I am learning to play your tune Honky Tonk. I am having some problems with the process of breathing while I play this tune. I was wondering if you would have any breathing advices especially between bar 3-13 in this song.
Despite doing diaphram exercises I find that I run out of breath about half way in that long sequence. I have spent hours practicing.
Could you please advise me on possible techniques that I could use to solve this problem.
Many thanks
Bengt
Good question Bengt. I had the same problem when learning this tune.
it’s pretty much impossible to play every note at full count without taking a breath.
I should have put “breathing” marks throughout the head of this tune. A breathing mark is just a comma (‘)
to remind us to take a breath there.
what you can do is add your own breath marks and I suggest (counting from the beginning of the melody):
at the end of bar 2. I sometimes will even omit the last 8th note of the bar just to get a full breath.
again at the end of bar 5. you can omit the last 8th note there too.
you can follow this pattern trying to take the needed breath when it’s over an 8th note and not over the 4th
beat of the bar when it’s the 3 note pattern such as the triplet or 2 16th’s and 8th notes together.
after you get fast at taking a breath in these spots you may find you can start getting a bit of that 8th note in there as well as taking a breath…of course that 8th note will sound more like a 16th but doesn’t really matter as long as you keep the groove going with convincing articulation.
Good advices, will do that tonight. Also found that going back from my DG King to my old MP with a 7 opening helped a lot.
In general a very good advice I never thought of, going to implement that tool in other songs too.
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