Didgeridoo Lesson 3 | Before Learning Circular Breathing

When you start the didgeridoo, you only think about one thing: circular breathing. When I say I play the didgeridoo, the first question people ask me is: “Do you do circular breathing? I tried, but it is so difficult.”

Circular breathing is not difficult. But you have to prepare yourself before you practise it, and you need to know exactly the right exercises. So don’t go too fast: let’s see what is essential before learning circular breathing.

Why most explanations don’t work

Most explanations of circular breathing are simply: use your cheeks and breathe in at the same time. If you learn it like that, it will be difficult.

In reality, there are several steps. If you follow those steps, it becomes much easier. But before the steps, here are the three very important things.

1. A perfectly straight drone

Your drone needs to be perfectly straight, and the start of your drone should be perfect too. Don’t start by searching for your sound.

This is very important, because when you do circular breathing, you need your sound to be very strong.

2. A powerful sound

You don’t want a small, shy sound, as if you did not want people to hear you, blowing into your didgeridoo in a very shy way. Try to make it really strong.

To get a very strong sound:

• It comes from your stomach: when you blow out, push outwards with your stomach.
• Use your lips too.
• Don’t overdo it. Of course, you need to stay relaxed.

Your sound should be at a good level and very straight. Having a really good sound is so important that I made a whole lesson on it: lesson 6.

3. Cheeks you can control

There are at least seven ways to push the air out when you do circular breathing. The first one is the cheeks, because it is the easy way. To use your cheeks, you need to understand how they work.

The exercise: play your sound with your cheeks, then without your cheeks. To do this, you use the corners of your mouth, as I show in the video:

1. Relax them: your cheeks inflate.
2. Push them: your cheeks deflate.

Now you are ready for circular breathing

Now you know the three important things. Practise all three. At the same time, you can start learning circular breathing: my way of teaching is to practise circular breathing without the didgeridoo, so it combines well with these three exercises.

You will find it in my free circular breathing video course.