Intake Exercises

• Intake exercises are designed to help you improve how much air you inhale. Wind players take in too little air by tightening their throats and breathing into only the tops of their lungs.
  
  Practice deep-breathing while lying on the floor. Relax your throat (think of breathing hot air on frosty glass) and breathe slowly. Let the air fill your lungs from the very bottom, below your ribcage. Try to mimic this feeling while standing up.
  
  

Blowing Exercises

• Blowing exercises are designed to help you expel the air from your lungs with the proper consistency and power, including control of the abdominal muscles to help you push out the last of the air in your lungs with the same pressure as the beginning of your breath.
  
  The best way to develop consistency of support for flute tone is to practice playing the longest single notes you can on the instrument. Initially, you will find that as you get closer to the end of your breath, the quality of the note's pitch and tone will waver or the tone will stop. Work on pushing harder from your lower abs the more the breath wanes in order to compensate. Initially this type of breathing will feel uncomfortable, but you will get used to it.
  
  To develop more strength and power in blowing, try this exercise without the flute: Take a piece of paper or facial tissue and try to hold it up against a wall with the force of blowing air. Challenge yourself to see how long you can hold the paper in place and how far back you can stand from the wall.
  
  

Quick Breathing

• Once you've developed the ability to take in a deep, relaxed breath, you must learn to do so quickly, because musicians will often have only a split-second within a musical phrase to take in a deep breath.
  
  To work on taking quick breaths, use a metronome set at a pulse of 60 beats per second. Breathe in deeply for eight counts, then expel the full breath for another eight counts. Next, breathe in for only seven counts, but still breathe out for eight. Continue to reduce the amount of time you spend inhaling while increasing the amount of time you spend expelling air; be sure not to reduce the strength of your blowing. Once you can blow for a very long with only one beat of breathing, speed up the metronome to take an even shorter breath.