Improving Air Support in Your Oboe Playing

I recently wrote about how important control over your air is in this post, What Is the Most Important Technique for Playing the Oboe? You can start there if you want to see how much I can go on about this and all the ways your air affects your playing. This is the first of several posts I plan to do getting more into the details of how to use your air. First up are the basics of improving air support in your oboe playing.

Air Pressure or Support

Before we do anything else, let’s get a good picture of what is happening when you play the oboe properly. As oboists, we only blow a small amount of air through our instrument compared to the air used for most of our other woodwind friends. But the air that we keep in our lungs is just as important as the air that makes it through the reed. The air in your body needs to be like a tank of pressurized air. When there is an opening in your tank, like your embouchure, air shoots out the leak. This happens because air will always move from an area of high pressure to an area of lower pressure. We can use this to our advantage and let our air move itself, in a sense, out our embouchure so that we can be more relaxed playing.

The higher the pressure is in your “gas tank,” the more intensely the air will blow out. Also, the smaller your embouchure is, the more intensely your air will push through. And the inverse is true of these. Higher pressure means higher pitch and lower pressure means lower pitch, assuming that the volume of air being blown remains constant.

Air Volume

Volume of air is a different matter. The volume of air that you are blowing through your reed is also controllable and is directly related to the volume of sound that you are creating. While pressure or support is controlled in your abdomen, volume is controlled in your embouchure. Although your reed is only ever going to be open so far, you can still make changes in the “size” of the reed opening with your embouchure. The “size” of the reed opening is not exactly what we are talking about since I believe this has more to do with how open your mouth is and how much room the reed has to vibrate as opposed to actually pinching the reed down or open in your mouth. But you can see how much the opening of the reed makes a difference in volume (of sound) when you play a reed that is closing up and then play after pinching it open. So reedmaking and quality reeds affects your dynamic range as well.

When playing more softly, try to think of cushioning the reed with your embouchure or narrowing your embouchure’s opening. And when playing louder, opening up so as to let the reed vibrate more. But you must also remember that more volume (either of air or sound since they are almost the same thing!) means a lower pitch and less volume is a higher pitch, assuming that your air support remains the same.

Working Together

These two aspects of oboe playing work closely together. I think that oboists are pretty familiar with the idea that opening and closing the embouchure opening adjusts the pitch up and down, but they seem less familiar with the idea that the amount of pressure or support they are creating also has that effect. They balance each other out and a proper understanding of them can make playing much easier.

So, when trying to play softly, instead of squeezing out notes under extra back pressure, dampen the reed with your embouchure and, to make up for the raise in pitch, relax your air pressure just enough to be in tune and under much less stress!

To play loudly, have an open embouchure so that the reed can vibrate as much as possible (or as much as you need it to if you are not playing at your loudest) and make up for the drop in pitch this will cause by increasing your air pressure until the note is up to pitch.

Practicing

There are some simple exercises you can do to get a feel for this whether you are just learning oboe or have been playing for years. I would suggest focusing on your abdominal support more than embouchure manipulation because a greater control and usage of those muscles will relieve a lot of the stress off your face muscles and give you more endurance.

First, try holding a note and without moving your embouchure, neck, or anything else you are tempted to move, relax your abdomen and see how this affects your note. I have to push my stomach out rather than think about relaxing which still opens your lungs and releases the pressure. See if you can go back and forth on your long tone manipulating the pitch with nothing but your air support. Then, try to play the note with a much more relaxed embouchure than you would normally, playing the note flat, and then make up for this with your air support. Do these on many notes in different registers. This is a great time to think about how you normally play and whether you need to make adjustments. It is common to play with a much more tense embouchure than necessary and if you can retrain yourself to play with a relaxed embouchure and more tense abdomen, I believe your ease of playing, endurance, and even your tone will greatly improve.

Getting Your Air

Also, when practicing, while it is good to think about breathing in all the way to the bottom of your lungs and expanding your abdomen, don’t overdo your breath. You do not need to be stuffed as full of air as you can, especially since this can be uncomfortable. Take a comfortable “medium” breath which is primarily going to be used to create a space of pressurized air and very little will be expelled while playing. This is important because breathing out is as much a part of breathing for oboists as breathing in is. If you have too much air, it can take you too long to release it all and make way for air with oxygen in it. Keep this in mind especially when spots to breathe in your music are short!