Circular Breathing for musicians - practical skills

What is circular breathing and how do we achieve it?

It is NOT possible to breathe in and out at the same time so you must adapt the body to engage this seemingly simple but surprisingly complex method. I have worked with many people over a long period of time to really get to the 'nitty gritty' as to what makes this technique easier to learn.

It is all a 'trick'. Our body controls our breathing 24/7 at a very deep sub-conscious level so we need to find ways to go in and take careful control of this mechanism. I have found this process is very analogous to learning to drive a manual (stick shift) car. At first, any time we push in the clutch pedal it can be a struggle to co-ordinate the movement of the gear stick with the release of the clutch pedal - leading to a frustrating 'kangaroo' bounce along the road in the car!

I will start with VERY simple exercises that can be tried pretty well anytime and will not need a didgeridoo.

How to get the most from this, and any of my courses, on Udemy.

Learning to use circular breathing (and playing the didgeridoo) have been medically linked to a reduction in symptoms experienced with snoring and sleep apnea*.

The exercises, and the actual process of using circular breathing, help to tone the muscles of the throat and this is believed to help reduce nocturnal snoring and can even lessen the severity of sleep apnea.

* Here is a link to the main article published in the BMJ (British Medical Journal)

BMJ Article

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Getting started with circular breathing.

We need to re-educate the body / mind as to what is possible with the breath mechanism:

1. We can hold air inside our mouths, with inflated cheeks, and close off the back of the throat so that the air does not pass into the oesophagus and make us burp.
2. Holding air like this we can easily breathe in and out through our nostrils*
3. Hold air in the mouth as above and instead of breathing through the nose we will use cheek tension to deflate the cheeks through a pursed mouth to squeeze the air out.
4. You might like to imagine you are spitting water slowly out of your mouth, in fact alot of folks have great success by actually doing this and spitting a mouthful of water out into a sink to access this technique.
5. Work on the spitting part until you can make a cheekfull of air last half a second or so of spitting.
6. Now here comes the fun part! We need to spit and sniff in at the same time.
7. You may find this easier if you carry on with a slow cheek squeeze / spit and then just choose to sniff in during that time.
8. It is essential that you master the spit / sniff before moving on so practice as much as you need until you can do it easily.

* Now is the time to discover if you have clear nasal passages and sinuses or not! If you have problems getting air in through your nose then circular breathing will be a real challenge. See the PDF download for ideas on how to solve this.

I'm going to suggest that you may wish to create a simple 'pipe didgeridoo' to experience these exercises simply before you take them to your instrument of choice.

Let's start using the didgeridoo with these techniques.

Okay so now the next challenges:

1. Find your normal drone position on the didge and blow for a while.
2. Now close the back of your throat and use the cheeks to 'spit / squeeze' some air down the didgeridoo - this will probably sound terrible and nothing like your drone but don't worry too much.
3. Now open your throat and blow a normal drone again.

This is the process of CB but with gaps between the spit sound and the normal drone.

1. Now try the spit / sniff with your mouth on the didge. This will also probably sound nothing like your normal drone. Keep trying it and then alternate between doing this and blowing a normal drone.
2. Try to really feel the difference between the spit/sniff and the drone - how do your lips feel?, what is their tension?, what about the air pressure and speed?
3. Keep moving between spit/sniff and drone until the spit/sniff starts to have a sound closer to your normal drone.
4. You could even practice just your spit or cheek squeeze on the didgeridoo. Don't worry about the sniff / inhale and just work on making the air you spit down the didge into a normal sounding drone.

Starting to close the gaps between breathing and sniffing.

As we saw in the previous lecture, we can create a cycle of normal blown drone / spit&sniff / normal blown drone, etc. This becomes CB but with gaps, now we must start to close up those gaps and create the continuous drone we are seeking. Here are a couple of ways to achieve this:

1. Start the cycle of drone / spit&sniff / drone and really make sure you get the best sound from your spit&sniff. The closer it is to your normal drone the better.
2. Ensure that your spit sound lasts at least half a second.
3. When you start your sniff is probably as long as your spit - your body is trying to breathe in a normal inhalation - you need to re-educate this into a shorter and more shallow sniff.
4. Imagine you are sniffing a bad smell! You will not want a big lung-full just a short shallow sniff.
5. Try to time the sniff so that it comes in quickly at the beginning of your spit/squeeze and has stopped before your spit/squeeze has finished. These two factors ensure you have a buffer of air / sound from your spit/squeeze to keep the drone going whilst you recover into opening your throat and blowing a normal drone. This is one of the most important parts of CB!
6. One of the key ways to help close the gaps is to speed up the whole cycle - think of an old steam train pulling out of a station - the chuff chuff getting slowly faster and faster.
7. Practice makes perfect. Most folks take about a week to 10 days over this part so don't rush it or get too frustrated.

Smoothing out the gaps and creating a smooth sound.

Okay so if you have put in plenty of practice you probably now have a cycle of drone - spit/sniff - drone that has started to join up into a continuous sound. Maybe it is a bit 'lumpy' or you can only maintain it for a little while before it breaks down. Let's look at improving further.Watch this lecture and try to follow along with me at various speeds.

Practice, practice, practice!

If you are really serious about playing didgeridoo then good control of CB (circular breathing) is pretty essential so really put the hours in to make yours solid and dependable. There are a few people who are very lucky and CB comes naturally to them in just a few days but most folks take at least 2 weeks to really get it happening well.

If you have a busy life and cannot practice on the didge every day then at least try to practice without one, I'll show you how in this lecture.