CLASS; J S S 3 WEEK 4
TOPIC; PRACTICAL: BREATH CONTROL VOICE TRAINIG AND
INSTRUMENTALS.
Breathing is the single most important element in singing. In order to control your voice you have to put out exactly the amount of breath you need for the sound you want. That breath needs to be as focused as a laser beam. How you exhale controls the quality of the sound, the volume, the pitch and the tone. How you inhale governs how you exhale. Most people, as they walk around in their daily lives, inhale into their upper lungs i.e., their shoulders go up as does their chest. When the air is in your upper lungs, you don’t have the kind of detailed control you need. A singer (or a swimmer or runner–anyone who has to control their air) should fill their lower lungs. This means that instead of a breath that is vertical, with your body expanding upwards, the breath should be horizontal, expanding outwards. Put one hand on your abdomen and the other hand on your back, both at about waist level. Inhale by filling your lower lungs with air so that your stomach sticks out. Your hands should move apart, the air filling the space between them. As you exhale let your stomach go back in gently. Think of your stomach as a balloon that inflates and deflates. Your chest shouldn’t move, not even an eighth of an inch. As you get better at this, your back will also move out when you inhale. Try putting your thumbs one on each side of your spine, at about waist level. Relax your shoulders. Now inhale into your thumbs. Once you put the air in the right place, you must learn to control it with your diaphragm. The diaphragm is a muscle that sits below your lungs and causes them to fill and empty. If you exhale out all of your air down to the absolutely last drop, you will feel your diaphragm under your rib cage as it pushes up against your lungs. On the outside of your ribs you will feel your abdominal wall pushing in; inside your ribs your diaphragm pushes up. Not only does your diaphragm need to be strong enough to push hard when you want lots of power, but it needs to have even more control and strength when you want to sing a fast and accurate lick, or a big jump in pitch, or very, very quietly. Building the strength and control of your diaphragm begins with proper breathing. To strengthen the diaphragm, again put one hand on your abdomen and the other hand on your back. Inhale into your abdomen and exhale forcibly so that your stomach muscles push in and the air comes out rapidly. Repeat this–inhale, abdomen out, exhale forcibly, abdomen in–thirty times picking up the tempo as you get comfortable with it. Breathe through your mouth. As you go faster you may find that you’ve fallen back into the old habit of breathing vertically again. In that case, stop and start over by breathing slowly and gently into your lower lungs until you have the feeling again.
To understand how correct breathing and breath control works, first you need to understand the process that it uses to operate. Surrounding your lungs is a muscle system called the diaphragm which is attached to the lower ribs on the sides, bottom and to the back acting as an inhalation device. When you breathe in the muscle lowers displacing the stomach and intestines. When you breathe out the diaphragm helps to manage the muscles around the lungs (abdominal muscles) control how quickly the breath is exhaled. If you breathe out quickly, the diaphragm does nothing but when you breathe out very slowly the diaphragm resists the action of the abdominal muscles. A singer learns to use this muscle system to control the breath as it is being exhaled.
BREATHING EXERCISES
The following exercise may make you feel tired at first, do keep at it as you will begin to notice that it takes less effort to breath, less energy is used when breathing plus it helps you learn to co-ordinate the diaphragm and abdominal muscles when breathing. To find out if you are breathing correctly, place a hand on your belly button. This area should expand first when you breathe in and then spread upwards until your chest is expanded (don’t lift the shoulders or push the stomach out). If you feel you are not breathing properly, practice the following exercise. Lay flat on your back. Place your hands on your waist, fingers pointing towards your belly button. Focus on filling up your stomach from the bottom to the top taking a slow deep breath. (The aim is not to fill yourself to bursting but to inhale enough air so that you can feel the difference between a shallow breaths taken when breathing from the chest). You should feel your stomach rise and your hands being raised gently up and outward until you feel your chest expanding. The expansion is not only at the front of the body but also to the sides and back as well. Breath out slowly to a count of 5 Repeat the exercise 10 times Practice daily before you rise in the morning and prior to sleeping at night for 5 – 10 minutes gradually increasing this to 3 or 4 times a day. Once you get it right, practice as often as possible, sitting, standing and whilst at work until you are breathing naturally from your abdomen. Try the following exercise to help increase breath control – Count on one breath singing each number out loud. Using one breath at any comfortable pitch. Start with a small number like 5 or 10 and increase this gradually until you can manage 25 or more without straining, tensing or running out of breath.