Breath technique: You’ve survived this long...do you really need to work on your breathing?
As a vocal coach one thing I hear a lot in my studio is singers wanting to work on their breathing. It’s certainly a buzzword for singers and the industry in general, and you may have heard terms such as “breathe into your diaphragm” or “breathe into your belly” which is causing some confusion and worry (I know it did for me!)
In this blog we’re going to look at what “bad” breathing technique actually means and some vocal exercises to address them. Because the truth is you’ve survived this long, so do you really need to work on your breathing?
The short and unsatisfying answer to that is maybe. But more than often a singer just needs a small tweak to their breath management technique rather than the actual task of breathing. And that’s the key phrase here: breath management.
So what is breath management in singing?
Breath management is the way a singer or performer will use their breath while singing. As a rule of thumb unless a singer shows some signs of weak breath management it’s not something I would be looking to ‘fix’ straight away. However it is something I’ll always look into, as it can be responsible for many different outcomes in the voice.
Signs of weak breath management can be:
Gasping for air;
Running out of air on long phrases;
Rigidity in posture, particularly the back or sides;
An unconscious airy tone (taking into consideration the singers age, as things like puberty in girls can naturally bring up a more airy tone);
Raising the shoulders;
Bulging throat or neck muscles;
And many more…
If this sounds like you then it may be that you need to do some training to improve your breath management, so here’s my favourite exercises to help with that.
Exercise: Yoga, Swimming, Aerobic
I know it’s not what any of us really want to hear right now *cue running to Netflix on the sofa* but exercise can transform the way your body intakes, maintains and exhales breath, which are all varying skills that are vital for good vocal technique.
Let’s take yoga for example. It’s common in yoga that you use breathing on different counts and match it to your movement; so while you’re doing your warrior two and it starts to burn you can breathe through it at a steady pace and transition to a new position. At this point you have effectively controlled the speed of your inhales and exhales, while also engaging your intercostal muscles to maintain breath within your chest as you hold without even thinking about it. This is the beauty of using exercise as a tool for breath management; in my experience it seemingly more quickly becomes part of your unconscious mind as a singer as it becomes part of your lifestyle.
Some extra added bonuses to using exercise as a breath management tool can also be:
As a performer it’s rare you’re singing while standing still, so a physically fit body & instrument is key to delivering a solid performance;
Having good breath control can help with things like stage fright, where you can use meditative exercises to calm any nerves down and prepare yourself for the task ahead.
My yoga of choice is always going to be Yoga with Adriene, a free channel on YouTube with 1000s of videos. I send all my students here so go on, give it a go!
Controlling your exhale by hissing to a timer
Another simple but effective exercise to help train good breath management is hissing to a timer and seeing how long you can last until you run out of breath. This helps you manage your exhale and is a good way to see improvement as the time increases. This is something I’d recommend doing daily, as it’s the best and fastest way to see progression and celebrate your improvement.
Quick warning: this exercise can seem a bit odd to begin with so you can always imagine you are blowing on a candle and you don’t want it to go out but you want it to flicker. Using your imagination here can help calm the mind and help the task make sense.
Add in a phonated sound
Once you’ve done the above and feel comfortable try adding in a phonated sound on an EE vowel and see what happens, is there much difference between? If there is a large difference it might be something else that is using that extra air e.g. the dynamic, the tone of the voice. In this instance I’d recommend recording the sound and listening back to see if you can identify this in the voice. Think about these questions:
Was it a lot louder than the hiss?
Was the tone breathy throughout?
Was the onset was aspirate resulting in a HEE sound?
Once you have identified this you can give it another go and see if you can amend your approach to strengthen your breath management. Following that you can start to play with the vowels, trying different vowels to see how the breath management differs, or you can even add in counting 1-10 on repeat. Again this is something I’d recommend doing daily to see the full effects and improve your breath management more quickly.
Inhaling on a count, holding and exhaling on another
Doubling up as the beginning of meditation, this exercise again works on controlling that inhale, the hold and exhale. Can you see the pattern here now?
With this exercise you can start small and get bigger, but take good care on the holding. I’d advise you to focus more on the inhale and exhale getting longer, rather than increasing the hold too much. In fact I’d say only hold for a maximum of 4 counts. Even in this case if you’re finding that your muscles are starting to ache because you’re holding the breath in, I'd recommend taking it down a little more, as your body is wasting extra energy which can result in a “HUH” sigh as you struggle to get air out as much as possible.
In conclusion, breathing is something that you can naturally do and take joy in that, however it’s most likely you will want to tweak your breath management at some point in time. In fact it’s highly likely! Adding the above exercises for breathing technique for singers into your practice should help you develop good breath management naturally over time. And then all that’s left to do is celebrate your win (cue Whitney “And I…..”).
Get in touch if you have any questions, and let’s chat about breathing.
