Breathing Exercises and Support

Those of you that are familiar with our
singing course know that our approach to breathing is a very casual one (against seemingly every other coach in the world). We have said again and again...start with the right vocal cord technique and you will not have to worry so much about your breathing technique.

Singers are told to practice "diaphragmatic breathing" by their teachers the world over. Our answer to that is: "the ONLY way to fill up your lungs with air is by using your diaphragm! There is nothing BUT diaphragmatic breathing!"

Imagine a basketball cut in half...made of thin but strong muscle, turned over like a hat and sewn around its edges to the bottom of your rib cage, and you've got something like the diaphragm. As long as that muscle is relaxed it sits up like a dome and your lungs are empty.

But when it contracts, it flattens out, thus sucking air into your lungs.

On top of the diaphragm there are a couple of air-sacs that join by a pipe running up to the back of your throat (your lungs, of course).

Now if you are unconscious and NOT breathing, hopefully, someone will come and fill your lungs by force from the outside, mouth-to-mouth. But when you are breathing on your own, your lungs fill from the opposite direction (vacuum) caused by the dome-shaped diaphragm sucking downward, drawing in air.

While in Colorado, I discovered that at a mile and a half high, the air is VERY thin. You can suck a lung full of air and feel like it's only half a lung-full.

When performing there, singers often get light-headed and the main-stage at the venue we were at even had an oxygen tank for woozie performers.

I BREATHED IN...NOW WHAT?

Ok, you used your diaphragm to breath in correctly, letting your abdomen expand outward.

The only real complicated part of breathing for singing is deciding what to do with the air once it's in there awaiting use (to produce a tone).

Here are the theories I'm aware of:

1. Just focus on your cords and let them determine how much air is released to produce the desired sound.

This is largely what we teach. I say "largely" because for the most part, singers need the most help in tone production and shaping. They've been breathing all their lives or they'd be dead. But their tone is in need of improvement. Or their range. Both of these, we argue, are handled best from the "vocal cords first" approach.

But sometimes, we get a singer into a beautiful place tone- and range-wise, so we can work on adding a little more "power." That brings us to another breathing approach...

2. "Support (gentle)." This is such a common cliche among voice teachers that I hesitate to use the term for fear of your mind switching off. Stay with me.

Because I AM a singer, I approach vocals from a "how do we get this into a singer's head simply" angle. The best mental picture I was ever given on this was this: imagine the air cascading down the inside of your body like water and splashing outward at your pelvic area. As you sing notes, make sure that the air keeps splashing DOWNWARD at your pelvis.

This simple picture will keep your breath giving just enough support without having to think too much.

3. "Support (hard)." This is for ROCK singers and anyone who wants to strike a more edgy tone.

In this approach, once the breath is taken in, you firm your pelvic floor exactly like you do when you are eliminating your bowels. YUK! I know that mental picture is not so pleasant, but it just happens to work.

You can try this and give a slight "grunt" to feel what this will be like when you are producing a vocal sound.

The trick is to NOT allow too much of that pressure on your cords (we call that yelling). You will blow your cords out if you don't regulate the amount of pressure down there.

CONCLUSION

MOST of your attention should NOT be on breathing (unless you find yourself at 7500 ft above sea level and you feel you might just die any moment on stage.)