Achieving the best Breath Support system ever for your singing!
Hi Singers, Joel here. 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 keep it simple. 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 do you think is going to hold back the pressure of air in your lungs if you don’t tighten one of your 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. Breath in deeply. Your body should move backward from the wall. Exhale on “S” and don’t let your body fall into the book! This is the most important skill to master for good singing and good vocal long-term health. Contact us today to get started on your lessons!
A collapsed rib cage is wrong!!
One of the things we see a lot of singers do incorrectly is drop the rib cage. We call this collapsing and what that usually results in is a jutting out or sticking out of the jaw. Sometimes we say to students, “You’re leading with your jaw” It’s the wrong position to have your vocal instrument in. What you want to do is pick up your rib cage. It’s difficult to do this because under our rib cage is our abdomen and we don’t have a spine like we do in our back to hold us up. We can drop or collapse into the abdominal area which is really incorrect for great singing. Instead, imagine a string that is tied to your sternum and up to the ceiling pulling your rib cage up which automatically puts your head in a better position and gives you better posture through the vocal tract area. This will help you get a proper breath for singing and improve the quality or your sound! Make sure, by looking in a mirror you never collapse your rib cage while singing!
Raising your soft palate is REALLY IMPORTANT!
As singers, we all want to have the most open and beautiful sound we can produce. One of the most important skills to work on is raising your soft palate. You may be asking, where and what is my soft palate? Let’s start first with the hard palate. The hard palate is the area that includes the roof of your mouth right behind your upper teeth. The soft palate is the area that is behind your hard palate going to the back of your throat. If you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth and slide it back as far as your can you will feel where that hard palpate becomes soft. When we yawn, we naturally raise the soft palate. I was told by a voice teacher to practice singing while keeping my throat in a yawn position. That visual, although correct, was a bit too abstract for me. What really helped was to take a flash light and shine it into my mouth while looking in a mirror and actually see my soft palate. You know that little piece of tissue that hangs down in your throat that looks like a punching bag? That is called your uvula and it is in the middle of the soft palate. In order to raise your soft palate you have to pull the little punching bag or uvula up as high as you can.
Once I actually saw my uvula and understood where and what my soft palate was, I was able to practice raising it up. Then, once I felt the sensation of a high soft palate, I practiced singing while maintaining that feeling of openness in the back of my throat. The results were amazing! I found singing in general to be so much easier and I had an immediate improvement in the high part of my vocal range. I think that the results can be amazing for you too. Give it try and see for yourself an almost immediate improvement!
What is sub-glottic pressure?
What is sub-glottic pressure?
The opening between your vocal cords is called the glottis. When we close our vocal cords to create phonation we are closing the glottis so that the vocal cords can vibrate and create sound. What causes the vocal cords to come together and close the glottis? It is the breath that comes up from our lungs controlled by the diaphragm that draws the vocal cords together. So the term “sub-glottic pressure” is divided this way:
“sub” refers to the breath pressure that is beneath the vocal cords, “glottis” is referring to the opening between the cords and “pressure” is the air coming through the glottis to make sound. We have to create the correct amount of sub-glottic pressure to successfully sing in our different ranges. Sub-glottic pressure is at it’s greatest when we sing high because the vocal cords stretch very thin and vibrate very quickly so more breath pressure is needed. In our middle range less breath pressure is needed to create sound because the vocal cords are stretched less. Most people speak in their middle range because it requires less effort. When we sing in our low range, the vocal cords are the least stretched and because the cords are vibrating more slowly, the singer needs to move more breath rather then rely on the sub-glottic pressure to hold back air. Singing in our high range requires the most breath support to properly create sub-glottic pressure which is why so many singers strain their voices when they sing high.
So what is a singer to do? We at Jameson vocal studio believe that singers need to achieve the right kind of sub-glottic pressure to learn proper breathing technique. Your vocal cords will react to whatever range you want to sing in but if you lack adequate breath support you will not be able to achieve the beautiful sound you want. Don’t get frustrated, contact us today!!