Air for wind players

How to do it

1. Sit toward the front of your chair with a long spine, feet flat and shoulders loose, the way you'd sit at a music stand.
2. Open your mouth in an oh shape and keep your throat loose. Breathe in through your mouth for 1.5 seconds: a quick, wide, nearly silent breath. Your belly and ribs open; your shoulders don't rise.
3. Without stopping at the top, bring your lips together as if to blow and send the air out for 10 seconds, in a firm stream that neither sags nor surges.
4. Hold the back of one hand about eight inches from your mouth. The air on your skin should feel the same at second 1 as at second 9.
5. When the guide cues it, take another 1.5-second breath through your mouth and blow for another 10. There are no pauses between the two phases.
6. Keep going for 3 minutes. If you get lightheaded, lower your hand, breathe through your nose at your own pace and come back to it later.
7. To finish, close your mouth and breathe normally for half a minute before you stand up or pick up your instrument.

What it is

It's the act of breathing in the middle of the music, practiced without the horn. A score almost never leaves time for a slow inhale: the air goes in during a short rest and then has to last the whole phrase. So the breath in is through the mouth and takes 1.5 seconds, and the breath out takes 10, with the lips together and the stream constant.

It resembles the singer's exhale, but it isn't the same exercise. There the air comes in through the nose over 3 seconds and the thread grows from 12 to 20. Here the breath in is much faster, the breath out doesn't change, and what matters is that the air keeps moving.

Where it comes from

The teacher most often cited on air for wind instruments is Arnold Jacobs (1915-1998), tuba player of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1944 until he retired in 1988 and a teacher at Northwestern University. Brass players, woodwind players and singers all came to his studio. His motto was Song and Wind: in a 1995 lecture he said that about 85 percent of your attention goes to the music you want to hear and 15 percent to the air that fuels it. His assistant Brian Frederiksen collected those teachings in the book Arnold Jacobs: Song and Wind (1996).

In a 1983 interview for The Instrumentalist, alongside the pulmonologist David Cugell, Jacobs asked players to think of moving air as wind, not as air pressure: with wind there is always air pressure, he said, but with air pressure there is not always wind. His exercises include a fast breath: blow for four counts and breathe in on the fifth, at about 60 beats a minute.

The other reference is The Breathing Gym (2002), by the tuba players Sam Pilafian and Patrick Sheridan, a set of exercises done away from the instrument that Pilafian began putting together in 1976 and that spread through school and college bands. The 1.5- and 10-second timings in this guide are this site's own.

What people use it for

Wind players use it to warm up without tiring their lips, to rehearse the quick breath, and to check that the stream doesn't deflate at the end of a phrase.

What the research says

We found no studies of this exact pattern and no trials comparing these exercises with others. What Jacobs taught came out of decades of practice and his work with physicians, not out of controlled trials.

What has been measured is the lung function of people who play, and the results don't point one way. A review published in 2012 in the journal Pneumon suggests that playing may work as continuous training for the breathing muscles, and at the same time flags the high pressures some instruments demand. A 2023 review pooled 11 studies with 596 wind players: in most of them, the players had lower spirometry values than the comparison group, with no difference in breathing muscle strength. Its authors conclude that those studies can't establish a positive or a negative effect.

What it feels like and what to notice

The breath through the mouth feels cool in your throat and makes little noise if your mouth is well open. If it sounds like a gasp, your throat is closed.

Taking big breaths over and over can make you lightheaded, especially the first few times. That's a signal to take less air on each breath in, not to push through. If tingling, dizziness or shortness of breath show up, drop the pattern and breathe through your nose.

Variations

• Easier (2-6 variation): breathe in for 2 seconds and blow for 6 until the motion comes without tension.
• The Jacobs way (variation with a beat): with a metronome at 60, blow for four counts and breathe in on the fifth. Then blow for three and a half counts and breathe in on the last half count.
• On the instrument, without sound: send the air through the horn without making it speak, as in the flow exercises bands do together.

Common mistakes

• Lifting the shoulders on the quick breath. Hurry pushes the air up high. Think of widening your waist.
• A noisy inhale. A gasp means your throat or lips are narrow. Open your mouth into an oh.
• Blowing with pressure, not with air. Hard cheeks and a clenched belly choke the stream. Jacobs said support is never tight muscles.
• Filling to the max every time. Away from the instrument you don't need to, and it's the main cause of lightheadedness.

How often and how long

Three minutes before you practice or rehearse is a realistic habit. The exercises in The Breathing Gym are built as routines of three to five minutes, and this guide follows that scale.

If you don't play an instrument, do it once a day or whenever you want to practice the quick breath. Don't repeat it several times in a row: between sessions, let your breathing settle back to its own pace. For the technique of your instrument, your teacher is still the best guide.

Before you start

• Do it seated. Taking big breaths over and over can make you lightheaded: if it does, stop and breathe normally through your nose.
• Never do it in water or while driving.
• Don't blow hard or with tight cheeks. If you feel pressure in your head, ears or eyes, you're pushing too much.
• If you're pregnant, or have a heart, lung, blood pressure or eye condition, or a history of fainting, check with your care provider first.