It all started with a question from Victor, under an old video on my English channel. In that lesson, I was playing a little rhythm, and I’d got carried away… Victor wanted to know exactly what I was playing. I thought his question deserved a video, and this article.
Because this rhythm tells us something precious: you can start from an almost childlike base and, little by little, let it grow into a real groove. Without changing the rhythm, simply by inhabiting it differently.
The starting point: three breaths and the “i” overtone
The base fits in four syllables: “on, on, on, i”. In practice, you breathe in three times, then send out an “i” at the end. That’s all! And yet this pattern already holds the essentials: a steady pulse carried by the breath, and a small high sound that punctuates the phrase.
Play it for several minutes, calmly, before going further. The more settled this base is, the more easily the variations will come.
A first colour: the accent
Also, listening back to the original video, I noticed that I sometimes slipped an accent onto the second beat… and sometimes not!
That accent is a KOUF, the sound that snaps like a snare drum. Put it in or leave it out, it’s up to you, but listen to how it changes the colour of the rhythm. If you don’t know it yet, I explain it in this article about the KOUF.
The wobble: three sounds, at least one of which is a breath
Next, I suggest you develop the WAs.
And with what I play all the time: wobbles. These are sounds that follow each other very fast. Here, it appears on the second beat, and I write it “WAwa”. In the jargon, with a certain logic, it’s called a “double WA”!
Its secret?
You push the air out in two goes: once with the cheeks, a second time with the tongue. Two sounds follow each other… but you only breathe in once.
It’s actually the sound of circular breathing cut in two. That’s why I always encourage you to work on the wobble with the in-breath, right from the start: without it, it’s just an articulation!
But with the in-breath, it becomes a wobble (I talk about it in my free course here)!
The rhythm then becomes:
Here, I’ve even developed the bounce sound, but if that’s too complex for you, play the rhythm without the “HO”. It then gives:
Developing it without losing the thread
Once the double WA is in place, you can keep having fun by adding our good old KOUF or TOUF (whichever consonant you like).
Then I also develop the double WA on the third breath, and I double the i at the end. Each time, the base stays in the background, like a river that keeps flowing while you play with the reflections on its surface.
And it sounds like this:
Of course, it’s up to you to look for your own variations, depending on your playing habits, what comes easily to you and what you feel like doing. There are no right answers, only what motivates you!
The grand finale
At the end of the video, I deliberately slow down a passage that mixes overtones and double WAs. For this part, I’ll let you search a little: it’ll be good work for your ear!
On the other hand, feel free to slow the video down on YouTube to decipher it. Sometimes it takes some real effort to work out what’s being played, but it’s an excellent exercise!
How to practise it at home
To sum up, here, as an example, is how I’d advise you to approach this rhythm:
Start with version 1 (ON-ON-ON-I) on your didgeridoo, at a slow tempo, around 50 beats per minute, focusing above all on the quality of your sound and leaving nice, well-spaced breaths. When you can keep it going on its own, add the kouf. Then the double WA on the second beat, slowly, really feeling the two pushes for a single in-breath. And only then, move up little by little towards 100.
If you’d like to learn the two main wobbles step by step, they’re explained in the free wobbles course. And to understand where wobbles come from, and how each kind of circular breathing opens up its own possibilities, that’s what my course The Secret of the 7 Breaths is all about.
Happy blowing!
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