You’re four weeks away. Still breathing? Good – keep it up – but only where you plan it!
Now’s the time to make sure that ANYWHERE you think you might need a breath is marked in. Now Bach has a reputation regarding breathing among flutists. Make no mistake – Bach (and other composers represented in New England, All State, and District Festival audition repertoire) knew what he was doing regarding breathing. Only thing is, he was probably writing for a top performer with extremely well-developed breath control (he was believed to have been writing the sonatas for one specific flutist). So yes – there are good places to breathe, and acceptable places to breathe – and there are very bad places to breathe. Your first job is to mark all the good places to breathe and find enough additional places to ensure that you absolutely will not: 1) collapse on the floor; 2) breathe in an unplanned spot; 3) sacrifice tone or intonation; (especially note phrase endings or octave leaps – i.e. make sure you have enough air to keep from going flat) or 4) sacrifice the continuity of phrasing any more than necessary to avoid the above 3. Your second job regarding breathing is to practice enough to ensure that you will follow through on all of the above – i.e. remain upright; breathe only where marked; play with fully in control tone and articulation; and keep phrases flowing beautifully as planned.
First – DO breathe often enough to be in full control of your tone and pitch. Take full breaths at every opportunity, filling your lungs like a glass – from the bottom up. The two main things to keep in mind, in terms of mechanics, are: 1) taking full breaths and 2) using your air efficiently. Yes, I know, that’s pretty basic, but it’s amazing how often that’s forgotten! Ideally, by now you are basically comfortable with the mechanics, but if not, there are some great articles online regarding breathing – click here (http://www.jennifercluff.com/breathe.htm) for some very helpful thoughts from Jennifer Cluff about the mechanics involved in improving breathing.
At this point, it’s time to make sure you consistently apply those strategies in the places you want. It’s also important to recognize that you can make an improvement in the capacity of your lungs and related muscle development in 4 weeks’ time – by stretching the limits of your capacity and exercising those muscles. Running or other aerobic activity plus crunches and other abdominal exercise can also help – ideally as a year round venture.
Bottom line:
- figure out how far you can comfortably go between breaths without sacrificing tone or intonation (ask your teacher – also notice where respected performers breathe, and compare with your own needs)
- mark every breath you think you will need to take
- mark additional “safety breaths” – places you probably won’t need a breath, but where if nerves got the best of you and you ran short on air you’d have a back-up option that would be more acceptable than a desperate, random breath – note these differently from the others – perhaps with parentheses
- practice your preferred breathing as you would any technical spot – until you’re getting it in the correct place and as full as you want it to be ten times out of ten – but mostly with large sections to get the full feeling
- for the most part practice without the safety breaths – but do practice some with the safety breaths, so that if you should need one under pressure you won’t be thrown off by taking it
- play some challenging passages each day with fewer breaths than you think you’ll need – perhaps on the Bach or perhaps on something totally unrelated – in order to stretch your breath capacity over the next few weeks so that the safety spots won’t even be necessary under pressure, and to make your first choice spots feel easy
- don’t ever breathe anywhere that’s not marked!
Next week: Learn a bit about the composer (links below)
