Re: [Harp-L] Lung capacity



Hyperventilating suppresses the urge to breathe--messes up your CO2 level. I remember doing it to try to pass out when I was a kid.

Corollary to the posture thing--don't play while sitting down.

If you practice diaphragm breathing for a while it becomes second nature. My high school chorus teacher made us do it. It's been my normal way of breathing ever since.

I've been fooling with the breathing by counts excercises. It's a great way to kill time on my 45' train ride to and from work.

Frank Sinatra was able to sing sixteen bars of a pop tune at moderate tempo without breathing. When I read about it I tried it. Until about five years ago I could do it. Old age and the legacy of having smoked till eleven years ago have cut me down to about fourteen bars. I hope the excercises will bring it back.

Being able to go across "natural" dividing lines in music makes for some interesting effects. It definitely opens up some great phrasing possibilities.




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Jonathan McAnulty wrote:
In some of the examples in this thread, such as with free divers, much of the effect seen is actually due to an increased ability to reduce oxygen consumption through efficient use of muscles. I spent many years free diving and although I do believe my lung capacity increased, my ability to go to and stay at depth was much more due to an increased ability to reduce oxygen consumption. Hyperventilation beyond mild efforts can be damned dangerous in free diving (shallow water blackout). Similarly, preoxygenating by hyperventilation, as in the running example, attacks the same problem by loading oxygen. However, I don't think either of these relate much to harp playing. For increased lung capacity you would need to increase the volume of air you can move which is an increase in vital capacity. Two things that I haven't seen mentioned yet (maybe I just missed it) to improve this are both good posture, which opens up the chest, and doing yoga, which also trains you to open up your chest area and control your respiration. Yoga has pretty remarkable results in this respect. These two, coupled with deep breathing exercises go a long way to increasing vital capacity and breath control.
my $0.02
Jon


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