Posted by fred young on June 02, 2001 at 15:44:31:
In Reply to: Re: Re: breathing posted by Brian Frederiksen on June 02, 2001 at 14:22:17:
Many years ago a trumpet player from one of the smaller orchestras in the MidWest came to Arnold Jacobs complaining that he did not have enough air. It turned out that he never took a breath before playing and did his playing on whatever air happened to be in his lungs. Prof Jacobs got him to take a big breath and blow into a five liter neumotacograph to measure his lung capacity. He filled it with air and proceeded to blow water all over the studio in AJ's basement. AJ borrowed a 12 liter one from a hospital which the trumpet player did the same thing to. AJ took him to the vet school of a local university where they had a neumotacograph for measuing horses vital capacity. It would measure 18 liters. The trumpet player had a 16 liter capacity. He was tall but not 7 feet tall. I have know some tubists that were almost 7 feet tall, but unfortunately they had no musical talent for tuba playing.
If a five foot person has 3.75 liters vital capacity, a six footer would have 6.5 liters and a 7 footer would have 10.3 liters vital capacity assuming the aforementioned cubic variation. It would seem that there must be some other factors that I have not included.
For example, it is well known that the natives of the high Andes have extra large lungs because the air where they live is rather rarified. I also think tubists can preserve their vital capacity as they age by doing a lot of aerobic excercises.