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Breathing For Singing..

Why is breathing for singing so important? Because without breath, without air, we have no voice... we have no sound! We need breath in order to produce the sound that is our voice. This is why most vocal instructors would emphasize on breath training right from the very beginning, putting students through rigorous breath training in order to build a good strong foundation for singing. However, before we move on to even the most basic of our breathing exercises, we need to first know how to execute good breathing for singing. This would involve a certain muscle in our body called the Diaphragm, as well as other supporting muscles around the diaphragm. Our diaphragm is actually a thin sheet of muscle separating our rib cage from the rest of our organs below it (including our stomach and intestines). Its function is to regulate the flow of air in our body, by contracting and relaxing whenever we inhale and exhale respectively. You may have noticed by now, that you can't really control your diaphragm when you breathe. It moves involuntarily, meaning you can't tell it to go up or go down like other muscles like your biceps or triceps. What you can do though, is to inhale and exhale, and this causes the diaphragm to contract and relax automatically. So, how do we practise our breathing exercises if we can't control how our diaphragm moves? We can control the muscles surrounding the diaphragm, namely the intercostal muscles around our ribs, as well as our abdominal muscles. These muscles are under our conscious control, and we will be practising some basic exercises for these muscles when we do our breathing exercises for singing. Now, let's begin by first drawing in a deep breath of air! Imagine that you are sucking in a strand of noodle (for example, when we are eating Japanese Ramen.. we need to suck the noodles noisily...) or sucking a deep breath of air through a tiny straw, and letting the air go directly into your abdominal area. Try it now and feel the air being drawn into our abdominal area, moving downwards as well as sidewards. Of course, our air does not actually enter our stomach when we breathe. This is only for visualization and instructional purposes! (For those who do not know, the air goes into our lungs...) Some important points to note: Our shoulders and chest area should be relaxed when we inhale. If we find that our chest area lifts up high or our shoulders are raised when we inhale, then just rest both hands on your chest and repeat the inhalation exercise with our hands resting on a stationery chest. Raising our chest and shoulders is a common habit, but it really causes us to draw a shallow breath, and this creates problems later when we need more breath to support our singing, especially for high notes or for long phrases in a song. Once we have understood how to take in a proper breath of air, we can proceed to some basic breathing exercises that will teach us to control our breath for singing, as well as strengthen the diaphragm and its surrounding muscles, so as to be able to provide better breath support for singing!

Bad Singing Foods

Good Singing Foods

"Good Singing Foods" is a term that i coined personally, to refer to foods that are beneficial to our vocal health. These foods allow us to build strong and healthy voices, as well as protect our voice from harmful organisms or diseases. Often when we eat, we do not think about how our food affects our voice or our singing. We may consume caffeine or spicy food which may be harmful to our voices and cause irritation as well as dry our throats! If we sing immediately after consuming these foods, we increase our risk of damaging our vocals and causing unnecessary pain to ourselves! Learning about the various "bad singing foods" and why they are bad for you will help us to avoid these foods and avoid potential vocal abuse or damage! One of the major "Good Singing Foods" is actually a liquid, and it is WATER. It is extremely important for us to drink lots of plain water, in order to keep our bodies well-hydrated and to also cleanse our bodies of the toxins that may build up in our tissues and cells. This will also keep disease and infections at bay, and help us maintain a great level of personal health. Apart from hydrating the body, water also keeps our vocal cords moist, and this is very important for a healthy voice. This is because when we are singing, our vocal cords are vibrating at an extremely fast speed. If our vocal cords are dry, they will be more prone to irritation when vibrating, and this may cause some pain and discomfort when we sing. One useful voice care tip is for us to have a glass of lukewarm water beside us whenever we are singing or performing, or just to drink some warm water before we sing! This helps to soothe our vocal cords and our throat, and also moistens the tissues and muscles involved, reducing the risk of vocal damage. This is what i always do whenever i have to perform, or whenever i have to take several singing classes consecutively. (In fact, I drink a lot when i'm performing!) Water is so very very important to us singers! Other than taking in lots of water, we should also consume a balanced diet for our meals, and take lots of whole grains, fruits as well as vegetables. These foods contain high levels of Vitamins A, C and E - Vitamin A helps cells regenerate normally, Vitamin C helps prevent the common cold and sore throat as well as improve immune functions of the body, and Vitamin E is a powerful anti-oxidant that protects cell membranes and also improves immune functions of the body. These foods also help to keep the mucus membranes in our throats healthy, so that we avoid irritation in our throats when we sing. Another one of my favourite 'good singing foods' is Honey! My personal favourite is actually Manuka Honey, which has anti-microbial properties, meaning that bacteria will find it hard to survive and reproduce in honey. This also means that when we have a sore throat or just feel some discomfort in our voice, we can just take one spoonful of pure Manuka Honey, and let it drizzle down our throats. This will help to keep the bacteria away, and will also help our sore throats to heal faster! Manuka Honey has yet another wonderful healing property, which is that it is antiseptic and anti-inflammatory! This means that it will help to prevent any infection from spreading, and will thus speed up the recovery of our sore throat! Many singers swear by honey being a wonderful remedy of sore throat as well as a great singing food for protecting our fragile vocals! One great singing food that may be specific to Asian countries is a cough syrup called 'Chuanbei Pipa Gao', which translates to Fritillaria and Loquat Syrup. The loquat leaf is often used to reduce "lung heat" syndromes, or other infections for example sore throats. Fritillaria is a potent cough suppressant and can also be used to treat swollen glands and nodular swellings. When used in combination in 'Chuanbei Pipa Gao', it is very effective in alleviating cough symptoms and curing sore throats! These are just some of the good singing foods that we can take to preserve our voices as well as to prevent unnecessary vocal damage when we sing or when we are sick or have sore throats. Of course, we have to constantly practise great breathing habits as well as great vocal warmup exercises before we sing, so that our voices will be flexible, healthy and strong!

Voice Care Tips

When it comes to singing, most of us do not really observe good voice care measures on a daily basis. In fact, we would not give a second thought to eating certain foods or taking alcohol or caffeinated drinks just before we sing! In fact, there are many important voice care tips that we can learn, so that we can maintain a healthy and strong singing voice, as well as not do too much damage to our fragile vocals! These tips range from which foods we can or should eat for a good singing voice, as well as which foods we should avoid in order to take proper care of our voices. There are also various voice protection tips and techniques that we can follow in order to ensure proper vocal health. Check out the corresponding links to find out more about how to exercise proper voice care! Many of us would probably know some of the general guidelines that we can follow to take care of our voice: 1. Maintain Good Posture and Proper Breathing Control When Singing - Always make sure that we maintain an upright and neutral posture and practise proper breath support when we sing! Practise these basic breathing exercises in order to establish better breath control in our singing. If we wish to, there are also other more advanced breathing exercises that we can practise in order to be more proficient in our breathing control! 2. Practise Vocal Warmups Before We Sing - We should always be sure to warm up our voices before we start to sing, so that our diaphragm and our vocal cords are ready to support and produce the sound that we require during singing. Check out some useful vocal warmup exercises in order to achieve better voice care and protect our singing voice. 3. Regular Exercise and Proper Diet - This point applies to our voice care and also to our bodies in general. Achieving a good level of personal health is certainly beneficial to maintaining a great singing voice. This is because when our bodies fall ill, we may feel fatigue, experience blocked noses, sore throats or may not even practise proper vocal technique when singing. This will cause unnecessary damage to our voices, and we would do well to keep ourselves healthy so that our voices will be healthy too! 4. Keep Our Neck, Jaw and Face Relaxed During Singing - When we sing, we control our breath using our diaphragm and the surrounding abdominal and intercostal muscles, and our voices with our vocal cords and supporting muscles. We should always take care not to involve other muscle groups into the picture, for example our neck muscles, jaw muscles and facial muscles. These muscles should be relaxed when we sing, as they will affect our voice by increasing the amount of tension in our throats and in our vocal cords, and making it more difficult for us to sing well! Understand more about some common singing problems by clicking on this link, and you will know how to overcome these problems with some simple tips as well as constant effort on our part! 5. Placing or Focussing Our Voice Appropriately - There are a great variety of vocal registers and positions that we can sing from, and knowing which register to use as well as which position our voice should resonate from will be beneficial to general voice care and avoiding vocal damage. For example, we would not wish to place a very high note in too low a position, or to use a low register to stretch and reach for a high note! Do check out the rest of this website for more information on vocal registers as well as positions! 6. Reduce Speaking Time in Noisy Environments - When we are in extremely noisy environments, for example at a busy construction site or at a crowded club or pub, we would find that the overall noise level in these places are far higher than what we usually encounter in our daily lives. As such, when we try to speak in these noisy conditions, we cause a lot of strain on our voices and may hurt our vocal cords in the process. Reducing our speaking time in these noisy environments will help to avoid unnecessary damage and aid in protecting our singing voice!

Breath Support and Singing

We all instinctively know that breath support is important for our singing. The question on everyone's lips is: "How Are They Related?" Also, how do our breathing exercises aid us in our singing? Basically, breath and singing are like food and our stomach. One can't do without the other - our stomach cannot live without food, and food can't be digested without our stomach. In fact, we can't sing without breath! We need breath in order to vocalize even the slightest sustained word or note, and breath support is vital in helping us to produce a well-supported and stable sound. So, how do all our basic breathing exercises, advanced breathing exercises as well as breathing control tips help us to be able to sing better? (Because as we all know, our ultimate goal for practising these breathing exercises is to be able to sing better!) Let us look at our basic breathing exercises, and draw a relation between the various exercises and the way we sing. Do click on the various links provided if you need to revise the various breathing exercises previously explained in this website. For basic breathing exercise 1 , we practised how to produce a sustained 'ssss' sound with our breath, controlling the volume and stability of the sound produced. This is extremely important for our singing when we need to sustain a long note, for example when we sing an 'AH' for 10 counts, and we need to keep the sound stable and not shaky. This breathing exercise also helps us to be able to vary our singing volume, by varying the amount of pressure we apply when we produce the 'ssss' sound. A slight increase in pressure in our abdominal area creates a louder 'ssss' sound, and when applied to singing, will create a correspondingly louder word or sustained note. For basic breathing exercise 2 , we practised how to produce a LOUD 'SSSS' sound with our breath, teaching our diaphragm and abdominal muscles to withstand greater tension and pressure. This is vital for our singing when we need to produce a loud sound, or when we need to sustain a high note, since our muscles need to be able to generate and maintain a greater amount of pressure in order to be able to produce and sometimes project that note or sound outwards to our audience! One way for us to feel the tension required when we sing high notes is for us to try to lift up a PIANO with both our arms! Try it and feel the core muscles in your abdominal area contracting and becoming tense! That is the kind of tension that we would need to be able to support when we sing and project our high notes or when we wish to be able to produce a louder sound when singing. As for basic breathing exercise 3 , when we practised how to produce bouncy and light 'ssss' sounds with our breath, that would be extremely useful to us whenever we need to sing fast songs, or when there are many words in a phrase, or when we need to sing staccato in a song. (Do check out the upcoming section on musical terms in order to understand more about the common musical terms used when singing.) Basic breathing exercise 3 teaches our diaphragm and its surrounding muscles to be more flexible in their breath control and usage, and this is vital whenever we sing fast songs, or even light and happy songs, which sometimes require us to be lighter and bouncier when we sing! This is in stark contrast to the slow love ballads that we may sing, which will require us to use more of the techniques taught in basic breathing exercises 1 and 2, where we sustain long notes, and also vary dynamics gradually from soft to loud and vice versa. Ok! So, now that we understand how our breath support aids us in our singing, and how the various breathing exercises help us to vocalize better, we can move on to producing sounds with our voice!

Advanced Breathing Exercises

Breathing Control is extremely important when singing, and these Advanced Breathing Exercises build on the knowledge imparted in our previous section - Breathing Exercises For Singing. Check out the above link if you have not already done so, in order to ensure that you have sufficient knowledge as to how to breathe properly for singing as well as how to perform the basic exercises involved, bearing in mind the important breathing control tips for greater efficiency! Now, you have already learnt the following basic breathing exercises: 1. Breathing CONTROL - sustaining a simple 'ssss' sound as long as you can. 2. Breath TENSION - maintaining a greater level of tension and force when expelling breath. 3. Breath FLEXIBILITY - creating light and bouncy 'ssss' sounds for flexibility training. Let us combine some of these exercises to enhance the flexibility and strength of your diaphragm muscle, as well as the surrounding intercostal and abdominal muscles. For our 1st advanced breathing exercise, let us combine basic breathing exercise 1 with breathing exercise 2, by creating a slight crescendo (gradually build-up in volume) with our breath, from a soft 'ssss' sound to a relatively loud 'SSSS'! Your focus should be on our abdominal area, and you should 'imagine' your diaphragm going downwards and flattening outwards as you expel the air from your body. You would also notice that your abdominal area will expand sideways slightly when you use more force to create the loud 'SSSS' sound. This will teach your muscles to be able to withstand more tension, and also to vary the tension from a soft sound to a loud sound. Our 2nd advanced breathing exercise will combine basic breathing exercise 3 with exercise 1, beginning with 3 bouncy and light 'ssss' sounds, and ending with the sustained 'ssss' sound, keeping it there for as long as you can sustain it for. Try it now! This exercise will teach your diaphragm and its related muscles to be more flexible, and yet be able to maintain tension at the end with the sustaining 'ssss' sound, and also to control the amount of breath in your 'air tank' or 'air balloon', so as to be able to sustain a long 'ssss' sound at the end. Our 3rd and final advanced breathing exercise will combine basic breathing exercise 3 (for flexibility), with advanced breathing exercise 1! (Now, don't get confused.. just follow my instructions and you will be fine..) Begin with 3 bouncy and light 'ssss' sounds, followed by a sustained but soft 'ssss' sound, then gradually increase the volume of the sound to a LOUD 'SSSS' sound, expelling all your breath at the end of this exercise! Try it now! The purpose of this exercise is to teach your muscles to be flexible, and yet also to be able to sustain and towards the end, create greater tension to expel all remaining air, even when you have already used up much of your breath for the beginning part of the breathing exercise! This is why you need to fully understand the previous basic breathing exercises before you practise these more advanced breathing control techniques! Now, to be able to understand how these breathing exercises relate to how we sing, check out this link and do be sure that you practise your breathing exercises diligently in order to create the desired results! Let us move on to learning how we can vocalize properly while using the breathing techniques we have learnt!