Recorder Technique Essentials: USE OF AIR & BREATH CONTROL

When we breathe, the lungs expand automatically. But when we play a wind instrument or sing, we need something extra: a long, steady exhalation. That means taking in more air in less time and releasing it more slowly than in daily life.

How breathing works

Breathing starts with the diaphragm—a thin muscle attached to the lungs above and the abdominal muscles below. When it contracts, it pulls the lungs downward. The muscles between the ribs also help expand the chest.

Try this first: just watch your natural breathing. Don’t try to control it. Put your hands on different places—stomach, waist, lower back, chest, ribcage at the sides or back. Notice what moves. (The back is harder to feel—also a good stretch for shoulder flexibility!)

The best way is standing upright: head over heart, heart over pelvis, feet under hips with weight balanced. Sitting tall or lying down works too.

Breathing for the recorder

Once you’ve noticed how your body moves naturally, let’s connect it to recorder playing. With wind instruments, we need to control both inhalation and exhalation. But unlike reed or brass instruments, the recorder has almost no resistance. That changes the way we use our air.

The main muscle groups you can move are:

• abdominal (core) muscles

• chest (pectoral) muscles

• intercostals (between the ribs)

Try isolating each kind of breathing. How does it feel? Does it relax you or create tension? Which is easiest?

Three types of breathing

Abdominal breathing (“belly breathing”): the diaphragm moves down, pushing the intestines outward, so the whole belly expands. You can feel it in your stomach, waist, and even lower back.

Chest breathing: the lungs are pulled upward by chest and even neck muscles. This has drawbacks:

• it closes the throat and tenses the neck/shoulders

• chest muscles are weaker, so tone control suffers

• if you breathe only in the top of the lungs for too long, you can get hypoventilation (air still in the lungs, but without oxygen) → shortness of breath

Intercostal breathing: the ribs expand sideways. They help in both chest and abdominal breathing, and can be used for a “sideways breath” under the arms when you need just a bit more in a long phrase. But don’t rely on them until abdominal breathing feels natural.

Resistance and support

With reed and brass instruments, breath support means pushing air upward against resistance. You can feel this if you blow hard on your hand—your abs tighten.

For the recorder, it’s different. Because there’s almost no resistance, support means keeping the lungs open so the air doesn’t collapse out. Instead of pushing upward, the abdominal muscles gently pull the diaphragm downward, keeping the flow steady.

Watch out for nose leaks

This detail is often forgotten: always breathe in and out through the mouth. Inhaling through the nose is noisy and impractical. Exhaling through the nose is quieter but wastes air, weakens the tone, and makes the sound airy. Make sure your nose is fully “turned off” when you play.

Exercises for better breathing

You don’t always need your recorder to practice breathing. These daily exercises train awareness and build muscle memory, so proper support becomes automatic. Try one or two before you play, preferably in front of a mirror.

1. Breath of Fire / Panting Dog

   Quick, active inhales and exhales (through nose for Breath of Fire, mouth for Panting Dog). This is a great exercise for waking up the diaphragm and core.

2. P–T–K

   Say consonants with energy—“Peter! Thomas! Karen!” This engages the abs and makes the diaphragm respond.

3. Condensation

   Breathe on a mirror or your hand. Keep the fog constant as long as possible. This builds slow, controlled exhalation.

4. Bending forward

   Sit and bend forward with hands on your lower back. Inhale. Since the belly can’t expand forward, the breath has to expand sideways and backward. Then rise slowly and notice how long you still feel your back move. Over time, you’ll feel it even when upright.

5. Opening up

   Exhale fully with a “fffff.” Then open your mouth in the form of an “oh” or “ah,” letting the diaphragm release and the lungs refill naturally. Next step: add a quick abdominal inhale to take in more air. Later, practice this on the recorder with long tones.

Exercises 1 to 4 make us aware of our diaphragm and where in the body our muscles have to work actively. Exercise 5 is the basis for the correct use of abdominal breathing once we have a good feeling of the diaphragm and the abdominal muscles.

From here on we practice with the recorder.

We hold the recorder with the right hand (and also with the lower lip, the right thumb and optionally the little finger under the edge between holes 6 and 7). The left hand is on the stomach or waist so that we can still feel our breathing.

When the recorder is lying on the lower lip, we first blow out all the air: not yet in the recorder, but above it, and then immediately open our mouth in the form of an “Oh” or “Ah”. Instead of blowing out normally as before, we now blow into the recorder.

In this way we can still do the breathing exercises from before, but already combine them with playing the recorder.

The next step is to play a long tone with both hands on the recorder while continuing to focus on diaphragmatic breathing and the feeling of it. The goal is that when playing a musical piece on the recorder we maintain this awareness of our breath support, so that our tone is stable and centered without any breathing problems.

Final thoughts

Recorder tone should feel like a calm lake—smooth, steady, no waves. Vibrato is an ornament, not a constant. Practice long notes, experiment with slow/fast and broad/thin air, and learn to find the “center” of each note where it resonates best.

Breathing for the recorder is close to breathing for singing: subtle airflow, resonance, and phrasing. With daily practice, your sound can grow from “school instrument” to flauto dolce—the sweet flute.