Didgeridoo Circular Breathing – Connect Back to the Drone – Lesson 7 of 8
NOTE:The first half of this lesson series is available completely free of charge. You can purchase the full set by hitting the Buy button below or by purchasing a full membership.
Lesson overview
Now it’s time to close the gaps. In this lesson we will show you how to smooth out the little breaks in the drone so you have a continuous sound while breathing in.
Lesson goals
- Be able to go from drone to squeeze with no gap in the sound.
- Be able to go from squeeze to drone with no gap in the sound.
- Combine both techniques so you have a continuous drone.
- Be able to breathe in between the two techniques.
Training tips
- Breath in while preparing for the squeeze.
- Don’t squeeze all the way out. Only squeeze half to prepare for breathing out.
- Breathe out half way through the squeeze to prepare for the next drone.
- Remember, it doesn’t need to be rushed or fast. You can do the circular breathing technique nice and slow.
- Practice this another 1000 times :). This is it, you are circular breathing!
Give it a try, let us know how you go and if you get stuck, post a question in the comments section below
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Hi Sanshi , I’m going insane 😵 I cannot get it smooth between the squeeze and then connecting back to drone when circular breathing , i have got better but i just cant get rid of the tiny gap in the sound.I’ve been trying for a couple of weeks and I feel totally stuck on this last part…I have no hair left to pull out!!! Please help , thank you Sanshi , Joff.
Hi Joff
Hang in there!! It all happens with in a second! so the squeeze technique is just get you to understand the mechanism of Circular Breathing, Now you can slowly loosen your lips to get it connected!! It might take another week or two, but keep on practicing the CB video 4 and 5 will explain the timing, lock yourself into a room for a practice!!!! Happy Didgin’!
I am doing well, about two minutes with drone and awful squeeze sound non stop.
I can also drone and try and breathe in with alright sound, but every so often need to squeeze hard to take a deeper breath in.
I presume just practice practice practice.
But my main issue is I am starting to get quite a bit of saliva in my mouth.
What do you do with this saliva whilst playing? Usually I just clean my mouth on my shoulder between segments of blowing, yuk, haha.
Do we need to clean the inside of the didgeridoo from this saliva after every time we play, or does it help the didge?
For my sax, I always clean it out after use, so wondering if this is similar.
Hi Aurora, when you need to catch up for the breath, which means your air is running out? If so, the balance of breath in and out is the issue, make sure your air flow is minimal, so could be firm up your lips to use less air to play your drone? Then work with breath in timing!
Saliva could be annoying, firstly dry your mouth just before you play didge, swallow any excess saliva in your mouth then start playing. if builds up during the play (which I don’t have that issue anymore) wither spit it out forward or swallow it while playing. both could be a nasty business but you can also stop playing. Only if you have to keep on going, you can try these. But when you used to playing then you won’t produce much saliva…
Cleaning you can use old tooth brush or similar thing to clean near the top. I use eucalyptus oil or orange oil for cleaning.
I hope these info helps!
Wow, nice to see the saliva issue posted about.. I had alot of trouble with excess saliva when I first started playing about 6 years ago. I was trying to practice adding a swallow to my rhythms a long with a (B) lol. I believed at the time that it would always just be a problem. But like Sanshi stated, it went away the more I played. Now I have more trouble with my mouth being too try after 20 minutes or so of straight play..
Hi John, when your mouth is too dry, think about sucking a lemon! Or if you ever tried sour plum or umeboshi plum, try that!;) Soon your mouth will be full of saliva! Oh no!
The sound of my drone is changing when I puff up my cheeks just before the squeeze and it is a very noticeable change and I am unable to avoid it. I have no problem transitioning from the squeeze back to the drone. The problem I’m facing is when I puff up my cheeks. Please help!!
Hi I am in between lesson 7 & 8 and making a reasonably good sound.
I am finding that it is easy for me to use the didgeridoo slightly to one
side of my mouth. Is that ok for me to continue in using that technique ?
Cheers
I just heard CB lessons 5-8. Just want to say here that Sanshi’s choice of words and actions are absolutely the best to get through to me how to do circular breathing. Excellent!
I do the AA at the same time as the breath instead of drone.is that OK?
From Elijah 😊
Not sure what AA means, but as long as sounds connected, you can do anything instead of breathing in, you can do vocals, other techniques or even brew some tea!?
The squeeze, still sounds pretty bad. How do you get that nice clean sound? What are you doing with your lips?
The transition from the squeeze to the out breath. When I often get what sounds like blown out lips for various lengths of time before I can find the proper drone again. Any advise?
Thank you, I would not have gotten this far with out the Dojo!
Thank you Sanshi!!! As I live in the United States, it took about 2 weeks for the didgeridoo starter pack to get to me, but it gave me 2 weeks to work on fundamentals of the drone from your lessons. What a great way to go! I received the didge and thanks to your lessons, could make the drone very quickly after adjusting the mouth piece. On my 30 minute commute to work, I would practice my squeeze and breathing and have finally connected the breath and can circular breath. I cannot recommend this course enough. You were right about practicing a thousand times – that was the key. I look forward to progressing and am so grateful for your guidance.