Not sure if it is the right place for this,
Last night I was working on a new song, not an easy one and I realized
I wasn’t really breathing, kind of holding my breath. Then it hit me that I’m
doing that a lot. And I was wondering if anybody else was doing this and how
did you practice a part and counting or remembering to breathe? And being
In my 70’s, I need all the breaths I can find
Happens to me a lot when practicing, or reading, or watching TV, or doing any sedentary activity. When I become aware of it, I just kinda force myself into taking a few deeper breaths until I snap out of it. It causes tension during practice, which is harmful physically and musically. If it is an ingrained habit, you can try setting a timer to go off every 5 minutes or so during practice to remind you to take a little break and get back into normal breathing rhythm. I also try to remember to get up off my butt about every 25 minutes to take a breather and for adjusting various moving parts.
I taught fiddle and mandolin lessons for my profession. Amazing how often, especially on fiddle, I would see people not breathing or breathing very shallow.
I had fiddlers play long notes on open strings and concentrate on their breathing to become aware. Often just that one thing would solve their problems.
On steel I bet just playing an open string as quarter notes while really feeling your breathing is what I’d suggest, maybe followed by a very simple phrase.
Non pedal steel, mandolin and fiddle transcriptions
https://www.petemartin.info/transcriptions.html
Free Western Swing, Jazz, Bluegrass instrumental recordings
https://www.petemartin.info/recordings.html
To: Fred, Pete, and Joseph,
Thanks for the info. I started to realize more than not that I wasn’t breathing the way I should.
I’m gonna work on this breathing and counting when playing. And who knows, I might finally
learn to play the steel better with some more oxygen
Steve
