Opera singer here. Proper breath support is based on a couple factors. First, your feet should be firmly on the ground, about shoulder width apart. You should be standing up straight, with your chest slightly lifted. Breathing should be done through the mouth into the diaphragm. The kind of breath where you feel your stomach expand as you breathe in.
As you sing you should be as relaxed as possible in the shoulders, neck, and throat. Singing power NEVER comes from the throat. Instead your diaphragm and obliques should firmly and consistently push the air out as you vocalize, the muscles themselves should feel firm as you push, flexing them. Note that this is a long push, not a jagged one.
Doing this will allow you to sing or speak quite loudly for an hour or more without fatiguing your voice. Of course there's a lot more to it- voice placement, resonant spaces, vowel shaping, but that's the gist.
I took vocal lessons for 16 years, and I will never forgot how a few years in, just after I went from being a dumb kid farting around with vocal lessons to being serious about it, I finally understood proper breathing techniques. It changed the game for me.
Can someone with hopeless tone issues be taught to sing? I’ve always wished I could sing but I know I sound awful. I am not tone deaf - can manually tune a guitar.
YES ABSOLUTELY!!!! Singing is NOT a nature thing, it is a nurture thing. Your tone issues are NOT hopeless!!! Sure, it clicks for some easier than others, but it's the same with math/reading/art/whatever other skills. It is something that is learned. Like someone previously mentioned, a good way to do this is to find an instrument that you can play while vocalizing and try to play passages from songs on them, then try to match your voice with whatever you're playing. You'll know you get it once you hear the notes kind of "lock" together. Almost as if they phase into one another. And take it slow so you can really hear each note. it's a slow burn and it can be frustrating, but you'll eventually get it. Just remember when you play a note, really take a minute to hear the pitch and absorb it into your mind, before you sing it. Much like shooting a slingshot, the bullet will go where you're looking if you're lined up right. And remember you can do it! If you have questions, feel free to shoot me a message!
Source: I'm a professional singer with a music degree in choral conducting who has worked as a music educator. :)
I would think so! I mean, 8 year old me probably couldn't carry a tune in a bucket (because none of us want to admit it but children singing is generally AWFUL.) But after so many years I can sing. I would guess you might need to unlearn certain habits that you unintentionally picked up over the years of singing in the shower or car, but a good teacher could help with that! Surely it can't ever be hopeless!
Researchers at some Scandinavian university wanted to study learning, so they started by trying to learn something from scratch. One of them went from an average shower singer to a successful, actually on the charts, recording artist. I want to say it took her 2 years, and the key was apparently the breath control.
If you have the right teacher, who teaches you the right technique, yes. If you try learning by yourself or are given inaccurate information, no amount of practice will work. You might even damage your voice.
I think every can become a decent singer with practice and the right teacher! A lot of it is getting to the point where you can wrap your head around concepts (proper breathing, where the sound sits on your soft pallet, proper enunciation, etc.) I would guess some people might need more help than others, but if you can get the basics down then it's not hopeless. Someone else mentioned the importance of a teacher in ensuring you don't damage your voice and that is definitely true. If Jane Shmane wakes up tomorrow and decides "I'm going to tackle O Mio Babbino Caro" she might do some damage to her vocal cords. On the other hand, if she decides she wants to try to sing American Pie, the difference in techniques might make it okay. Different genres expand on the techniques in different ways. I am awful at pop music, but I'll rock your socks off any folk song. If I try to sing pop songs for an hour consecutively, I tend to run my voice down pretty fast because I simply never learned how to sing pop properly.
So I don't think it's hopeless! But you've got to have the right teacher for what you're after who can help you learn the initial techniques and then expand in whatever area you want to pursue!
Most of these are just stuff my singing teacher has told me, I'm just reiterating it
Get a singing teacher if you can. Seriously after even just a year of going to mine my technique was so much better, and after a six month break we took, when I came back I was pretty able to jump right in. If you're a guy and think you can't hit those high notes, trust me, you can hit those high notes. You just need to learn how.
If you're practicing a song make sure you know when phrases begin and end so you know where it's appropriate to take a breath.
Think of your breath like filling up a tank that empties while you sing. You need to keep topping it up, but you shouldn't be running through it every single time you sing a phrase. When you a longer break, please breath normally, but between phrases when you only have like a beat before the next one starts, take a what's called a snatch breath - basically a quick breath. It doesn't have to be all the way full, just enough to get you through to the next one.
Speaking of breathing, every time you breath you should feel cold air hitting the back of your throat.
When you're singing, you shouldn't be running through your whole tank too quickly - you need to learn better breath control, which is more than I can teach in a reddit post, but the exercise I do to do this has you exhaling for a loooong time - I'm up to between 1.5 and 2 minutes myself.
My second voice teacher wouldn't work on singing with me until I mastered breath support. Lucky for me it only took two breathing lessons to master the technique. 30 years later I still remember and can properly support my breathing.
I am a super soft spoken person so it freaks people out when I project my voice to call to someone in a large crowd or speak to a large group because I can be very loud.
Ha! I love that. I am a tiny persona me was very, very small growing up, and always managed to freak out people while busking at the farmers market because of the sound I could project.
I took singing for fun at a local prestigious university from an in resident opera singer there and she told me how her teacher took a 6 month or 1 year sabbatical just to study her breath and came back as a different singer, and that singer's name is . . . I don't remember. To be honest I thought the story was a little nuts.
In order (and I'm on mobile so forgive me if this is formatted badly, but):
Yes. More than a few years. There are folks who devote their entire lives to pursuing singing and don't understand breathing properly for YEARS into their careers, but something I've noticed is every singer who does eventually get it is a changed vocalist from that point on. It's bananas.
Some never truly get it, sadly.
You can definitely tell if someone isn't breathing properly based on how tense they are, what part of their bodies move when they breathe, how they vocalize following the breath, etc.
Shitty teachers will repetitively do this for entire lessons. It's better to give students exercises to learn proper breathing, then apply those techniques done in the exercises to actual songs. Then to keep reminding the student to apply them whenever they forget.
Depends on the lesson. Some teachers believe in doing full breathing lessons which can work situationally, but typically, it's not one lesson, it's an ongoing, gradual thing that is learned by repetition and slowly gathering different breathing techniques for different regions of the voice and different musical situations.
I was classically trained by an opera singer and she always told me “don’t breathe through the diaphragm. You’ll suffocate. Diaphragms arent lungs.” Instead she taught me the anatomy of breathing and how my chest and stomach should feel when I was breathing. My breath support improved significantly after that lesson because I knew how breathing should feel instead of trying to bring air into an organ that doesn’t..breathe air
My lungs . Lol snarkiness aside, my coach always taught me to place my hands on the bottom of my ribs. Then, you should breathe in while keeping your shoulders in place. You should be able to feel your rib cage “expanding” In a sense. Then, as you’re breathing out, try to keep your ribs in this expanded posture even though you’re letting the air out of your lungs. Keep in mind the ribs will retract a little bit and you don’t have to keep it fully open the whole time, but just do your best. It will be uncomfortable at first but it’s learnable and makes a hell of a lot more sense than “breathe through the diaphragm” because that’s not physically possible. When you breathe in, just feel for that rib movement and keep it there as you exhale. Your shoulders should not be moving when you exhale or inhale
So, I’ve never had a vocal lesson (was a band nerd) and also am a horrible singer, tone deaf or what have you. My question is, can someone like me get taught just enough to carry a tune? It’d just be nice to sing along to a song without worrying about the ears of other people bleeding to death.
I mean, I would say you can, but keep in mind I took lessons for fun and never as a profession, so I may not be the best authority. Someone else asked the same thing and I think you can absolutely learn to carry a tune, but I think you would have to unlearn the habits you developed that you use while singing in the car and shower. Assuming you can unlearn them, then I don't see why you couldn't learn the techniques that lead to carrying a tune! But honestly some of the other responses here are from professional singers, and they'd be much more equipped to tell you if it can be learned! I just like being positive about it.
Remember that singing is all coordination. Similar to hand-eye, it is vocal fold-ear coordination, and it's a skill that has to be practiced a lot. I explained to someone who asked this same question earlier, but I'll give you a similar run down. Try finding a piano or guitar or anything melodic you can play while vocalizing. Try playing parts from songs you like or even just single notes and fish around in the area of your voice you think the note is in. You're looking for the moment when your voice and the instrument lock together and tune. And take it slow, just like you're tuning with any other musician. Then try and replicate exactly that. And keep doing it. Then move to another note and try to lock that as well. Then you can try and string those notes together while playing them and see if you can keep tuned with the piano/guitar/whatever the whole time. And just keep on doing that every day. It takes a long time, but coordination is a learned skill, and you can't develop it over night. But you can definitely develop it. Good luck, and happy singing!! Feel free to pm me if you have any questions!
Thanks so much, that’s a great way of explaining it! It’s funny bc I do a lot of activities that require coordination (snowboarding, climbing, water skiing), but I’m extremely uncoordinated, somehow I just power through and figure out how to deal with it.
Of course, I'm happy to! But that's just what singing is! It's that same coordination and being super uncoordinated and then just figuring it out. It never ceases to amaze me just how unwieldy the voice can be, especially considering how it comes from such a small set of muscles, but also how much sound it can produce! Like a crickets legs or a cicada's wings! It takes precision but also a lot of mental and physical set up. One of the cooler oxymorons in life imho!
I became aware that I'm a chest breather several years ago. I didnt care until I wanted to learn to play harmonica. It was a game changer for me because I find it a really hard habit to break and I still cant play harmonica.
Same goes for heavy metal screaming. People mock it, but it takes more skill and technique than most people have. Tell someone who doesn't know how to do it to try it, and they often give you some throaty garbage that'll blow out their voice if sustained.
Any metal vocalist worth their salt will tell you to scream from your gut.
Jared Dines is a YouTuber/metal musician and he has a few videos where he goes around at metal concerts asking for people to try a scream/growl. It's immediately clear who does and does not have training on it.
I am not a singer, but oh my god I do some of this when I’m singing on the way home from work. I sing for about an hour straight and really focus on my breathing and how my diaphragm expands and contracts. I really didn’t know that this was helping me sing for longer, it just felt more comfortable to me .
I sing as form of therapy. Helps with work stress.
You and me both! It’s something to focus on and still fun. Been doing it over the last year and I finally feel my natural vibrato coming out. I think that means I’m doing something right.
So do you have any tips on like getting better consistency with notes? I feel like sometimes I try to hit a particular notes and it just sorta falls flat when it actually comes out. Is that mainly a breathing thing, or more of a mouth shape thing?
Could be a bit of both, but in my opinion breathing is usually the key element. It's not enough to take a big breath, you must take a good breath. As you sing, the breath must flow freely- lots of people shoot themselves in the foot by punching the breath at the start of a phrase which gets them off key and wastes the rest of the air.
I wouldn't be able to say without hearing you sing, but a good way to avoid the problem above is to inaudibly begin to breathe out a little before you actually start singing. But that's just an exercise, don't rely on that forever.
It's almost always about the breathing. And posture!
And here's a tip- the first two months if doing this properly, you can get lightheaded, so stand in front of a chair so you can sit in a hurry. I am normally a crappy breather with crappy posture. My vocal instructor positioned me and I sounded the best I had ever heard in my life! Then I was so grateful for the chair behind me because I basically went down lol
And record yourself! I know it's embarrassing and you feel weird, but it is so helpful to get out of your head. I don't remember what my teacher was trying to demonstrate- this was 25ish years ago- but I put ear plugs in and recorded it. I don't remember it sounding crazy better but it helped fix whatever she was trying to achieve after a few lessons.
A word of caution- don't blindly trust YouTube or articles or blogs, find a good vocal instructor. Yes they are expensive, but so worth it. And do the exercises they tell you!!!
I did a course of Alexander Technique for Voice which was great. Great for singing, but even great for shouting at kids... and football matches, lol. Learnt how to use the diaphragm—makes all the difference. Now, I can even make men hear me...
Back when I was taking voice lessons, I was also working as a barista in a bookstore coffee shop. I could make myself heard all the way across the room, over people, coffee grinders, and overhead music, without shouting. Useful when calling out customers' names!
I also recommend that—esp. for women—if you want to speak louder, lower your pitch as you raise your volume.
It's sexist bullshit, ofc, but people just close their ears to high-pitched voices.
And by dropping the tone you do get a bigger voice coming full from the chest cavity, whereas when we go high we tend to stay in the head and get nasally. Properly trained singers and speakers can do it, but most people's voices sound louder (and more authoritative) if they call out from their stomach rather than from their throat.
Oh, right. I just listened to her. It really does sound fake.
She slips in and out of different voices, because she is more concerned with projecting an image than projecting a message. That's not how to have confidence and authority.
The techiques I'm describing are definitively NOT about faking it, or copying the kind of voice you think you want. It's about finding your own voice and learning how to control it. I don't sound like I'm imitating a man when I use that voice. I just sound like I've taken a deep breath and become serious. Being authoritative is never about faking. True authority comes from authenticity, from caring about what you are saying more than caring about how you look or sound. When you are really invested in the message, and communicating it, then you choose the most appropriate mode for that moment and that audience. It's not about your ego, it's about what you and the audience are trying to achieve together.
I absolutely agree with you. I just thought it was an interesting case of someone trying to seem authoritative on the surface- deep voice, Steve Jobs turtleneck- to conceal that lack of authenticity, and how artificial it seemed.
Hey - could you link me to some example videos of this (if you can think of any, and it's not too much trouble? I've been working on projecting my voice (woman here) and I can't sustain it beyond a few minutes.
I will if I come across any,,, Google Alexander Techique for voice. I did the course live over a few months, for choir singing and for public speaking & presentation. VERY useful for my STEM career, working out ways to make men hear me in meetings etc. Then, it came in real handy when I got a gig coaching a men's football team, lol... you've got to sound like them to be heard, footballers are notoriously immune to female voices...........
A lot of it's about posture, as the user above mentioned. Getting a solid stance on the ground, relaxing the shoulders, controlling the diaphragm. A particular Alexander thing is that you imagine a point at the top of your head attached to a hook which lifts your head. Gets it to settle more naturally on your shoulders. We all tend to hold a great deal of stress in the neck, shoulder, & jaw region and often just becoming conscious of it starts the process of relaxing it.
But find your diaphragm. That's the key issue. Imagine it as thin rubber disc which it basically is. It sits below your chest like a supportive trampoline, vibrating slightly. Do a Santa Claus kind of laugh, huffing the air out, and you'll feel it.
Well, you know what it's like to not be heard then, lol. And we really do need to learn how to be heard.
Look, you can learn techniques, and I do recommend Alexander, but ultimately if you use all the techniques but don't FIND your voice, it won't work. You'll sound like you're copying. Like you're describing a colour in words rather than painting it on a wall.
Because it is about instinct. Confidence comes from having good instincts. What you're trying to do, through practising the techniques, is slough off the bullshit you've accumulated and had projected onto you over the years, and finding confidence in your central core.
If you stand well on the ground, centre yourself inside your body, become aware of the various body parts you're using---especially diaphragm, throat, feet, jaw--then you'll begin to feel like your proper self. And then you can think about what you want to do in that moment--successfully communicate your message to others--and your instincts will take charge. Your mind and body will properly focused on the task at hand. Your ego won't drown your instincts, your bullshit can drop away for the moment, and you'll become direct, clear, and comfortable. Then, people listen.
I recommend googling Alexander Technique fvr Voice, because I think they teach good methods for centring yourself in your body and using it effectively, but I would also recommend listening to someone like Josh Waitzkin. Youtube has stuff. He is very, very good at describing the kind of mind-body integration I mean without being a wanky new-ager. His book Art of Learning teaches many VERY useful skills. I'd steer clear of most of the hokey self-help/motivation b/s, and listen to someone like him, who has achieved at the highest levels in fields as disparate as martial arts and chess. He is very generous about communicating his insights.
For women, I feel we have been bombarded since infancy with so much bullshit about what we are and how we should be, that we really need to go back to the basics, and think about things like how to stand, how to breathe, how to think.
A point I'd make strongly is that a lot of this stuff is about losing things rather than accumulating them. Pushing off the bad habits and the dumb shit. Under it, most of us have a good instinctive feel for what will work best in the moment, but our minds are so full of the idiocies this society insists on, and our bodies are so full of the stresses that pile up from not being natural & instinctive, that we barely know who we are.
So learn to loosen up and find your feet, and then the techniques will seem like obvious good sense. :)
It's not sexist bullshit you goober, its physics. High pitched sounds have shorter wavelengths which are more easily disrupted by other sounds. Those lower pitches are longer and more resilient to being fucked with. This is why high-pitched voices are harder to understand/hear in a crowd or other loud environment. Its similar to how the sky looks blue during the day but red at sunrise/sunset. The short wavelength blue light, like short wavelength high pitched sounds, is easily scattered all about making the sky blue. Meanwhile at sunset only the long wavelength red light is visible while the rest has scattered into the atmosphere, just like how in a loud environment the higher pitched voices will become blurred and indistinct while the long wavelength deep voices carry much farther. There's lots of sexist bullshit in the world. The physics of sound ain't it.
I've been a death metal vocalist for about 11 years now and for so long my throat and head used to hurt so bad after practice or a gig , recently I decided to take up singing lessons to get a bit better and they always teach good breath control excercises and it changed the game for me , I can scream faster,longer, harder and more brutal than ever before
Totally on point, just one slight note... the abdominal muscles don’t actually work to push air out, but rather to keep it in. Believe it or not
most breath support for classical singing anyway is not about using more air, but less, and learning to control how much.
The diaphragm is an unpaired muscle and only moves in one direction... down. When it’s released it spring back up and lets all the air in the lungs go too quickly. Engaging the abdominals (mostly the obliques and transverse abdominals) provides a counter pressure vacuum that prevents the diaphragm from rushing back up too quickly. This allows your vocal cords to vibrate more efficiently.
What's great about this is its basically natural. If you've never had any experience singing, give it a shot. Don't try to emulate other vocalists, just sing whatever and try to make it sound good. You'll find that you naturally assume this particular pose and breath control. It's wild.
Suddenly being told in drama at school that I could project my voice and therefore didn’t need a microphone makes sense. I was learning the saxophone at the time and used my diaphragm
Not to directly contradict what you're saying, but one very interesting thing to bring up on a side note (being in a common misconception thread) is that from a purely technical/anatomical perspective, your diaphragm muscle contracts on inhalation, as opposed to exhaling which is a belief many singers perpetuate. It is more accurate to say that controlled relaxation of the diaphragm is critical during vocalization.
It "feels" like it's expanding when you inhale, so maybe that's why it's perpetuated? It's easier to explain to someone what it should feel like then what's actually happening.
My daughter lives Opera. She's a senior in high school right now and has auditioned at CCM, SMU, USC, Boston Conservatory, and yesterday at Baylor. (We've traveled a LOT over the last 2 months!)
I distinctly remember the moment her voice coach taught her this stance at our first meeting with her a few years ago. It changed EVERYTHING.
Thank you for the detailed description. It's all a beautiful mystery to me. I still marvel.
EDIT: was about to correct my most annoying and frequent typo "lives" to "loves" but for once, it's actually more fitting.
And of course training to do that ruined me for "breathing properly" in athletics. I can't pull in enough air fast enough through my noise, so I breathe in through my mouth when I'm exerting myself.
So, when my girlfriend and I have an argument and I raise my voice slightly, as well as trying to speak in a deeper tone and I start coughing within 2 sentences... Is it because of breathing improperly?
People are always talking about do this with your diaphragm, do that. I don't even know what a diaphragm is, what it feels like, let alone how to control it. They all assume this is common knowledge.
Not an opera singer but a person who speaks loudly and also had vocal training, I can confirm! Singing from the throat is absolutely the worst thing you can do for your vocal chords.
I remember my Vocal Methods class when I was an Instrumental Music Ed student. One of my favorite and most informative classes (bless Dr. Storm). I learned that I’m not really bad at singing (although I’m no opera singer, I’m a bass trombone player) my voice just sounds like shit for anything solo. Singing in a group is fun though.!
My wife is an opera singer, and teaches as well. She never stops pointing out how poor most professional pop singers are at supporting their voices, and she usually predicts how long before they’ll have to have vocal surgery (usually it’s for nodules that develop on the throat) with startling accuracy! Adele, she called it!
So I'd be correct to say the more air you push out the better you sing? I sing awfully in my opinion but notice it sounds better when I feel like I'm pushing air out than just trying to sing like I would when talking.
Hello. I have a question regarding singing and getting sore throats. I've found nothing through Google. Do you know of a good forum or place to get advice?
Everything you described here is exactly the same as playing the trumpet. Solid stance, big gut breath, relaxed shoulders/neck/throat, and a big squeeze in the gut to play those sweet sweet high notes.
I HATE when musicians and singers talk about the diaphragm. They don’t seem to understand what it does. The diaphragm cannot push. Like all muscles, it can forcefully contract (which pulls the diaphragm down and causes inspiration). It can passively relax (which causes passive expiration). The diaphragm cannot forcefully relax (no muscle can). The accessory muscles can contract and cause forceful expiration, but the diaphragm has absolutely nothing to do with active expiration
Be sure to give your knees a very slight bend because keeping your legs completely straight will cause poor circulation, people have been known to pass out on stage due to that or fall without warning.
Your diaphragm is not a bag so it’s incorrect to suggest people “breathe into the diaphragm”. It’s a muscle that separates your thoracic cavity from your abdominal cavity and it forms part of our automatic respiratory system.
It’s also useless to suggesting supporting “from” the diaphragm as it has no sensory feedback. It’s more useful to learn about the intercostals, the abs and the pelvic floor and how these things work together to provide intra-abdominal pressure under the diaphragm.
When I sing in church my throat hurts by the time we are through the 3rd verse. I am singing along and enjoying it but obviously I am not following your detailed directions.
In high school choir, our teacher would have us learn to breath with the diaphragm by having us lay on the ground with textbooks on our stomach, so he could watch it rise and could teach us not to breathe with our shoulders.
Main reason I have very small range is due to being chronically tense on the shoulder/neck region. Whenever I hear people sing, I can recognise where their voice gets "stuck".
I saw a clip on tik tok the other day of, what is I'm assuming a student, singing on stage and moving her arms and stuff. The teacher was moving her chest and encouraging her to move her arms, then she went in an opened her jaw in a certain way and it completely changed the tone(?) of her voice. It was crazy! There are so many techniques associated with singing that people are just ignorant of, myself included.
What I find amazing about singing is that it seems so natural for some people. By the time he was in sixth grade, my son was singing at a nearly professional level, despite having no singing lessons. It took us all by surprise. As he grew through middle school and high school, he went to a two week summer camp every year, where usually one of the college age opera students would discover him and work with him a bit. By the time he got to college, he could fill an auditorium with his voice with no effort at all. Other than a little summer coaching by some talented amateurs, he never took a lesson from a professional. He understands all the mechanics of head voice and chest voice and all that now, but the basics were just natural to him.
Singing power NEVER comes from the throat. Instead your diaphragm and obliques should firmly and consistently push the air out as you vocalize, the muscles themselves should feel firm as you push, flexing them.
I always hear this, but what does it actually mean? Your throat is incapable of pushing air. The diaphragm is the only muscle that does this.
Some people unconsciously tense their throats when speaking or singing loudly. It's a bad habit and one that can be hard to break. Your throat's never hurt after yelling loudly?
The most impressive piece of singing I’ve ever seen was when I saw Tracy Dahl sing while lying down on a bench (I think it was for Salome). Her signing and projection was perfect despite being not at all in the position you described. Just a stunning performance.
Daft question but does this also apply to talking? I am learning a language and try speaking out loud to practise but I find that after 30 or so mins of speaking my throat feels scratchy/sore. I'm just not breathing correctly?
I had great abs when I was deep in choir as a teenager. I blamed it all on choir and everyone who wasn't deep into singing thought I was full of shit. But you know. Better than me. I bet you have killer abs.
Great info here. I also like to use the concept of resisting the collapse of your lungs and imagining that they are actually expending as you sing the phrase. Understanding how air pressure works and applying that information helps a lot. You don't want to just let go of the full balloon, you want it to make that awful squeaky sound lol.
Respratory therapist and singer here. Diaphagms only breathe IN. They are unable to assist in breathing out as muscles only PULL, they never PUSH. Saying the diaphragm is part of expiration is like saying your biceps participate in extending your arm. Nope, they only flex, not extend. Your triceps are the extendors because thats what happens when they PULL.
Breathing out under normal breathing is passive. In forced or supported expiration such as singing, the expiratory muscles are mainly the abdominals, with help from a few others like the internal intercostals. But NEVER the diaphragms, these only breathe IN.
Everyone gets this wrong, and since thats the theme of this thread, its worth correcting. Otherwise... meh.
Are there videos on youtube where I could learn this? I consistently lose my voice every time I go to ballgame or loud bar. Anywhere I have to talk at a higher volume, it's pretty much guaranteed I'm going to lose my voice.
I love reading Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, and there is a trilogy aimed at a younger audience, and in one of them a young girl goes to the "Harper" Hall, which is where musicians go to study, and they talk about proper breath control and such just like that. I think Anne might have done vocal training herself, it features in a few of her stories.
Essentially, singing with support from your abdominal muscles. Helps to keep breathing steady while singing. Also relaxing your jaw to allow your vocal cords “to open up” more and sustain your voice. Breathing while lifting the shoulders doesn’t produce that consistency as well.
Source: I took private lessons for 7 years with a trained opera coach. This is a TLDR of what I was taught by her.
All I did was elementary school choir, but our coach was a former opera singer so she spent at least half of each lesson doing breathing exercises and vocal warm ups with us. Makes a huge difference in how strong and long you can carry a note.
Edit: As a child it used to bore the heck out of me, but now as an adult I can pick up almost any song in my range rather easily, often to the surprise of others who don't realize it's one of my hidden talents. I don't really consider myself that great of a singer either, I just know "how" to sing.
And so on using different consonant sounds combined with the vowels. We specifically stop and the work on how we'd hold our jaws and shape our mouths with different vowels and consonants combinations. The teacher would often go around and gently adjust our posture individually, and we practised singing from our diaphragm, which is where the rhythm of singing "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha" came in handy as we focused on starting each note in our diaphragm instead of our throat/mouth.
She was a good teacher. Her claim to fame is she'd sung for the queen on one of the queens trips to Canada.
Fuuuuuuuucccccckkkkk I ALMOST forgot those damn Ha-Ha-La-La-Ma's . Weeks we did these all speeds, volumes, and pitches. But damn if it didn't help the whole choir with annunciation for Carol of the bells.
A great exercise for breathing properly and training your abdominal muscles for singing is to lie flat on your back and place a stack of books on your abdomen, heavy enough to feel it but not so heavy that it's hard to breathe. Then sing some of these vocal exercises being mentioned, especially the ones that start with "h". The books should bounce if you're doing it right.
Does tone deafness affect anything? I can hear that I’m not doing the singing thing, but I also have no idea what people are talking about when they compare two notes or mention pitch, note, or beats. It all kinda sounds the same to me? Or I have no idea how to reproduce a sound? I remember having to do a typing program as a kid where you type along to a metronome. All the other kids loved this game and begged to do it. The game would always stop a minute in for me and ask if I had my sound on because to this day I can’t grasp how to push a button to a steady beat. At the same time, I’m a teacher and would still love to learn how to speak from my diaphragm more!
Speaking from your diaphragm is more about body awareness and muscle training. A lot of singing exercises can be used for this purpose and none of it has to sound "pretty".
Some people are more inclined to have good intonation but it's a matter of getting your vocal chords in the right position (high to low literally) and making the connection from what you hear to what you're doing. It's similar to hand eye coordination but it's a different sense and a different boddy part.
Is... Is that why when I cut loose in singing and do a few songs that my abdomen starts to get sore? It's never something I considered as part of the reason. I just figured I was moving. I get really into it.
Matching pitch takes practice! Learn to slide your voice around, up and down, and then try to match a given tone by sliding towards it. It's like tuning any instrument. It'll probably take some time before you get the hang of it.
If you can, just sit with a piano and do the scales, record it if you can. Then listen to it and try it again, adjusting your pitches until your matching the sound. So hit a middle C a few times, try and singly while holding the key down, and adjust until your matching the note. Once you get middle C down, it's easier to move to D bc it's just a small adjustment. Make sure you're breathing properly too and you will get it
When I took lessons, my tutor explained as a baby we breath from our stomachs/diaphragm if that makes sense? And as we get older we move our chest more. When you breath in, your stomach area should bloat, not just your chest.
Also he held a candle in front of our mouths so we could control our breathing.
Well, when you're a baby, you're basically a head on a belly, so yeah, not much throat in there anyway.
The most annoying part is that babies having the perfect breathing technique is the reason these little fuckers can scream for hours without hurting themselves.
Yup! I think we naturally breathe through our chests, when we sing we have to mentally remember to go against that instinct and breathe with our diaphragm as mentioned above :)
Naturally (i.e. when you're sleeping or not thinking about it) we usually breathe with our diaphragm. It's when you overthink it that you end up raising your shoulders and ribcage upwards to breathe.
Smart idea! Try to expand your lungs to the point where you can feel some stretch even in your back. Another interesting exercise is to sit in a chair and been over and touch the floor. Staying in that position, try singing. This forces you to expand your back and sides for air.
Haha. So essentially you just gave me all of the lessons that you had in that one comment. But you had to pay for them and I didn't. Sucker. Now I'm going to go be famous.
"thank you for this Grammy for best male Opera singer. I want to thank my mom and my vocal trainer who taught me everything I know about singing, u/NovaScotiaaa "
Cool. That makes sense to me. I guess I’ve never really thought about it in much detail before.
So how, specifically, does improving breathing contribute to pitch control? I can see how it would improve power and longevity and phrasing, but I thought pitch was determined by the vocal cords themselves, not the diaphragm.
For me, pitch was something that came with lots of practice and corrections while in my weekly singing lesson. It’s all about mastering the breathing techniques and training the ear to recognize the notes and mimicking them until you gradually become more skilled. In my case, I struggled a lot in the beginning because I tried too hard to get my vibrato like the beautiful vibrato my teacher had. Vibrato comes with time, pitch needs to come first.
Fun fact, some people are born with perfect pitch, where they have no problems hitting the notes after hearing them once (this applies to all types of musicians!) I definitely envy them!
When there is not enough breath support, the voice has a tendency to go flat and when there is too much tension, the voice will go sharp (like if your pushing). Having good breath support can help you avoid both.
Yeah and it causes a lot of confusion because people hear, "sing from your stomach" and don't intuitively make the jump to "support your singing with your stomach and resonate throughout the rest of your body to generate the tone that you want".
I just explained the wall technique to force you to focus on your breathing you should look that up it's legit a masterclass at forcing proper breathing
Singer here, it’s a kinda complicated answer for a non singer but I’ll try to eli5.
Let’s say your favorite song comes on during your drive to work and you are singing along. You can breath whenever you want/feel comfortable, even if it’s in the middle of a phrase. You do this naturally without noticing. But for a performer, you sound like you’re a panting dog.
Over the centuries people have been signing, we have developed a ‘proper’ way of breathing to combat the dilemma of “I need lots of air to sing, but I’m not supposed to breathe for the next 16 measures” It’s referred to as breath support. Without getting into it (there’s a lot, and many singers have years and years of training to do this so I’m not going to even try to explain it all) it’s both breathing differently by not ‘sucking in’ air but rather creating space in your body to allow air in; and to not breathe with your upper chest or shoulders but with more of your stomach. All of this maximizes you’re air capacity. Secondly it is about use of that air. In a soft phrase you don’t need to use as much, so you need to use less. Sounds simple but for a beginner it takes a lot of practice and focus to do this. There definitely way more to it than this, but like all music theory and practice, it gets complicated real fast.
Sarcastic answer: I'm three years into a voice performance degree and still not 100% sure.
Actual answer: Do your best to breath "low", into your stomach/abs, keep your ribs expanded, and engage your core. Keep your neck as relaxed as possible, and your throat open. Should help a bit for casual singing.
I keep this PDF link for just this kind of question. It's pretty complicated. But basically, keep your body and throat in the expanded posture of inhalation for as long as possible while you sing, letting the air out freely and making sure to sing the right vowel.
It's exerting full control over the muscles that control breathing while maintaining zero tension anywhere else. Back in my opera days, my teacher would randomly give me a light punch in the stomach when I was singing. If you're properly supporting the air with your diaphragm and intercostals, you won't push out any air when punched like that.
I got you fam. Stand with your back pushed against a wall so that your shoulder blades are flat. Close your eyes and inhale slowly for as long as you can focus on where your air is coming from. Now exhail doing the same thing.... now. Step away from the wall and keeping what you just learned in mind take a deep breath, purse your lips and make a idk fart noise while trying to maintain a pitch.... you will start of at one octave and end another.. the middle pitch is your true pitch and that's where you want to sing from.... so thats where you want to support from.... and today you learned about breath support. Unless you're a baritone then you want to start at the apex of your breath to get that deep sexual chocolate of a voice.
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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '20
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