Module Two: Lesson 2: Breath Control: The Key to Expressive Singing

Transcription

So, what’s the first thing that you need to create a sound?
That’s right — you need an energy source. In singing, that energy source is the breath.

The Energy Source: The Breath
So, how does your body breathe? Do you know what the diaphragm is? Have you ever been told to sing from your diaphragm?
Before I took voice lessons, I had no clue what “singing from your diaphragm” meant. I didn’t know where the diaphragm was in my body — let alone how I was supposed to sing from it. Let’s dive in and take a look at this all-important muscle and how it works.

THE MECHANICS of RESPIRATION
Here’s an illustration of the diaphragm. It’s the breathing muscle and is attached to the bottom of the rib cage, all the way around. Above it is the thoracic cavity where your lungs are, and below it is the abdominal cavity where all your guts are housed.

Your rib cage is another part of your respiratory system. In between, each rib is an intercostal muscle. The intercostals expand and contract the ribs. They expand to make room for the lungs when you inhale and contract to help empty the lungs when you exhale.

Let’s check out what these muscles feel like...

Go ahead, take your hands, and find the bottom rib of your rib cage. Now take your fingers and try to feel underneath the bones. You have to dig in a little bit. It’s tough to do because the muscle is usually pretty tight right there. But if you dig around a little, you can get a sense of where it is in your body.
Now take your hand and use your fingers in between your ribs to find the intercostal muscles. Feel them? Ok. Now make a fist with both hands, and put them on either side of the rib cage. Notice how it feels when the rib cage expands and contracts as you breathe in and out. To really feel this, let’s exaggerate the movement by taking in a BIG breath three times.

OK great. Go ahead and relax for a minute.
So, how does the diaphragm get the air get into the lungs? The expansion of the rib cage plays a part, but there’s something else happening to help your body breathe.

Diagram of the Diaphragm
See this muscle right here? Its job is to pull the diaphragm down when you inhale. When the diaphragm is pulled down, a vacuum is created in the lungs, which is subsequently filled with air. The more efficient this muscle is, the more quickly it can pull the diaphragm down, helping you to get the most air with the least amount of effort.
Here’s another way to visualize it.

This is a model of the thoracic cavity. Imagine that the outside of this plastic shell is your ribcage, the little balloons inside of it are your lungs, and the rubber piece here is your diaphragm. The top of the shell is your neck, and this small hole in the rubber stopper is your trachea where the air goes in. My hand is that little muscle that pulls the diaphragm down.

When I pull the diaphragm down, a vacuum in the lungs is created, et voila! The little balloons fill up with air. Notice that the ribcage isn’t moving when I do this, and yet the lungs still fill with air. Kinda cool, right?

There’s a way you can help that muscle do its job even more efficiently, and that’s by using something called abdominal bulk.

Abdominal Bulk
Abdominal bulk is the 20 to 30 pounds of stomach, spleen, intestines — all the guts that are in the abdominal cavity. When you expand your tummy, the weight of that abdominal bulk, plus gravity, helps pull the diaphragm down. This happens even when you’re breathing normally. Think about it. When you see a baby or an animal sleeping, what does their tummy do? It expands a little on the inhalation and contracts on the exhalation.

Let's do this abdominal breathing together so you can feel how it works.

Staying seated, put your hands low on your abdomen. Now take three deep breaths. Expand your tummy on the inhale, and move it in and up on the exhale. Let’s do it again. One more time. Inhale — expand, exhale — lift in and up.

Now, this is a slow inhalation compared to when you’re singing. Sometimes, to find a muscle and move it in the way we want to, we need to slow the movement down.

Eventually, when we become coordinated, and muscle memory takes over, we don’t even need to think about inhaling or exhaling. When you expand the tummy, the air gets sucked in automatically. And while you’re singing, the belly lifts in and up.

Here’s an illustration of what the whole process looks like.

[Abdominal bulk illustration]
When you inhale, the diaphragm is pulled down, and the tummy is expanded. Then you start to sing, and the abdominal bulk lifts in and up.
That lifting continues throughout the phrase with the abdominal bulk displacing the air that’s leaving the lungs. Because the abdominal bulk is displacing the air, the pressure in the lungs stays constant. When it remains constant, you have even air pressure from the beginning to the end of a phrase.

Does that make sense?
So, what does this sound like? How does it look when a singer’s actually doing it? Allow me to demonstrate with a classical piece by Scarlatti.

Gia Il Sole Dal Gange
Did you hear me inhaling? No. The actual inhalation is silent.
OK. This time when I sing, see if you can count how many times my tummy expands to take a breath.

How many times did you see my tummy expand? Seven. Each time my tummy expands, the lungs fill up with just the right amount of air. Since I don’t have much time for breathing in this song, little sips of air all along the way work best. Now, if I did more than just expand the tummy, let’s say I inhale fewer times and focus on filling up my air tank completely each time, it would sound like this:

Not so good, right? I’m late for the beginning of every phrase, I run out of breath at the end, and I get hyper-oxygenated cuz I’m sucking in way more oxygen than I need for the job at hand.
When your body learns how to sing this way unconsciously, no one will ever hear you gasping for breath again. AND, if you keep the rib cage from collapsing when you sing, you won’t feel like you’re running out of breath at the end of a phrase, and you’ll be able to hold a note for much longer, like this:

OK. So that’s the energy source. Let’s move on to the part of the instrument that vibrates.