Breathing Improvement
May 29, 2009 by wkimball · Leave a Comment
Here’s an update at the end of the second phase of my little study:
•After 3 weeks of measuring 30 vital capacity breaths a day, peak measurements improved from 6.6 liters to 7.3 liters.
•After 3 weeks of measuring 30 peak expiratory flow/forced expiratory volume maneuvers per day, peak measurements improved from 720/4.75 to 735/5.00.
In both cases, a significant measurable improvement, especially given the limited amount of time! The final phase, which I’ll start tonight, will be combining the two: measuring 30 vital capacity breaths and 30 PEF/FEV1 maneuvers per day for 3 weeks. It will be interesting to see if combining the two will result in similar improvement, superior improvement (resulting from a sort of optimization), or lesser improvement (from over-taxing muscles).
Update and conclusions in 3 weeks!
Breathing Experiment
May 28, 2009 by wkimball · Leave a Comment
Scientific studies have shown that certain aspects of breathing can be improved through respiratory training. This is the basis of one of the articles I’ve posted on breathing on this site. The underlying physiological concept is that the respiratory system contains skeletal muscles that can be strengthened just like any other skeletal muscles in the body; these are the muscles that drive the respiratory bellows (the lungs themselves containing no muscle, of course).
Based on these and other studies, I have decided to try a little experiment, using my own breathing measurements. First, measuring 30 vital capacity maneuvers per day for 3 weeks, using a spirometer. Second, measuring 30 PEF/FEV1 (peak expiratory flow/forced expiratory volume in 1 second) maneuvers per day for 3 weeks, using a digital PEF/FEV1 meter. Third, combining both 30 vital capacity maneuvers and 30 PEF/FEV1 maneuvers (a total of 60 measurements per day), again measuring daily for a 3 week period.
Vital capacity, by the way, is a person’s usable, voluntary lung capacity. Peak expiratory flow is how fast a person can exhale air. Forced expiratory volume in 1 second is how much air can be moved in one second. All three of these measurements would seem to have applications for wind musicians.
This is not a tightly controlled medical experiment, of course–it is just slightly better than anecdotal. However, I was curious to see what measurable benefit I might personally experience. Essentially what I’m trying to see is whether an active professional wind musician can make similar improvements to those that have been made in the studies on “normal” subjects. I am in the middle of the process, just finishing up the third week of PEF/FEV1, and it looks fairly promising. The vital capacity measurements were especially surprising: in the course of 3 weeks, I improved from 6.6 liters to 7.2 liters, a fairly significant increase.
I’ll post updates as I finish the PEF/FEV1 phase and the combined phase. Eventually I’ll post a summary of everything and discuss what possible conclusions can be drawn!
Utah Trombone Authority clip
May 25, 2009 by wkimball · Leave a Comment
The Utah Trombone Authority, a quartet with 2 members of the Utah Symphony and 2 members of the BYU faculty, played a concert for the Deseret Chamber Music Series on May 15th. BYU-TV did a short review of the concert on “BYU Weekly,” a sort of week-in-review news spot. Not a bad little piece of publicity. Here’s a link to the archive.
The Trombone in 1830
May 22, 2009 by wkimball · Leave a Comment
I just added an entry for the year 1830 to the Trombone History Timeline: Auguste Bertini, an international musician previously active in Italy and France, relocates to England and publishes his New System for… All Musical Instruments, an instruction book for a variety of instruments. He mentions alto, tenor, and bass trombones, the alto apparently pitched in E-flat.
There are several other significant trombone-related events from the year 1830. 1830 is the year that Hector Berlioz writes Symphony Fantastique, of course, a work that employs trombones prominently. Regarding the orchestration of the uppermost trombone part, Berlioz demands, in an early document listing the instrumentation, “The alto trombone part must not be played on a big trombone, as is often done in France: I demand a true alto trombone.”
In Leipzig, Germany, a correspondent for the well-recognized music periodical Allgemeine musikalischeZeitung proclaims, “Truly we live in an age of trombones.” This observation is largely in response to the remarkable solo career of trombonist Carl Queisser, who performs often to great acclaim at Leipzig’s famous Gewandhaus and is a member of the Gewandhaus orchestra. Carl Queisser’s colleague in the orchestra, concertmaster Ferdinand David, later writes the well-known Concertino for Trombone for Queisser.
Gewandhaus
In addition, around the year 1830 some interesting trombone manufacturing events take place. In Austria, Uhlmann, a Viennese brass manufacturer, improves on Riedl’s valve design, making B-flat and G trombones with the double Vienna valve. In Strasbourg, a city on the border of France and Germany, manufacturer Charles Kretzschmann makes a rear-facing trombone, an instrument now held in the Metropolitan Museum. Rear-facing trombones, in fact, enjoy a certain vogue during the century, as a number of graphic representations depict (see 19th Century of the Trombone History Timeline).
Belgian military trombonist
Czech lithograph with 2 rear-facing trombones
(For sources on all of the above information, see Trombone History Timeline and Bibliography.)
Note from Lyon Conservatoire
May 11, 2009 by wkimball · Leave a Comment
Just got a nice note about the trombone history timeline from Sandie Griot, a master’s student studying early music at the National Conservatoire, Lyon, France. Sandie was also interested in information about any available facsimile editions of Tuma’s Inno per il Festo di Saint Teresia (1741). I recommended gleaning info from the published performance edition (Modern Editions), as well as contacting Stephen C. Anderson, editor of the edition, for more details. If anyone out there has additional info, let me know, and I will be happy to relay it!