Learn to Play Recorder

Lesson 70: Circular Breathing

  • Sustain a single tone for thirty seconds without an audible break, using the cheeks as an air reservoir.
  • Practise the mechanics with a glass of water, then a straw, then the recorder.

Circular breathing is not magic. It is a trick of the cheeks.

Circular breathing sustains a tone for longer than one lungful; the recorder's low breath pressure makes it relatively easy to acquire. It is not Baroque practice — learn it as a tool, not a default.

The mechanics

  1. Lungs through mouth — the normal source.
  2. Cheeks through mouth — the reservoir; cheek muscles push stored air into the instrument while the lungs inhale through the nose.

The cheek-fed air carries the tone for one or two seconds while the lungs refill; the switch must not change the breath pressure on the instrument.

Drill 1 — the water-glass exercise

Blow bubbles through a straw using only cheek pressure, refilling the cheeks from the lungs as you go — the goal is a continuous stream with the two sources alternating invisibly. Ten minutes; until this is reliable, the recorder version cannot work.

Drill 2 — the straw exercise

Same drill through air, not water: listen for the moment the air stream interrupts, and repeat until it disappears.

Drill 3 — on the recorder

Sustain a low D, switch from lungs to cheeks, inhale through the nose, return to lung-driven air — the note must not change pitch, volume, or quality across the switch.

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Four whole notes on low D. One circular breath occurs in the middle of the sequence; ideally a listener cannot tell which one.

Application — an extended slow phrase

The textbook application is a phrase longer than one lungful — like the second eight-bar section of the HWV 365 Larghetto; one circular breath lets it finish as one arc instead of two.

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A six-bar Larghetto phrase. One circular breath in bar 3 (mid-phrase) lets the whole arc resolve on a single line.

When not to use it

  • The breath in a phrase is itself musical — a Baroque player who never breathes is not phrasing.
  • Used badly, it is more disruptive than an honest breath.

Use it when a contemporary score demands a continuous tone, when a Renaissance fantasia's phrase exceeds your capacity, or at a moment of high lyrical stakes; otherwise, breathe.

Now play these

Handel: Sonata in C major, HWV 365 — Larghetto
Apply the drill to the longest phrase in the movement.
Van Eyck: Doen Daphne d'Over Schoone Maeght
Renaissance-length phrases; use circular breathing sparingly.

When a sustained low D lasts thirty seconds with at least one inaudible circular breath, move on to Lesson 71.