Soap Box #1

My student (singular) knows how serious I get about the connection between musicality and breathing. As a string musician you have to think about 20 million things before you start a performance: bow placement, bow pressure, bow speed, tempo, dynamics, your pianist. The list is overwhelming. I demand a lot from my student and he always gets frustrated when I stop him again and again because he didn’t breathe. He thinks I’m being ‘silly’ and one day he even said, “I just don’t see why.” I immediately laughed when I could think of ten reasons ‘why’. I pulled out my soap box, and for the remainder of the lesson I explained exactly why breathing, above all else, was most important.

I started with what I believed to be the most important reason of all. Breathing is an immediate way to connect to the piece your playing, and to remain engaged throughout the piece. It allows you to feel the tempo, and emotion. It can connect you to the audience. And what is more important than that? Nothing is more important than properly expressing whatever piece you are playing to the audience. That’s the point of performing. Enough said.

Breathing also plays an important physical role as well (duh!). Before you delve into any performance you can experience a wide variety of tensions and anxieties. I can’t stress enough the importance of a good breath before the first note of any piece. Part of making a good quality sound comes from being relaxed! Can you imagine if you walked into a yoga class, and they told you to breath as little as possible and when you did take breaths they had to be shallow and quick. NO, of course not! In the first yoga class basically all you do is sit and breathe. It seems like such a simple task but the conscious act of breathing before you play can perfectly prepare your body for the strenuous task ahead.

The wonderful thing about music is the opportunity to create with other people. It’s true, most classical musicians spend 90% of their time in the practice room alone, but that’s not why we do it. I can remember the first time I truly learned the importance of breathing in music. I was only in eighth grade, and it was at a summer music festival at Tennessee Tech University. I had never played in a small ensemble before and I was thrilled about the opportunity. I remember sitting behind my cello hoping not be called on or even looked at. But sure enough, my coach turned to me and told me to start the quintet. She gave me the tempo and then stared at me in anticipation. Of course the first attempt was a miserable failure! She told me to ‘breathe’ and move with the music. The second attempt was only marginally better but by the end of the first rehearsal I had learned how to breathe out of necessity. I took that lesson to the practice room, to orchestra, and it became second nature to take a big deep breath before I started anything. It wouldn’t be until many years later that I would truly understand the gift that chamber coach had given me.

I could probably continue to speak on the topic of breathing for many days but inevitably everyone would get bored except for me. So I will keep this post succinct. I obviously didn’t even scratch the surface if you consider the fact I didn’t even mention wind players or singers. In the end, performing, collaborating, and expressing yourself would be impossible without the simple act of breathing. Breath in (1,2,3), breath out(1,2), repeat and repeat and repeat...