How do you effectively breathe at tempos like 110 where everything is 16th notes? At around 65 bpm, I no longer have enough time to get a full breathe without pausing, causing me to have to breathe every 2 measures or so, ruining the sound of the music due to gasps.

Effective breathing.
If you can only gasp enough air to play two measure at 65bpm then you probably have two issues. The first issue is you are not breathing correctly and the second is you do not know how to manage your air - yet. You probably do not spend 5 minutes everyday practicing your breathing.

To learn to breathe properly you really should invest in private lessons. I know they can be costly but they can be a very good investment. You do not want to learn to breathe incorrectly and develop a bad habit you can never break. Depending on your location and what you do know already you may be able to find a teacher that will teach you what you want and take 4 or 5 lessons just for that. (remember you are paying them and although teachers should teach you everything we are moving to a modular world.) I do have students who come to study only one thing for a summer and then they come back the next summer to study something else.

If you find your self raising your shoulder up you are breathing very shallow and if you are finding you are pulling your stomach in to support then you are supporting incorrectly. If you have a thousand 16th notes to play then you breathe in when you should be playing a note and you just leave that note out.

If you are breathing properly you should not hear any gasp sound.

Here is what I teach, and be forewarned it is controversial, but it works.

Think of your torso in four sections.
section 1- top front
section 2- top back
section 3-bottom front
section 4 bottom back
the top goes from your shoulders to your ribcage.
the bottom section goes from your ribcage to your lower abdomen.

When first learning breathe air into your top back and bottom front sections, your mouth should be in the vowel shape of "O". Practice and you will see you can suck in a lot of air in less the a quarter of a second without making a sound.

When you are playing do not squeeze the stomach muscles inward like most people teach. Try keeping your torso billowed out . . . do not squeeze until there is absolutely no more air.

Practice this technique while doing long tones and scale. It will take awhile but you will be rewarded greatly for the investment of time and practice. When you get it down we talk about lesson number two.

John