Breathing Control Tips for Better Vocals!

In order for us to achieve the desired effect from our breathing control exercises, here are some important tips, so that our exercises become more focussed and effective. For those who need to refresh their memory on the breathing exercises for singing, just click here to revise the basic breathing exercises taught in the previous sections of this website. You can also apply the breathing control tips on this page to the advanced breathing exercises for singing, which would be building on the skills that you would have acquired from practising the basic breathing exercises and breathing methods for singing. Now, in order for us to practise our breathing exercises effectively, we need to bear in mind the following points: 1. Downwards and Sidewards Motion Whenever we do our breathing exercises, we should 'imagine' the movement of air as coming in from our mouth and moving downwards towards our abdominal area in a downward and sideward motion. The muscles surrounding our diaphragm area, as well as our abdominal muscles, should expand slightly in all directions, more noticeably sideways. The reason behind this is that our diaphragm separates our rib cage from the rest of our organs below it (including our stomach and intestines). When our diaphragm contracts and flattens during inhalation (when we breathe in), it pushes down on our vital organs and compresses them slightly, resulting in a slight bulge all round in our abdominal area, or as we commonly call it, our waistline. 2. Maintaining Tension in the Abdominal Muscles When we exhale during our breathing exercises, our task is to focus on maintaining a certain level of tension in our abdominal muscles (since as I previously mentioned in the earlier section on 'Breath', these muscles are easier for us to control, compared to the diaphragm muscle itself). We should not let our abdominal muscles collapse inward too quickly, and should try to maintain an outward tension, letting our abdominal muscles contract slowly as our breath is expelled from our body. This will allow us to train these muscles to be able to withstand greater tension, and also to be able to control our breath more effectively. 3. Feeling the Movement of our Muscles as we Practise: As we practise our breathing exercises, it is vital that we feel the movement of our muscles, especially our abdominal muscles, so that we know whether we are doing the exercises correctly or not. If we find that our abdominal muscles collapse inwards too quickly, or that they are not expanding sideways/all round whenever we practise our breathing exercises, then we would do well to try to achieve the desired movements. We can test the tension in our abdominal muscles by 'poking' the front of our abdominals a few cm below our belly-button, and making sure that this area is tense whenever we perform our breathing exercises. As long as we bear in mind these simple breathing control tips whenever we practise our breathing exercises, we will definitely achieve great improvements in our breath foundation for singing, especially for those who may not be able to sustain long notes, or for those who find themselves constantly out of breath when singing long phrases in a song!

Our Vocal Cords - The Origin Of Our Voice!

When we talk about singing, most of us rarely talk about our vocal cords, and would begin by emphasizing our breathing, since the first action that we do is actually to breathe before we even begin to make any sound! We believe that once we train ourselves to be able to control our breathing well, we will be able to sing well too. However, equally important is our set of vocal cords, which is the origin of our strong and healthy voice! Without them, we would have NO voice, even if we have a strong diaphragm and lots of breath in our lungs. Our vocal cords are actually housed in what we call our 'voice box' or larynx, also commonly known as our 'Adam's Apple', which is most easily seen as a bulge in most men's throats. These cords produce sound through rapid vibration with the passage of air between the set of cords. When the air passes through the cords, forcing them apart, the cords immediately close back, creating multiple vibrations at a certain frequency, and this creates what our human ear perceives as the sound of our voice. This also means that our vocal cords bear the brunt of the air pressure created when we sing! For a more detailed description, visit this webpage at Wikipedia which is packed with interesting information about these important cord muscles! Another fact that most people do not know is that these cord muscles actually can control our breathing too! Previously, our focus was on how our diaphragm and its surrounding muscles control our breathing, but it is also a fact that our cords can control our breath, by shutting completely and not letting any air out of our body! We can demonstrate this by pronouncing these words loudly: "HAK!!! Ah....." Make sure that you shut your cord muscles completely at the end of the word "HAK!!!", and only when you let some air pass through your cords, it will allow you to produce the next word, "Ah...." as a form of release... You can also demonstrate how our cords control our breathing by holding your breath and leaving your mouth open! It is this important set of muscles that is holding back the breath in our body, and once our cords are open, the breath will be able to pass through! One other important and useful fact about our voice is that for LOW notes, our cord muscles are relatively less tense and less stretched out. However, for HIGH notes, our cords are much more tense and more stretched out! This means that when we do our humming or lip trill vocal warmups and we do progressively higher notes, our cord muscles are actually being stretched out more and becoming more and more tense! This would mean that we need to be more careful when we start to sing higher and higher notes, as our cord muscles are subject to more and more strain, and they would then be more vulnerable to vocal abuse. Various vocal warmup exercises are available in this website to stretch out our vocal cords before singing to prevent unnecessary harm to our voice. There are also other vocal training exercises to help us to develop a strong and healthy singing voice! One very important point to note is that we should not be over-zealous when we are training our vocal cord muscles. Just as we would not want to strain our back or sprain our shoulders when we lift weights, we would also not want to hurt our voice muscles by over-training or subjecting them to much fatigue. A general guideline is that whenever we feel fatigue or even slight pain in our voice or throat, STOP and REST! This will prevent any unnecessary damage to these small but important muscles in our voice box!

Lip Trill Exercise

The Lip Trill, or what some vocal instructors call the "Bubble", is an extremely useful warmup exercise for all singers, be it to warmup before a performance, or to build a strong and healthy voice! Imagine you are swimming, and your head is submerged under the surface of the water. Now, when you blow air out from your lips, there will be a 'brbrbrbr' sound, and your lips will vibrate naturally and easily. Now try to repeat this motion out of the water, by letting your breath be released from your mouth, with your lips vibrating in a relaxed manner while you control the supply of air with your diaphragm muscles. (This is why vocal instructors also refer to the lip trill as 'bubble', because it is just like what we do when we are blowing bubbles underwater!) One important point to note is that you should not be blowing air from your mouth by pursing your lips. Your lips should be relaxed and the air should be controlled with your diaphragm, with your lips vibrating freely as the air passes over your lips. If you are unable to let your lips vibrate freely, place one finger from each hand on each side of your face (near where dimples would usually be), and gently push into your cheeks, then push your fingers outwards to support your lip muscles. This would relieve the lips of any tension that might be present, and allow them to vibrate more freely with your breath. Check out this audio clip to hear what the 'lip trill' or 'bubble' should sound like: Once you are able to produce the 'brbrbrbr' sound with just your lips and your breath, we can move on to producing just one note with your voice while doing the 'bubble' exercise. Just pick a comfortable pitch or note, and try to do the 'bubble' and produce sound for that note at the same time. Here is the bubble exercise demonstrated using a middle 'E' note: You can also practise the 'humming' warmup exercise to first understand how to produce a good sound , and then reproduce that sound but this time do it while you are doing your lip trill exercise! Your lips should similarly be relaxed, just as they were when you were practising the 'brbrbrbr' sound without any pitch or note! You can also practise this 'bubble' exercise with a variety of notes and pitches, as well as with some basic scales and intervals too. What are the advantages of this exercise and how does it benefit us in our singing? Well, firstly, it helps to warmup and relax our lips, so that we are better able to practise our diction when singing, as well as to wrap certain words or sounds with the vowels that we sing. Secondly, this exercise takes some pressure off our voice (our vocal cords), since some of the air pressure is placed on our lips for them to vibrate. This makes it easier and safer for us to do our warmups with our voice, since there is less pressure and tension on our vocal cords. Click here to understand more about our voice and our vocal cords! Lastly, the 'lip trill' exercise also helps us to warmup our diaphragm and its surrounding muscles for better breath control and support , since we need to be able to provide a steady supply of air for our lips to vibrate during the exercise. Click here for some great breathing exercises to strengthen your breathing control , if you feel that you need more practice in this area in order to be able to do the lip trill exercise! Once we are sufficiently warmed up and know how to develop a strong set of vocals, we can move on to singing songs for an appreciative audience!

Weak Voice? Singing Like A Whisper?

Breath Control When Singing Will Prevent You From Being Out-Of-Breath!

Many of us do not think about breath control when we are singing. In fact, we may sing in exactly the same way, regardless of whether we are singing a long or short phrase, or whether we are singing loudly or softly. Being out-of-breath when singing is one of the common singing problems that we may have, and it is also rather easy to correct. It just takes some awareness and adjustment in terms of breathing as well as vocalizing when singing. There are a variety of reasons why we may be out of breath when singing. Firstly, we may not have taken in enough air for us to be able to complete the respective singing phrase. Some of us may be practising shallow breathing, instead of proper diaphragmmatic breathing when singing! This will result in us not having enough air to be able to sing longer phrases, and also not being able to support our singing notes well. In order to correct this problem, do check out some tips on breathing for singing in order to understand more about how to breathe deeply for singing, and how to avoid shallow breathing. There are also some basic breathing exercises for us to acquire great breath control, and also to be able to use our breath to support our singing! A second reason why we may be out of breath when singing is that sometimes we may sing with an overly 'airy' voice! Our singing voice may sound like it is wrapped with many layers of air, making it sound weaker and less solid than other singing voices. This also means that each time we sing with this 'airy' voice, we are letting out more air than other singers, and this makes it more difficult for us to exercise good breath control. Instead, much more air is used up when we sing, and no matter how much air we may be able to take in when we breathe, we will find it difficult to have enough air to last a long phrase or sentence. We can solve this by making sure that we balance our Breath with our Voice, producing neither an overly 'airy' sound, nor an overly 'tight' or 'solid' sound. An overly 'airy' sound results in a difficulty in exercising breath control, and an overly 'solid' sound may result in unnecessary vocal cord damage. Do read up about our Vocal Cords in order to understand more about how our voice works! You can also try some useful vocal warmup exercises to stretch out our voice before singing, and also to strengthen our vocal cords for singing! Lastly, one reason why we may find ourselves out of breath when singing is perhaps that we forgot to breathe regularly during the song! You would be surprised to find out that some singers actually are so engrossed with their singing, that they may momentarily forget to breathe, especially at crucial points of the song! This results in the singer not having enough air to practise good breath control for the long or crucial phrases, and feeling out of breath when singing. This is an easy problem to solve, and we only need to mark out the points in the song at which we need to breathe, especially for crucial points in the song, for example just before long phrases or before parts of the song that require us to project our voices or to sing really high notes. This can also be referred to as 'phrasing' for the song, where a singer would mark out the breathing points in the song, so that he or she would be able to phrase the song well with breath and expression, and also be able to practise good breath control and support when singing! Now that we are more aware of how we can exercise good breath control when singing so as to avoid being out-of-breath, we can certainly solve one of the common singing problems that many of us may have when singing, and we would be well on our way towards improving our singing voice!

Singing Out Of Tune - How Do You Cure Tone Deafness?

As a professional vocal instructor, I have come across a great many students who sing out of tune. Some even thought that they were Tone Deaf and unable to sing in pitch at all! The truth of the matter is, it is very very rare to be purely Tone Deaf. I have been teaching singing for a number of years now, and I have not encountered a single tone-deaf student as yet! I'm not kidding! ;-p In fact, most of us are only tonally challenged, and we only need to do some pitching exercises, aural training as well as familiarisation with basic musical scales and pitches, in order to be able to sing in pitch consistently! There are a variety of reasons why we may sing out of tune. One, we may not be familiar with the notes or pitches that we are singing, or even the specific vocal range that the song is in. For example, a song may have a great number of pitch jumps, and we may not know how to sing these changes in pitch. Some proper training in musical scales and intervals will be able to strengthen our ability to sing different pitches, as well as know how to vocalize these various tunes in a song! Two, we may not be familiar with the vocal register or vocal positioning that we should use when we sing certain pitches. For example, if i were to ask a male student to sing a high 'E' or 'F' note, he may sometimes not be able to sing it and will probably go off pitch, because he is unfamiliar with his higher vocal registers or his nasal and head vocal ranges. Some exercises in finding these vocal registers and singing positions, as well as various vocal warmup exercises should be able to help these students to be able to hit these high pitches well, and not to sound too off key for those notes. We may also not be aware of the breath support necessary for hitting or even projecting certain notes that we sing, especially for the higher ranges of our voice. This may cause us to produce unsupported notes, resulting in our singing going out of tune! Some basic breathing exercises as well as understanding how our breath support affects our singing will be able to aid us in solving this problem. Three, we may not be used to listening to our voice and how it blends with the music while we are singing, which is actually an extremely important skill for singers! Sometimes when we sing, we focus too much only on what we sing, instead of making sure that what we sing matches the music accompaniment for the song that we are singing! This causes us to go out of pitch without us noticing at all! Some training in listening and aural awareness will be able to help these students to be more aware of their pitches when they sing, as well as to be able to listen to the musical harmonies in the song, and make sure that their voice is in tune with the music accompaniment of the song! Singing out of tune is certainly not incurable, and there are a great variety of pitching tips and techniques available to help us solve whatever pitching problem we may have!

Turtleneck Singing Hinders Your Vocal Prowess!

Turtleneck Singing refers to sticking your neck out when singing, especially when we need to hit the higher notes during a song or during a vocal warmup exercise. As the term suggests, the singer will resemble a 'turtle', which is able to extend and retract its neck when it moves around. The reason why singers may extend or stick out their neck when they are singing is because we have this false notion that we have more conscious control over our voice whenever we control our throat muscles. That is why we may strain our throats when singing, creating throat tightness and making it even more difficult for us to sing the high notes well. As with other common singing problems like throat tightness, turtleneck singing also involves straining certain throat or neck muscles whenever we sing or practise our vocal warmup exercises. In this case, we are actually straining the muscles in the back of our neck, stiffening these muscles as we sing and making us behave like turtles, causing the back of our neck to become tired after singing for some time. In order to solve this problem and learn how to relax our neck more, we can do some simple neck stretching exercises before we sing, so that we reduce the level of fatigue and strain in our neck before we begin our vocal warmup exercises for singing. A very simple neck stretching exercise would be for us to keep our heads facing front in a neutral level position with our eyes at regular eye-level, and slowly pivot our heads horizontally to the left, and then back to the centre again. We can do this for our right side as well, keeping our necks in a neutral position, feeling as though our head is perfectly balanced on our neck! Another neck stretching exercise would be for us to keep our bodies upright, and just gently drop our heads downwards, keeping our chin tucked in. We should feel a good stretch in the back of our neck, and this will help to remove the strain that we may feel if we were a turtleneck singer. At the same time, when we are straining the muscles at the back of our neck during turtleneck singing, our jaws also stiffen and to stick out when we sing, and this actually causes us to look like turtles with their necks outstretched. As singers, our jaw should be relatively tension-free, and we should be able to open our jaws without much stress or strain on the mouth or jaw muscles! Check out these simple exercises to keep our jaw strain-free, and also to prevent our jaws from locking or stiffening! Another useful solution to prevent us from sticking our necks out when we sing would be to just gently place one finger on our chin whenever we are singing or when we practise our vocal exercises or our song repertoire. Placing a finger on our chin will help to keep our chin and jaw in check when we sing, and whenever our jaw begins to stick out, creating the turtleneck effect, we can just gently restrain it with our finger on our chin and keep our jaws in a relaxed and neutral position. We can also practise our singing in front of a mirror, standing sideways so that we can check the side profile of our jaw and neck when we sing, and make sure that our necks do not stick out during our vocal exercises. We can also face the mirror directly in order to check the strain on our throats when we sing, and keep our heads in a neutral level position during our exercises. As a general rule of thumb, keep our eyes level and maintain them at regular eye-level whenever we sing, so as to prevent some of the common singing problems that may occur! In order to fully resolve turtleneck singing and other singing problems, we need to also always practise good breathing for singing, and keep up a regular practice schedule for our breathing exercises as well as vocal warmup exercises like the lip trill, in order to gain full mastery of our set of vocals. Other general guidelines include keeping our bodies upright and maintaining a good body posture when we sing so that we are able to support our voices well! This will reduce our need for unnecessary support from other muscles like our neck, jaw and throat muscles when we sing!