"Circular breathing" is a trick that players of all wind instruments can use to keep a note sounding while breathing in. In theory, it enables the player to sustain a note for as long as they want. I've seen Evan Parker play a ten-minute saxophone solo without a single pause for breath, so I know it's possible even though it seems not to be at first.

As I write this, I'm on day one of my drive to learn circular breathing. I'm listening to a lot of Rahsaan Roland Kirk for encouragement. Right now he's playing "One Mind Winter/Summer", simultaneously circular breathing through two recorders to create two contrapuntal lines. Scary stuff.

The Problem

There are some very useful circular breathing lessons on the web, but I ran into an early problem which may be down to my lack of experience, but may equally be because of the nature of the recorder (these lessons are designed either for reed players or didgeridooistes). That problem is that it seems impossible, or at least impractical, to really inflate the cheeks while blowing a note.

Let me explain. The trick in circular breathing is to keep up air pressure by filling the mouth with air while breathing out, and then pushing this reservoire of air out through the mouth while taking a big sniff of air through the nose. The conventional way to do this is to slowly puff out the cheeks while blowing, and then squeeze them out as if squirting water from your mouth while you sniff. That didn't work for me, so I tried something slightly different.

Instead of inflating the cheeks, I've been moving my tongue from the back of my mouth to the front to create that little rush of air you need. Here's my method. I've seen results already, and it feels right, but whether or not it's going to work completely will become clear in time.

A Sort of Method

STEP ONE: The tongue technique:

1. Imagine you want to whistle a really low note. Whistle the lowest note you possibly can; notice how you drop your jaw down and pull your tongue right back to create the biggest cavity you can in your mouth. Exaggerate that position as much as you can (don't worry about the whistling sound, it's the position of the mouth you're interested in).

2. Now whistle a really high note. You bring your jaw up and push your tongue right up next to your teeth.

3. Next, whistle a note which moves smoothly the very low note to the very high note, like a swannee whistle.

4. Finally, using the same movement but exaggerated as much as possible, close off your windpipe and just push the air through your lips with your tongue. Don't think too hard about this; it's something just about everyone can already do. DON'T puff out your cheeks when doing this.

Now here's the hard bit. Apply this to the recorder by simply blowing notes using ONLY this technique. Just play a scale or repeat a single note, pushing the air out of your mouth with your tongue instead of using your lungs. Notice three things:

It sounds awful;
Your lips get sore after a while; but
It's possible to breathe in and out through your nose quite easily while you're doing it.

Yes, the notes will sound weak, especially at first, but they do get better. Put in a couple of hours and you'll see an improvement. You don't need to have a perfect tone doing this -- or even an OK one -- to move onto the next stage.

STEP TWO: Actual circular breathing.

1. Pick a note you're comfortable with and play it. Allow a little air to leak out of your nose while you're playing it; this seems to help with what comes next...

2. Before your run out of breath, put your mouth into the "low whistle" position.

3. Now close your epiglottis (ie stop breathing through your lungs) and immediately start pushing the air out of your mouth with your tongue.

4. WHILE DOING 3, sniff in some air. It doesn't matter how much you can get in at first.

5. Open your epiglottis and breathe back into your mouth, returning to stage (1).

Some Tactics

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Well, it's not. The transitions between lungs and mouth are very tricky to get smooth, and the note you produce with your mouth will probably be a lot weaker than you'd like. Here are some approaches I've found helpful:

Always warm up by playing with the mouth only;
Play some notes using only steps 1-3 above, which focuses on the first transition;
...then play some notes using steps 3 and 5 above, which focuses on the second transition.

There are a couple of other things I've noticed which might or might not help. It's easier to circular breathe on lower notes than on higher ones, which require more breath pressure. I'm starting with low notes (between low G and low C) and planning to work my way up. Also, standing helps a lot, and I find raising my shoulders when taking my sniff of air either helps to get more air into my lungs, or else it helps psychologically somehow by involving more of the body in the process. Also, it's unwise to change notes while sniffing in, because at first the sound there is quite weak (at least, mine is).

Another question I'm wrestling with at the moment is how often to sniff. I'm finding a quite frequent and very regular, rhythmic cycle is easiest to get into, rather than taking a sniff of air as and when needed. The whole cycle is lasting only, maybe, six seconds. I think, though I'm not sure, this regular approach is the one Evan Parker uses. By contrast, the great saxophonist John Butcher prefers to amlost empty his lungs and then refill them using a sequence of three sniffs; I can't get my head around this at the moment, but it certainly works for him. Anyway, I'm hoping that as the process gets easier the space between sniffs can be extended a bit.

I don't know how good this approach is, but in a few hours I'm producing continuous notes which, while they don't sound that good, are at least improving. I'm concerned that this isn't going to work at high breath pressures, but even in one day I'm feeling an improvement in my ability to blow longer, louder, clearer notes using the mouth rather than the lungs. The mouth-only exercise (trying to play a scale or simple tune without using the lungs at all) has really helped me in this.

It may or may not be of interest to know that of the sopranino, descant, tenor and bass recorders, the difficulty I encountered in circular breathing was diractly related to my familiarity with the instrument, suggesting that the technique is no more difficult on any one than on any other.

As I said before, this is day one. It may not pan out, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone else who tries this approach, or who already uses it, and thinks it's good or disastrously bad.

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