New to the instrument? Start with The Bulgarian Kaval: what it is, how it sounds and how it is made.

Lesson 4 – Breathing

Breathing Anatomy

Our bodies have been practicing the skill of breathing since the day you were born. That’s the reason we sometimes take this function of our body for granted. This lesson is not about teaching you how to breathe, because we all obviously know that. It’s more about how to optimize your breathing and make it more efficient.

That lesson could be of use not only for Kaval players but for any other players who play an instrument that relies on air to produce a sound.

There are a few muscles that we use when breathing –  the intercostals (those are the muscles located between your ribs), the abdominals and the diaphragm.

The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle which sits under the chest cavity. When we inhale, our ribcage expands, The diaphragm dome pulls down, which increases the volume of the chest cavity and all that results in freeing more room for the air that comes into the lungs.
When we exhale the diaphragm goes back up to its relaxed state, the ribs go back in and all that helps the lungs push the air out.

Posture

Good and proper posture is a very important aspect for playing any musical instrument. For all woodwinds it is even more important because it can significantly improve your breathing and enables you to play clear and strong tones. That’s one of the first aspects a beginner player should address when starting to play the kaval. So what’s a good posture?

This is what your posture should look like when playing the kaval. Your back needs to be straight, so don’t slouch, because it isn’t good for your back, nor for your playing.

Breath support

Playing the Kaval requires us to have a lot of air and to optimise the use of it as much as possible, our sound relies on that. It is very important to be effective when playing and don’t get out of the air too quickly, before we finish our phrases.

In order to do that effectively we use Breath Support. Let’s define that! Breath Support is basically managing your exhalation, which would mean to regulate our air flow, air speed and air pressure. Good breath support allows us to play loudly or softly and at the same time be able to control our intonation. But how do we do all that?

We need to train our diaphragm so that we have complete control of how quickly it ascends to its high position. We need it to ascend slowly while maintaining a consistent airflow that would allow us to have longer phrases, better sound and better intonation. In other words – we don’t want to rush out the air too quickly.

Check out the Exercise section of the lesson to learn how to practice Breath Support and get good at it.

Circular Breathing

Circular Breathing is a technique for woodwind instruments that allows the player to inhale and exhale at the same time. I realise this may sound impossible but trust me it is possible. The first time I saw my teacher doing it I immediately tried to copy it, but it turned out it was not something that you can just copy like that, it is, in fact, quite challenging. The technique actually is accomplished by puffing out stored air from the cheeks to keep making the sound while inhaling fresh air through the nose. It is a technique that requires quite a lot of practice and I will not go through it in this lesson but stay tuned because I will explain in detail how to do it in my future lessons. For now just keep in mind that such a technique exists and it’s really cool to be able to use it. It is really nice to know that every time you get out air you can simply inhale more without stopping the air flow and the sound.

Check out this video, here I demonstrate how this technique works:
https://youtube.com/shorts/qMbaeKkP3_4?si=7f0DfmuZoROZAicx

Exercise

Breath support – To get the feel of good breath support:

• Stand up straight, keep your neck and back lengthened, your shoulders down and chest up.
• Inhale as far as you can.
• Exhale while saying “Ssssssssss.”
• Feel the resistance created by the hissing – this helps us control the airflow. It’s that control that we’re looking for, but without the “Ssss” – only by using the diaphragm.
• “Not” blowing a candle out – imagine a lit candle in front of you and adjust the speed of your air so that it’s enough to make the flame flicker but not enough to blow out the candle