Understanding Your Breath

Breathing. It’s natural. It comes naturally to all humans. So why do we need to work on it as vocalists? Why do vocalists need to develop good breath mechanics? The short answer is “So you can sing well”. The longer answer is “You can’t have strong vocals, without strong breath. You can have a voice, to be sure. You can even have a big voice, but time will expose the lack of mechanics every time”.

If you want a voice that can phonate (sing or talk) at lots of different volumes (dynamics), with large ranging abilities to fine tune your emotional delivery, you will need good breath mechanics. There really is no getting around it. Solid breath mechanics will allow you to build stamina and vocalize for long periods of time without vocal damage. Your breath is the key to your voice.

What are breath mechanics? Exactly what it sounds like. Breath mechanics are how your body breathes, or more specifically for vocalists, how we use our breath to sing. In the most general terms, we inhale air (see picture to the left), and then we exhale that air. Nothing to it, right? Well, vocalists want to inhale in a very specific way, taking in more air than the average person, holding onto that air for a longer period of time, then exhaling that air with very precise timing across our vocal folds to produce sound. We then start the whole process over again. Essentially, it’s controlled hyperventilating. Even though that’s a funny way to say it, it’s primarily true. Singers are inhaling and exhaling at a much deeper level, and more frequently, than a normal human being, hence the need to think about our breath. A lot of our work together will center around adapting your natural breath mechanic into an informed mechanic. A conscious mechanic. Over time, we will take what comes naturally to you, and condition it to achieve deep, stable, and consistent breath control and access.

The general public will breath in what we would call a shallow way. A vocalist will breath in a deeper way. You'll see on the left the image of someone just breathing in and out with their chest (shallow breathing), and someone breathing with their diaphragm in conjunction with their lungs (deep breathing). Chest breathing is not sustainable for a vocalist. Diaphragmatic breathing and control is the goal of every singer. Diaphragmatic breathing is expandable, changeable and can be built up to sustain even the most challenging high air demand vocalizing, whereas the shallower chest breathing is limited. Very limited. You can see where I’m going with this! We must learn to feel, improve and manage our breath. Every vocalist, should become adept at breath mechanics.

I have developed a whole series of exercises to isolate and develop a vocalist’s abilities to work on their breath, to feel their breath, and ultimately, to manipulate their breath to achieve their desired vocal sound, whether that is incredibly demanding high flying vocal riffing, sustaining high volume demand for musical theater, or flexing your distribution of your air over endlessly held notes. The skills to achieve true control over your voice lies in your breath, or to be more precise, your breath mechanics.

Of course, we also learn to shape that air within the soft tissue of our mouths, sinus cavities, and facial muscles, and to shape it with vowel manipulation. We’ll learn to condition our vocal folds to phonate efficiently at high pressures, low pressures, and everything in between. This is in addition, and in conjunction with your breath. A truly well conditioned voice is a voice that can control their breath mechanic.

Imagining Breath

Imagine your breath mechanism as a ballon. If you take in too much air, it’s going to burst, or expel in an out of control way, causing our “breath ballon” to run around out of control. If we we take in too little, we don’t have any air to even float our ballon. (or our voice in this case). We want to fill our ballon to just the right amount. Not too much, not too little. It should feel easy, and comfortable. Be sure not to confuse feeling easy with lack of effort, or physical work. Easy in this case means singing should feel easy and unlabored, if we are supplying our voice with proper breath, or with the proper “ballon” size. If we learn to take in the right amount of breath each time, we learn to breathe consistently, and this will provide us a great vocal foundation that we can then stylize and improvise over. Keep in mind, everyone is different. Everyone will feel “the ballon full feeling” in a different way, perhaps even in a different part of their body. However you feel the proper ballon feeling, consistent practice breathing properly for you and your body is the key to consistent, strong and flexible performance.

Another way to imagine your breath, is to imagine your whole self as a windmill. You want to generate air, constantly, consistently and easily. Building up or working on this breath ability is a core piece of vocal progression. Imagine a wind turbine, mechanically generating all the air you need. There is no need to worry, gasp, or hold onto a dying breath. You can simply generate more by taking the correct sized breath, a breath that feels full (perfectly sized ballon), that feels just right. Your goal is to keep this “air stream” flowing, so your available breaths are always there, ready and waiting. Yes, you will need to take new breaths as you sing, but the breaths are steady, regular and controlled. This air stream flows through your vocal mechanism, and is shaped and manipulated in the soft tissues of your mouth and face, and streamed outside your body. To the left is an illustration of what that might look like. In an even breath mechanic your diaphragm takes in air to your lungs (your lungs are passive in this particular function) and then you release that air in a controlled, even manner, over your vocal folds (which creates the sounds, or the vibration, phonation), and then you shape that sound through your mouth tissue, and release that sound as it finally passes through your mouth, which is where it is again shaped in the form of vowels and word shapes. The idea is to have a visualization of what is happening. It doesn’t have to be this one, but I always try to find a visual that works for my students, as it has a tremendous impact on their ability to execute, practice and perfect their own breathing style. Imaginative visuals are key when learning how to manipulate our bodies, our breath and ultimately our voice.

Movement and Breathing

**Vocal Posture Convex or Extended (c)**

**Vocal Posture Concave or Collapsed (b)**

In addition to “feeling” how much air you have taken in, or how much your are holding, it is equally important to recognize that your body’s movement and your breath work are very closely related, VERY. It is essential to move your body while you are singing. Moving is critical to mitigate physical tension, and to create a natural flow and function of your vocal mechanic. Standing still for long periods of time is not normal! You can have moments of stillness, but they should ultimately connect with natural subtle movement while singing. Movement while we sing is the best way to stay relaxed, and keep your body in a neutral position. Be mindful, of your stance, and your movement ALWAYS.

When we think about movement specifically, we can focus firstly on the importance of keeping the area from the top of your pubic bone (which includes your hip area), to the bottom of your chest plate (where your ribs connect to your chest bone), flexible. Not only flexible, but movable. We don’t want to stand perfectly still while singing, that will increase the tension in your muscle groups. Rather, we want to keep our bodies loose and naturally moving. We want to give our rib cage, diaphragm, lungs, jaw, neck, shoulders and all the joining tissues space to flex and function properly. We do not want to be overly concave (Illustration b), or overly extended (Illustration c). We want to be in a neutral stance (Illustration d).

The diagram to the left (illustration a) demonstrates the area that we can concentrate on keeping loose first. If we can keep this area loose, and moving (even slight movement), it will help keep our upper body, face, neck, jaw and shoulders loose as well. If we are stiff around the middle, this inhibits our ability to take in air, hold the air without tension, and most importantly phonate over that air as we sing. A physically tense singer, is a singer setting themselves up for a difficult vocal experience.

Imagine a string or line (Illustration a), going right through the center of your body, and out your head, imagine there is a ball or ballon on the string. If we rotation that string in a circular fashion, it creates a soft, round circular movement. This movement will keep us in good physical form while singing. Even small shifts in our weight from side to side and front to back can keep our bodies from locking up. Our bodies were created to move. We need to move. Tiny shifts in our bodies will keep our breath mechanism working with fluidity. Being completely still, or locked, can cause all manner of difficulties in regards to our vocal performance, such as being out of tune, short on air supply, non-rhythmic phrasing, etc.

Another way to imagine movement while singing is to think of singing or performing as a conversation with your best friend. You’re not moving around like a crazy person while having the conversation, but you are moving your head, your hands, your arms, your feet. It’s more comfortable to have some physical shifts. It’s also perceived by the audience or your friend as comfortable. We want our audience to feel comfortable. On the other hand, if you had a conversation with your friend, and didn’t move one part of your physical self, that would be weird. Very weird. Aim for normal movement in your vocal practice. Sometimes even walking, or moving, or dancing can work wonders for your delivery, and your natural breath patterns. Bottom line, do not stand perfectly still when you are vocalizing. Create a practice routine that involves normal, easy, natural movement.

I’ve always liked the image of a Gimbal, as a guide to how our bodies should move while singing. It’s the perfect example (see illustration on left). What is a Gimbal? "Gimbal: a device that permits a body to incline freely in any direction or suspends it so that it will remain level when its support is tipped —usually used in plural. — called also gimbal ring. gimbal. verb. gimballed or gimbaled; gimballing or gimbaling. “When singing, your body is a gimbal! When performing with a mic, you and the mic are a Gimbal!”