Breathing is the key to almost everything about playing the cornet well. It is the fundamental issue, on which all else depends. Proper breathing and breath control are the pre-requisites of a good sound, of sustained, graceful playing, and of control over all aspects of the instrument and music. They are also the key to achieving the freedom and fluidity which make the music live. And of course, breathing and support are an important part of the struggle to build up stamina. While building up the muscles that form the embouchure is also important, in the end, everything hinges on being able to take the strain of playing off the lips and onto the body.

Wind players, especially beginners, often fail to recognise that the most active part of breathing is the inhalation. It is at this point that the diaphragm contracts and moves downwards (pressing against the abdominal muscles) to make space for the lungs to expand. The chest also expands, as the ribs move upwards and outwards. These two actions create a vacuum in the lungs and a stream of air rushes in to fill it. Breathing out follows inevitably when the diaphragm and intercostal muscles (the muscles which expand the ribcage) relax although, as players, of course, we need to gain some control over this process. You can get a sense of how the act of inhaling works by breathing out all the air you can. When you think you have exhaled all the air in your lungs, and can barely speak, force the remaining air out so that you really cannot speak at all! Now hold your hands around your lower ribs, thumbs forward, and feel the movement as you allow air to flood in again. This is the sensation you should be looking for when playing (not running out of air, but using all the inhaling mechanisms effectively).

Because breathing is so important, you should, as a beginner at least, make an effort to practise it in its own right, possibly even before you pick up the instrument for the day. You might do this by taking some exercise - jogging or swimming, for instance. You could also use some of the published breathing exercises for brass players and for singers. At the very least, take some deep panting breaths to open all the airways and remind yourself that playing even a delicate instrument like the cornet is physiologically demanding.

The point to take on board here is that breath control involves command over both inhalation and exhalation, and that once this is achieved, it is the key to producing a good sound, to starting and ending notes, to achieving flexibility, and to having control over the instrument. The notes below are designed to help you explore this for yourself.

Although, paradoxically, playing an instrument like the cornet is usually thought of in terms of the action of blowing out, in practise the most crucial action is that of breathing in. The quality of the sound you produce, for instance, is directly related to the way you inhale. The difference between ‘ordinary' breathing and breathing to play, is that more air is needed. lt is therefore best always to breathe through the mouth since this allows more air to be taken in quickly, and is more likely to open all the airways. It also encourages an open and relaxed throat, and helps the palate form the appropriate vowel shape somewhere between aaah and oooh - for making a note.

The diaphragm - which attracts so much attention in the literature on breathing - is only relevant when we inhale. It is, moreover, a reflex rather than a muscle over which we have control. Its main action is to contract -buckling downwards towards the abdomen - in a movement which simultaneously makes space for the lungs to expand, and creates a vacuum which air rushes in to fill. Our aim therefore must be to allow the diaphragm to contract as much as possible, and this means having very relaxed abdominal muscles. There are all sorts of ways you can relax these muscles

walking around the room is the most obvious (as recommended for pregnant women), but generally, standing is better than sitting, and sitting with your legs crossed is really unhelpful. Always bear in mind that breathing is pnmarily about relaxing rather than creating tension. In so far as you make a conscious effort to flex some muscles as part of the inhalation, it should be the intercostal muscles (the muscles associated with the rib cage) that attract your attention. You should be working to expand these as much as possible to give your playing maximum support.

It is worth pointing out that, left to themselves, most adults do the wrong thing when asked to take a deep breath. We tend to fill just the top of the lungs with air, raise or hunch our shoulders and create all sorts of tensions in our necks and backs. Concentrate on NOT doing these things. To check that you are breathing well, clasp your hands around your rib cage after breathing out (thumbs to the sides of the body, fingers meeting across about 6 inches below the breastbone). Breath in a way that pulls the fingers apart, and hold this position while playing: it provides support for the note even when very little air is being expelled. Remember that when the lungs expand, they occupy the whole space created within the rib cage and this is why I often ask students to ‘breathe into their backs' so that they fill the whole available space.

One way to begin a new piece or phrase is to inhale in time to the music. This allows you to set the tempo before actually playing and it makes for a rhythmic and precise start. if you have trouble with beginnings - and an exposed start can cause problems for even the most experienced player -then the discipline of breathing in time is a great help (both to you and to those colleagues who need to follow your lead). It is worth taking time to practice this idea of a rhythmic inhalation: spend five or ten minutes a day with a selection of pieces of varying character and tempi, and simply concentrate on starting each new piece and each new section within it using this approach. Be sure to breathe in in a way that reflects the timing and style of the piece, and very soon the process will become habitual.

Some players advocate using the smallest time value relevant to the piece in front of them e.g. breathe in with a crotchet (quarter note) value for a piece in 4/4. This is the approach I adopted in my own early playing days. One advantage is that it stops you thinking too much about the action and lets your body get on with doing what comes naturally. A crucial disadvantage, though, is that the pressures of a vigorous start and a correspondingly quick inhalation can set up unwanted tensions which may impair note production and tone quality. Now, therefore, whilst still maintaining the value of inhaling in the correct tempo, whenever possible I take a much larger time value (certainly a minim [half note] or even a semi-breve [whole note]). This gives the body more time to provide the note with appropriate support, it provides an opportunity to check that your stance is relaxed, and it avoids the tension that rushing into a piece can create.

Although it is important to breathe deeply, the lungs do not need to be full all the time - in fact, this is necessary only very occasionally, for excessively long or sustained high phrases. Too much breath can easily create tensions which impair tone quality and intonation, and it can mean that you are forced to exhale at a point in the music where it would be much more helpful for you to take another breath (sometimes it will be necessary to use a breath mark to exhale anyway).

It might be easier to grasp this point if you think of the analogy of speaking. Of course playing a wind instrument calls for greater intake of breath and more breath control than speaking and the analogy must not be taken literally. However, the fact remains that if you take a completely full breath, hold it and then read aloud from a book, the result on your voice will be to make it sound tense, unnatural and possibly higher in pitch than normal, and you will find that you need to exhale just at the point where in more relaxed circumstances it would be more natural to inhale. Moreover, a build up of too much breath creates back-pressure which in turn will lead to hyperventilation (the first sign of this is slight dizziness, and the remedy is to stop playing!).

A common misapprehension is that the cornet must be blown hard. This could not be further from the truth, and just the idea of pressure will introduce more tension into your playing than is desirable. In fact, probably as much effort when playing is expended by holding the air back as it is in blowing it out. So, when exhaling - blowing the instrument - it is important to think of the air as flowing, rather than being expelled under pressure. The aim is to gain control over this flow: to be able to stop and start notes at will just as we can speak or not speak when exhaling normally.

In order to achieve a controlled flow of air, it is important to keep the chest expanded, the neck relaxed and the throat open. An open throat enables you to give proper support to the notes, and this is how you produce a good sound. It is therefore something that needs to be practised, especially in the region above g'. You can think of the effect as one of trying to ‘float' a musical phrase on a lake of air. This analogy should also help you to avoid cutting off the note too abruptly by using throat action. An expanded chest cavity will give support for the note even when you are at the end of a breath.

Once the throat is relaxed and open, and providing the chest remains expanded (giving the rather odd sensation of a ‘breathing-in' position while you are actually breathing out) it should be easy to think of the air as constantly flowing (albeit at varying rates) rather than as spurting out under pressure (which will cause the abdominal and neck muscles to lock and will restrict rather than enhance the airflow). This will allow you to have enormous control over your playing. For instance, just as when speaking or singing, playing should involve gaps between some notes. These silences are crucial to the music but they can only be achieved gracefully if the emphasis when playing is on airflow rather than pressure. Players who rely on their neck muscles or tongue to make these gaps often end up playing some notes routinely too long simply because of an inability to end them gracefully without intetrupting the airflow.

A much fuller explanation of how to start, stop and separate notes on the

cornett follows in the section devoted to articulation. However, whilst you are

a beginner and trying to get started, you should pay careful attention to the

following basic but crucial guidelines, both of which are related to breathing

and breath control:

The tongue is there to articulate your playing just as it is there to articulate your speech. To practise this at an early stage (and whenever you feel you are getting into bad habits of this sort), start notes gently using the breath and lips alone. Blow a gentle column of air down the instrument and, by bunching your lips into an embouchure, gently coax a note into life. Repeat this process, trying always to keep the dividing line between a column of air and a sounding note as gradual as possible. An abrupt kick" start is exactly what needs to be avoided here. Try this over a considerable range, and when you are able to produce notes reliably simply because you have control over the flow of the air into the instrument, then you are in a position to "drop in the tongue. Approached in this way, the tongue will take its proper role as a means of articulating, not a short cut to producing, the note. With the freedom this provides, you will be able, in time, to draw on the many different tonguing strokes available, as discussed later in this tutor.

This can be as tricky as starting them musically. Both procedures depend on good breathing and breath control, but note endings are particularly hard to describe. Briefly, do not end phrases with the tongue or with the throat (glottal), rather phrase off naturally using breath control. Think about speech to help if you find the concept difficult. For example, say the phrase: "I like to do it this way." It is very difficult to put your finger precisely on what you do to end this short statement, but it is certainly very different from the way you end the phrase: "1 prefer to do it like that'. Musical phrases are nearly always ‘way' rather than ‘that' endings. They commonly end with the sensation of continuing to breathe out, but sometimes it is appropriate to achieve the same effect by breathing in (just as you would at the end of a sentence if you wanted to carry on speaking). In either case, bear in mind the way' versus ‘that' analogy and it might help you learn to end a musical sentence in a controlled and graceful fashion.

Flexibility

Control over breathing is the key to starting notes convincingly, giving them shape and ending them gracefully. It is also the way to achieve flexibility of sound across the register. Flexibility refers to a command over the full range of the instrument, either stepwise or by leaps. It is the art of being agile on the cornett. Note, however, that achieving flexibility across the whole range of the instrument is one of the biggest challenges you will face. It is very difficult to maintain both the high and the low parts of the register simultaneously, and this requires constant attention in your practice sessions. Beginners often have difficulty cultivating the high end of the register, but beware of being too pre.occupied with this, because a common problem is also woolliness in the lower register, which is problematic for players of all standards. Do not, therefore, be tempted to forget about the bottom end in your quest to become a star: until you are one, you will frequently be playing low parts (and even when you are one, you will encounter dazzling passages which swoop to the bottom of the range).

In tackling flexibility, note again that it is the flow of air which should control the shape and pitch of the note. Neither the tongue nor the pressure of the mouthpiece on your lips should be used as a substitute. The tongue is only for articulation, and a primary concern for everyone is always to keep the strain of playing off the lips. Pressure from the mouthpiece will get you into the higher register but it will be at the cost of tone quality and a drastic reduction in stamina. You will produce a more strangled sound without any depth or resonance, and even this will not last for long! Moreover, if the mouthpiece is pressed too hard against the lips, it will make it difficult for you to relax them enough, quickly enough, to reach down for the lower notes, so overall flexibility will suffer from this strategy.

As you move up the register the best practice is to keep the lips ‘bunched', the corners of the mouth tight, and the tongue flat and relaxed. You can achieve everything you need by increasing the airflow with your abdominal muscles. As you play higher don't fall into the common trap of thinking ‘tight ‘pinched' ‘squeezed' or ‘forced' because any of these will stifle the airflow and lead to a strangled and raw sound as well as using up stamina fast. Think instead, if you can, about maintaining the poised and relaxed attitude of lower register playing: open throat, bunched embouchure but open aperture, and lots of support from your lungs.

It is worth noting that some players advocate raising the tongue to help increase the airflow to reach the higher register. The shape of the mouth then makes an ‘eeh' rather than ‘aah' articulation. This is a better ‘last resort' than pressing the mouthpiece harder onto the lips, but it will still make for a thinner sound.

Many of the exercises at the end of the tutor will, be useful for working on flexibility, especially those under ‘Beginners' and ‘General Patterns'. Concentrate on using airflow to move up and down the stave, and if you feel tension creeping into your playing, stay in the lower part of the range. Crucially, do not allow the tongue to work harder as you go higher. Move higher step by step, and only when you can do so by keeping the same overall aspect as when playing in the lower register. Ultimately, you need to be able to think of a high note as ‘just another note'. Persuade yourself of this and then play the untransposed Deposuit from Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers and you will wonder what the problem ever was. Then remind yourself again of your former anxiety concerning the sheer altitude of this passage and, money-back guarantee, you will miss the top D! This can be applied to any level of playing with different levels of pieces.

Low notes are also a challenge, of course. Here, it often feels good - as well as being musically appropriate - to blow firmly and freely into low end notes, giving them a fine full-bodied sound. This can be very satisfying, enjoyable and even relaxing! The mouth should be more relaxed with the lips less bunched than in the higher register, allowing them to vibrate more slowly and with greater freedom. Do not be afraid of the low note not speaking:

adopt the proper technique and you will eventually get them under control, even if they fail to sound for a short while.

Key Points on Breathing

• Breathing provides the support on which every aspect of playing the cornett rests
• Practise breathing exercises and keep fit if you want to play the cornett well
• Never use the tongue as a substitute for breath control
• Maintain the same "attitude for high register playing as for low
• To achieve the best effects, aim to float³ your sound on a "lake" of air