Breathing- Part Three: The Exhale

Moving air out of your body is pretty simple. You just take in a big gulp of air and your body essentially moves the air for you.

However, for brass playing, it is not enough to take in air and then blow it back out. The quality of the air that you move through your instrument is very important and directly correlates to sound production, good or bad.

Warm Air

One of the easiest ways to test the quality of your exhale is by using a mirror.

Stand in front of a mirror, window, or other shiny surface and use your air to fog it up.

It’s a lot like hopping out of the shower and writing your initials on the mirror. Hot air meets the cold surface of the mirror, which creates condensation, which then allows you to draw on the surface.

For brass players, we want the air moving out of our bodies to be warm, so if you are able to fog up that mirror with your breath, then you’re on the right track.

Air Speed

Use faster air. Use slower air.

When someone tells me to do either one of those things, it takes me a minute to really understand what they mean. Especially as a beginner, this was such an abstract idea to me that I usually just ended up playing louder or softer. Sometimes it worked, but most of the time it didn’t.

To best demonstrate this concept, think about an ordinary bottle of Coke. Or Pepsi, if that’s your thing.

You can move your air over the top of the bottle to make it resonate, and the less liquid there is in the bottle, the lower the pitch will be.

If the bottle is full, the pitch is high, and your air has to be moving very quickly across the top in order for you to make a sound. As you take sips from the bottle, the speed of the air you blow across the bottle gets slower, and the pitch produced gets lower.

Every pitch produced on your instrument has a designated air speed that it needs in order to resonate properly. The higher the pitch, the quicker your air has to move through the aperture (the hole created between your lips when you create a buzz). The lower the pitch, the slower your air has to move.

Air Column

Up next on this adventure through abstract ideas: the Air Column.

To put it simply, adjusting the size of your air column is what allows you to play louder or softer.

A large air column moves a large quantity of air through the aperture at one time, which creates a loud tone. Conversely, a smaller column of air creates a softer sound.

For a visual representation, walk over to a water faucet and turn it on about halfway. There should be a small trickle of water moving constantly into the sink. Think of this trickle as your air moving through your aperture, allowing you to play at a solid mp.

Next, turn the faucet all the way on. The large stream of water coming out is your airstream when you play fff. Its a huge column of air moving at a constant pace through your aperture.

Regardless of the volume of water coming out of the faucet, notice that the water stream remains constant. Your airstream should mimic the water, and should always leave your body as a steady stream of air.

Small column of air: quiet.

Large column of air: loud.

Relax

Every breath you take should be relaxed in both the inhale and exhale. Once you start the cycle of taking tense breaths, it becomes increasingly difficult to relax as you play.

If you feel yourself starting to get tense, just stop, remind yourself to relax, and then start again with a fresh, relaxed breath.

There are a lot of concepts that go into moving good air out of your body, and I struggled for years to really understand them. As musicians, we are constantly learning. I hope this post was able to shed some light on these ideas, and I cant wait to discover what I will learn next.

For more information about your inhale, click here.

For more information about tension, click here.

Happy Practicing.