is they try to save air. They'll get a good breath then they begin to play and then they try to save air so they can play as long as as they can. Well there's no musical reason to do that. When you save air it causes you to get all tight and constricted up in here. A good concept that I teach and has been very successful is support and that's blowing out. Support means you're supporting the tone. When you blow out you're trying to get the rid of your air as fast as possible. Now on a trumpet you can't do that because you're playing to a mouthpiece with a pinhole. But the concept of getting rid of your air as fast as possible is very good for you and will help you stay relaxed in your upper chest. Now I'm going to do probably two more series on breathing but this is the one about taking a breath where to put the breath and how to get it out correctly without getting all choked up. Now my next one on breathing will be on how to solve a tight throat. Hope to see you then.