Use a Straw to Breath, YES!
I want to give all of you a great tip that is helping our voice students. It has to do with breathing that builds strong inhalation muscles-a huge need for ALL singers. Get yourself a straw, not too big and definitely not a small cocktail straw. (that may cause you to work a little too hard!) Stand with good posture (find this be placing heels, hips, shoulder blades, head against a wall) and breath in through your straw as much air as possible. (remember the phrase, “down and out” when breathing in) Students always ask how long do I do this? I usually tell them to make sure the air goes as low as possible causing your abs to come out. Your objective is to pull in more and more air with each breath developing more lung capacity. Why the straw? The resistance the straw causes develops stronger inhalation muscles. Once mastered, you can have the strength needed when performing to pull in tons of air which can only help you sing better! Do this 5-10 times a day to build those inhalation muscles for great singing! Contact us today to start your voice lessons and learn how to master proper breathing!!
Breath support: Engaging your abs
When speaking of breath support, there are 2 concepts you must understand. The first proper inhalation and the second is managing the breath you have inhaled. The best way to experience proper inhalation is to take a straw and breath through it taking in as much breath as you feel you can and then forcing in one more breath. Once you have experienced that level of inhalation you have to learn how to manage the volume of breath you have taken in by understanding how to use your abdominal muscles to support your voice meaning. The question becomes, what should your abdominal muscles be doing to actually support your voice? The answer is the must engage or flex.
As an example, try engaging your bicep muscle by picking up something heavy for a second and see what that muscle is doing? It engages by rises up and stands out right? Well, our abs do the same thing. Let’s imagine that you are going to take in a big breath and blow out a huge birthday cake full of candles. Try it and see what your abs do? Did you feel them come out? If you did, that is is correct! We engage our abs the same way when we support our voices. So after you take in your breath with your straw, practice singing a line or a phrase of music and keep those abs engaged or coming out as you do. When you sing, you never want to pull your abdominal muscles in to start phonation. This concept will definitely take some time to master but it is really important to the overall health of your voice and your ability to sing long sustained notes and passages.
Breath Support
I want to speak to you about breath support. When I was a young singer the word “support” was something I could not get my mind or body around! There are many ways to discuss support so let’s try and simplify it for todays discussion. What we’re trying to achieve in support is to manage the flow or pressure of air from our lungs through our vocal folds…not too much and not too little is very important! Far too often we see singers use what I call their “valves” to manage or hold back air pressure that is built up in your lungs after you take a deep straw breath. We can think of our lips, tongue, jaw, larynx as valves that open or close. Let’s say you’ve mastered keeping your jaw down and relaxed, low laryngeal position, high and lifted soft palate in other words, everything is open and relaxed as it should be for great singing. What is going to hold back the pressure of air in your lungs if you don’t “tighten” one of our “valves”??? Hopefully your’ well built support system! Try this. Take a hard backed book and put one end against a wall and the other end in your lower abs-below your belly button! Then Breath in deeply allowing your breath to be down and out. Your body should move backward from the wall. Exhale on “S” and don’t let your body fall into the book!