Phil's Didgeridoo Class

• A basic drone. Before you do anything else, you have to master this. The drone is a resonant effect, and each didg has its own natural resonant frequency. The trick in droning is to allow the didg to find this frequency. Basically, you have to just let yourself go with the pipe. Common beginner problems:
  • Attempting to blow like a trumpet, or similar wind instrument, using tightly pursed lips. This causes an unpleasant "raspberry" sound nowhere near (usually) the natural drone frequency for the pipe. Solution: Relax! Let your lips flop into the pipe. Listen for the natural frequency.
  • If you have your lips too loose, instead of a drone you get a flappy, floppy, blurty kind of sound. Again, not terribly pleasant. Tighten up gradually. You should suddenly find the natural drone frequency, at which point the sound will suddenly take on a pleasant crisp note.

  

• The drone with added second harmonics (or something - I think that's what they are...), achieved by changing the "shape" of the mouth while blowing. You can do this by, for example, pushing your tongue forward, or by squeezing your cheeks together. The space in your mouth forms part of the resonant system together with your lips, and the column of air vibrating in the didg. You can get some quite entertaining sounds this way. During circular breathing, the shape of your mouth normally changes quite a bit, leading to a rhythmic variation in the tone of the didg, characteristic of the instrument.

  

• Drone with added vocalisation, basically by making noises with the vocal chords while blowing.

  

• This is me having a bit of fun combining the previous techniques in a "solo" performance. This sound sample will disappear soon when I get around to bringing my didg into work and digitising (didgitising?) one that's a bit better.

  

• Circular breathing. This is the great mystery of didgeridoo playing. There's a quote in Neil Murray's excellent book Sing For Me Countryman, where an aboriginal guy (must fix this reference) says that, basically, it's nothing special: "you just keep blowing".

  In fact, I found that it's something that just develops on its own if you play the didg a lot while always breathing in through the nose. In other words, play the didg without removing it from your mouth. When you need to breath, snatch a breath through your nose as quickly as possible, and start playing again. Do this for a bit each day, and pretty soon you'll discover (if you're lucky) that the breaks will get shorter and shorter. For me, it was about 6 weeks from when I started (with 1.2 metres of PVC tube) until I was circular breathing easily. This was with about 30 to 60 minutes of practice (I guess) per day - nothing formal, just playing around with it.

  If you are having trouble with circular breathing, there are lots of other things you can do. For example, in Alastair Black's excellent little book "How To Play The Didgeridoo", he suggests filling the cheeks with air and making a "raspberry" sound (without the didg) by emptying them without breathing, just squeezing the cheeks. You can use your fingers on each side of your cheeks initially until you get the idea. Then, independently, try snatching a fast breath through your nose, snorting backwards. Then (this is where it gets exciting), do both at once. Personally, I think the real value of this exercise is to convince your brain that it's not impossible. Circular breathing while playing the didg is really quite different, in my opinion. But, whatever works for you...

Please understand that I don't regard myself a terribly good didg player - I think I've got a basic level of competence on the instrument, but that's all. If you want to hear it played really well, have a listen to the yidaki solos at the bottom of the Yothu Yindi Multimedia Archive page. Those guys are just amazing!

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