I'm Pro saxophonist Jamie Anderson and on this week's show I'm going to teach
you how to do something which may seem impossible, and that is to blow out at
the same time as you're breathing in, which is also known as circular breathing.
So why do we need circular breathing anyway apart from it being a
pretty cool party piece to show off for your friends? lol Well, the obvious answer is
that you can play a much longer phrase, and several avant-garde saxophonists
have used that to their advantage, players such as Rahsaan Roland Kirk for
example. Obviously it seems completely impossible - how can you breathe in at the
same time as you're breathing out? Well, stay tuned, I'm going to let you into the
secret and let you know. In the meantime, if you enjoy Get Your Sax Together please do
subscribe to the channel, ring the bell to be notified when I upload new videos,
go check out my Instagram feed, leave me a comment down there, I'd love to hear
all your comments and suggestions for the channel, and I've included, in the
description, a link to a free pdf with the main points of how you can practice
your circular breathing, so without further ado let's crack on and learn
this technique.
Obviously you cannot actually physically breathe out and
breathe in with your lungs at the same time so we need to generate a way of
pushing air through our mouth as we breathe in through our nose, and the way
we do that is we store the air in our cheeks and as we push our cheeks
together the air comes out whilst we breathe in through our nose. So, for
example, when we fill our cheeks with air... then you squeeze your cheeks
together, the physical act, the bellows almost, of closing your cheeks will push
air out your mouth. Now whilst you're doing that you breathe in through your
nose, so here's the first step, and that is to fill your cheeks with air, start
breathing in through your nose and push them with your fingers like this...
It might help to make a raspberry sound with your lips as you do. So fill your
cheeks with air, breathe in through your nose, and then push your cheeks together.
I'll do it one more time...
Moving on to stage two, and that is to use a glass of
water and a straw. Now what we're going to do is we're just going to blow out
through the straw and practice breathing in through our nose whilst we puff the
cheeks in to keep the airflow going, like this...
As you can see the bubbles keep
going, and you just need to practice that control of breathing in through your
nose as you fill your cheeks with air and squeeze them and the air sort of
puffs out your mouth as you're breathing in through your nose. So far so good! Now
we move on to the third and final phase, and that is to do exactly the same thing
on your saxophone. You've practiced just with your fingers, you practiced with a
straw and a glass of water, and now we're going to move it onto the instrument
itself. Again, this will take some practice, and especially to keep the
evenness of tone when you take that breath in and puff your cheeks. They'll
never be perfect but with a bit of practice you can get it really good, so
it should look something like this once you've got it together ,and I
promise there is no trick photography - this is me,
one-take, blowing a single note...
Well I could keep doing that, for forever really, but it's not going to be
a very interesting video really is it? So that's the technique, take your time, work
on it, practice those three stages until you can really control it and if you're
really advanced then you can start incorporating it into your playing, or
even, I find out if I'm playing in a show or something like that West End show and
I'm running out of air in a long note, I can just get that little gasp to get
me through to the end of the phrase without breaking it up, so it's a useful
thing to have.
That's it for this week's show, hope you enjoyed the lesson
learning how to circular breathe on your saxophone. If you enjoy the channel
please do subscribe, ring the bell to be notified when I upload new videos, leave
me a comment, I'd love to hear from you, check out my Instagram feed, and of
course go into the description and find the free pdf linked which has got all
the information from today's lesson. I look forward to seeing you next time on
Get Your Sax Together. Happy playing!