How To Breathe for Singing

America loves talent, right? We are fascinated by people who can whip out a tune on a ukelele, or tight rope walk, or make basketball shot from across the court, or maybe all 3 at the same time - all without any seeming effort.  

But we only see the end product most of the time. What we don’t see is the hard work that goes into this “talent” - we don’t see the work done to cultivate what God gave us.

And in the end, I think we’re perfectly OK with that.

After all, it's far more impressive to see someone who you think came out of the womb singing like Whitney Houston, than to see them struggle through all the bad sounds, frustration, illness or injury that goes into achieving that awesome sound.

While you can’t change the muscles and cartilages and tendons you’ve been given that comprise the voice, you *can* improve upon it. There is even hope for those who think they are “tone-deaf”!

This series of articles will show you how to improve what you’ve got, using the science that we know and the sounds you should be making for in order to strengthen the right muscles properly, and weaken the wrong muscles so they don’t interfere.

Breathing

First, we need to talk about your breath. Well, your breathing to be more precise. The voice is a wind instrument, and like any wind instrument, the air must pass through it in a certain way for optimal sound. If you’ve ever tried to play a flute or a trumpet, it’s a whole lot more than just blowing air into it. The same goes for singing.

In fact, the problem with a lot of singing these days is if it is not done properly, then tons of tension comes in to protect the larynx and vocal cords. Imagine the Heimlich maneuver: this is that thing you’re supposed to do when someone starts choking on food. It forces the air out of your lungs by pressing against the diaphragm. The air from your lungs can be pretty darn powerful! Now imagine that same sort of power from your diaphragm against your poor little vocal cords! They wouldn’t be able to come together (proximate) to make any kind of sound - the air pressure would be way too high.

What are these mannequins doing?

...oh, they're just doing the Heimlich maneuver.

Obviously, that is an extreme example because you probably wouldn’t get the same amount of air power without using the Heimlich (WARNING: DO NOT attempt to sing while choking). But hopefully it gives you an idea of what kind of air pressure we’re dealing with when we sing.

The Science-y Stuff

The air from your lungs generally comes out with a decent amount of force, or what we call subglottal pressure. This is just a fancy name for the force of air that pushes up against your larynx on the way out of the lungs. When you’re breathing normally, the cords are relaxed and off to the sides of larynx, so the air passage is pretty unobstructed. When you go to make sound, the cords come together, or proximate, to produce different sounds. Some of those sounds we use in singing, and some are just noises. How much the cords come together can largely determine the pitch of the note, as well as the timbre. So if too much air comes against the cords (i.e., greater subglottal pressure), in order for the voice to make a sound, it must constrict with the surrounding muscles to help alleviate the pressure on the cords and stabilize the larynx. This results in anything from a raspy, to a tight, or even to a breathy sound - and it feels pretty awful.

Also, the higher the pitch, the greater the subglottal pressure, the lower the pitch, the lesser the subglottal pressure. So as we sing, we need to be able to adjust the air to accommodate the pitches. Vowels can also change the subglottal pressure - and we use a lot of those in singing words!

To avoid the constriction and to be able to accommodate the varying subglottal pressures in different pitches and vowels, we have to learn to not only breathe properly but also how to support that breath while we sing so that the air comes out with the correct amount of subglottal pressure required for that particular pitch.

So Tell Me How To Breathe Already

Whew! Are your eyes glazing over yet? Hope not, because now we get to the good news: you already know how to breathe! Yay! And you even already know how to breathe properly for singing! Double yay! So now it’s just a matter of identifying which breathing kind it is, and practice doing that while singing. This is the tough part (boo).

To demonstrate proper breathing, I’ve made this short video that you can try out yourself to make sure you are getting it right:

So that’s the first step to improving your singing! While it’s really not hard to do at all, it can be tricky to remember to do that while singing. So I suggest you sing a song you know really well, and focus completely on taking a good breath each time you breathe in, and try to hold out the abdomen as you sing each phrase.  

At first, you may feel it collapse in right away and all the air will escape your lungs, but don’t worry: you won’t die from lack of oxygen, because even when you breathe out completely there’s still about 30% oxygen left in your lungs. Yay God for not making us so we can accidentally kill ourselves from learning how to breathe! 

Hope this was helpful to you! Stay tuned for my next installment on the voice registers. Any questions on breathing? Feel free to ask in the comments below!