Breathing breaks for woodwinds

I've been trying to orchestrate my first symphony, but I am a pianist with little knowledge of woodwind playing. I've read online that woodwind players need periodic breaks to breathe, but it's looking more and more like I'll need long woodwind passages for parts of the symphony. I was wondering if anyone--either a veteran composer or a woodwind player--could give me an estimate for an upper bound to the length of a continuous, fast-paced woodwind solo (for an average player) in terms of measures or time. Thanks.

It's hard to say without seeing your music. Could you tell us more about the parts in question? Could you provide a score? Don't worry, we don't steal music here. Also depends heavily on instrument, a flautist needs more air to play than a reed player or most brass players. I would say, depending on dynamic, a continuous string of notes for four measures would be fine as long as it's not too slow or loud, even up to six measures. If you know anybody who plays the instrument(s) in question, ask them to play the part for you, see if it works.

P.S. Welcome to the community! I'm very new here as well, actually.

For orchestral writing, you don

Even though I'm a woodwind player, I never consider or worry about breathing. Like Verdi_Lver said, they can steal breaths (stagger breathing) if they really need to (sometimes it's even notated in the score as an instruction).

As for fast paced solos, I usually just take real quick breaths here and there, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Hmm. As a general rule, don't go over maybe 20 seconds on a loud brass solo. On the tuba or bass trombone, no longer than maybe 13 seconds. This is for semi advanced players. Also keep flute solos brief or breathable, but don't worry as much about breathing spaces - they are used to hiding them anyway.

On the oboe, clarinet and bassoon, long runs in the upper register take a lot of air, and need to be kept shorter. The extreme low register of the oboe and bassoon are difficult to sustain for long periods of time, and every breath is accented slightly. On the oboe, try not to go much lower than middle e4.

:)

Alex

Maybe the easiest trick is to sing it... sing loud you need more air... sing very low or very high you need more air... just remember that oboe last the longer and tuba the least. If so few guidelines you should be able to write it enough well. (well... it was said already)

As it has been stated, stagger breathing might be your best bet with this solo.

If there's a lot of running notes involved for a long period of time, you may want to consider throwing in a quick rest (let's say running 16'ths, put in a 16th rest.)

And as a clarinetist, I can tell you that at a relatively fast tempo (quarter=120) in say, 4/4, the clarinetist should be able to play about 8-10 bars of that non-stop (though most likely out of breath afterwards). You'll have to translate that to your piece though.

Really, breathing is dependent on the melodic line; it should never interfere with your intentions, so don't let it concern you too much.

If you need help specifically with a clarinet part in your piece, I'd be happy to help as well.

If you have more than one player on each part then it'll be easy for them to hide breaths, they'll just do it when they need to and hopefully that won't be at the same time as someone else.

Don't give them any kind of long slow sustained melodic line because it won't be continuos...also, i'm not really sure if any of my advice is accurate or heplful but...yeah...;)

As beethoven said, "Do you think I was considering your atrocious instrument when I wrote this?"

If the written passage is at all possible, I usually don't care how long the players can breathe. They're problems aren't my problems, even though they're my fault. :D

Well, for people trying to get their music performed, and performed well, it is their problem :P.