This melody is mostly draw notes - meaning that at the end of phrase your lungs may be too full of air to finish. How can this be dealt with?

One helpful approach is to play softly, but with full tone. If you use less of your air capacity, you'll have reserve space to deal with a longer phrase. But soft playing should still have fullness of tone and good bending control - be careful not sacrifice these.

Blow notes and short pauses allow you to get rid of unwanted breath.

Short pauses occur at the end of each phrase, offering an opportunity to breathe in or out. The note just before this pause is a very important note - the note that ends the phrase. Yet it is very easy to just touch this note briefly and then rush on to the pause - without tone, without finality, and without giving it enough time, thus ruining the whole phrase.

The note just before the pause should get full treatment of tone, and shouldn't just be touched and abandoned - you're not running bases.It takes care, attention, and finesse to give the last note full tone and a decisive character. You have to be careful not to spend too long on the pause, either, or you'll start the next phrase late.

But there are other ways to balance your breath on a blow-draw instrument.

Blow notes can help get rid of excess breath, but care should be taken not to let their fullness of tone suffer. Blow 4 occurs, but mostly near the beginning or middle of a phrase, not at the end where it's most needed. Draw 2 occurs frequently, and you can substitute Blow 3 instead IF you do not harm the tonal continuity of the phrase. If you use Blow 3, make sure that the tone is as full as possible. If you go from Blow 3 to Draw3 bent, make sure the transition is clean, smooth and on pitch (no sliding).

By habit, players often slide into a bent note. As a matter of style, this may be desirable in some situations and not in others. This is one of the situations where it is not.

This melody requires frequent use of Draw 3, bent down 2 semitones. It is approached both from above (draw 3 unbent) and from below (Draw2, or, optionally, Blow 3). In all cases, you should go directly to the target pitch without sliding into it. The note should be initiated smoothly, with immediate fullness of tone.

How do you avoid sliding? Find the mouth position that produces the bent note, at the target pitch. Memorize it. Now release it and go back to the natural note. Now go directly back to the bend by activating the mouth position for the bend. By memorizing and activating embouchure positions, you should be able to flip the bend on and off like a light switch.

You should be able to hold the bend at a steady pitch, without struggling or wavering. A firm yet relaxed hold on the bent note is essential for it to be heard as an equal to the other notes. This is a matter of good bending control.

It is easy to play the bent note flat without being aware of it. Listen closely to your pitch when playing back recordings. It may sound fine when you play it and flat when you hear it back. Experiment with playing it so that it feels a little sharp while playing, and see what effect this yields on playback. What you experience while playing is not necessarily what the listener hears. And the listener is the most important.

When you bend a note down, the vowel sound changes, sounding something like ee-oo. Work to minimize the effect of this, as it can distract from the phrase and call undue attention to the bend.

Bent notes can have less volume than unbent notes, even when you play with good resonance and good bending control. A reed vibrates with the greatest energy at its natural pitch, and with less energy when bent. This is true even when two reeds are co-operating in a bend. Again, what you experience while playing may not be what you hear on playback. Try playing your bent notes with slightly more volume - but with no extra force, and see what effect this has when you play back the recording.

With good resonance, bent notes can sound very full tonally, even at low volume. Their tonal fullness should be equal to that of unbent notes. The tonal color will never match completely. But equalizing the fullness of tone will go a long way towards integrating bent notes into a phrase with unbent notes.

Blow notes, draw notes, and bends all impose different requirements for vibrato. Non-bending notes (blow notes in Hole 1-6, draw notes in Holes 7-10) will not give pitch-based vibrato like the bendable notes. Bent notes can have pitch-based vibrato, but you have to control it while keeping the bent not in a stable condition. For consistency's sake, you must seek a vibrato that matches for all three types of notes.

Don't avoid using vibrato on bent notes. Depending on the expressive requirements of a phrase, vibrato may be called for on a note that happens to be bent. Find a way to play a steady, musical vibrato on that note, and make it consistent with the vibrato used on other types of notes.