Voice ViBE Episode 05 April 02, 2024 Philippe Hall
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00:00 Welcome to VoiceVibe: A Change in Plans
00:43 Diving Deep into Breathing Techniques for Singing
01:04 Unlocking the Power of Diaphragmatic Breathing
03:46 Mastering Inhalation: The Key to Powerful Singing
13:39 Breathing Timing in Singing: Planning Your Breath
24:56 Extending Your Breath Control: Practical Exercises
30:42 Wrapping Up: The Essence of Diaphragmatic Breathing and Next Steps
32:51 Join the Vibe Singers Community: An Invitation
Welcome to VoiceVibe: A Quick Introduction
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Philippe Hall: Hello, my name is Philippe Hall. I am your host, and this is VoiceVibe. I'm excited to share some information with you today. First of all, I have to clarify, we have my guest speaker, Rush Dorsett, has fallen ill, so we will be Postponing her live stream to a date in the near future. I'll keep you all informed.
So just spontaneously thinking here this morning, last minute about what I can share with you and what has come to mind, probably about a hundred things came to mind, but the thing that I've settled on is to talk about.
The Art of Breathing in Singing
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Philippe Hall: Breathing. Breathing technique in singing. Breath support. What is appoggio? What is support?
What is belly breathing? What is diaphragmatic breathing? What is low breathing? Everybody talks about breathing technique in singing. They use different words. All of these mean the same thing.
Unlocking the Power of Diaphragmatic Breathing
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Philippe Hall: More or less and Depending on the method that you learn or the different methods you've learned the approaches are different So the first thing I want to talk about is what is the diaphragm?
Well, the diaphragm is the muscle that is inside here of the separates the thoracic cavity which is basically the upper cavity that contains your lungs and your heart from the abdominal cavity that contains your organs and So there's this big dome shaped muscle, and it connects up here to the syphoid process, down to the lower ribs, and even back into your spine in the back.
It's kind of, some people refer to it as like a parachute, a parachute, a flat muscle that separates these two cavities. Now this is really important because the way we get air into our body is that the diaphragm, by lowering, Changes the volume inside of the thoracic cavity, creates a vacuum, and sucks in air into your lungs, and they inflate, and then they deflate.
So, you all know how to do this because you're alive, right? You're breathing. You're constantly breathing. So, you know how to do this. In fact, it is an action, the diaphragmatic action is subconscious. Meaning, it's involuntary, like your heartbeat. And we can do breathing exercises, we can do meditations, we can do different things to slow down our heart rate.
and change our breathing timing a little bit. But generally we don't have to worry about it. We don't have to worry about it at all. In singing, we've got to start worrying about it because we're going to be making sound for a much longer time. So let's just think about this and how this works for, for singing.
Okay, just checking out a couple things here. So what do we do? We inhale, the diaphragm goes down. When we inhale, it presses on the internal organs. And then you get this expansion because there's nowhere for the organs to go. They're getting squished, compacted. So when you breathe in, it's going to expand.
Now, breathe out, it's going to return. So you'll feel some expansion around the front of your abdomen, your lower abdomen, all the way down to your pelvic bone. The ribs connect all the way back into the spine. So you might feel some expansion at your sides. There's no bones between your hips and your ribs.
So breathe in there, you're going to feel some expansion there. You might feel the ribs expand. All of this expansion is necessary for you to inhale and it happens automatically. All right.
Mastering Inhalation: The Key to Powerful Singing
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Philippe Hall: So I've got some tricks for you here on how to activate your diaphragm. I didn't come up with these tricks. I learned these tricks.
They are backed by science. A lot of people have been going on a deep dive into researching breathing and how it works. So, we need to breathe from the diaphragm, which kind of sounds like an oxymoron because you can't breathe without the diaphragm. So you're not breathing without the diaphragm. So how do we optimize this?
Well, one trick we can do is we can, we can work on our inhalation technique. By doing that, we're going to activate the diaphragm. The diaphragm will activate and engage. And as soon as it's engaged, that's, that's what we [00:05:00] want. So the very first step in singing, breathing technique, a podge or diaphragmatic breathing support, whatever you want to call it, the very first step is to get a good inhalation.
How do we do that? Well, we can kind of trick the body into activating the diaphragm a little bit more. So number one, you might think is. Not what you'd expect. Number one in the way I teach this is you must relax. Put your thumbs together, put them on your belly button, make a little triangle down to the front of your pelvic floor.
All of your abdominal muscles, if you want a good inhalation, need to be relaxed when you inhale. They need to be relaxed because if they're not, your diaphragm can't lower. And if your diaphragm can't lower, you can't get an efficient inhalation. So, experiment with me. Indulge me here and feel this in your own body that wants you to pull in all the muscles of your abdomen, nice and tight, hold everything tight right now as I'm talking, pull it in, hold it tight.
Now holding it tight while you're holding it tight, breathe in. Try and breathe in and let it go. Okay, you discover and experience that you can't not breathe in very much because your abdominal muscles are very, very tight. And that makes it impossible for your diaphragm to lower and pull in air. Okay, so now try out the opposite.
Relax your lower abdomen, relax your abdominal muscles, and just take a nice, relax those muscles. While you take a nice inhalation, go ahead, relax and breathe in.
It's a completely different experience, completely different experience. So number one, make sure your abdominal muscles are relaxed. This way, your diaphragm can lower, can lower throughout its full range of motion, and by doing that, you will have a much, much better inhalation. Okay, we go on. So now is the trick, how can we activate the diaphragm?
Nasal Breathing: A Game-Changer for Singers
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Philippe Hall: There's been a lot of research lately on nasal breathing. Nasal breathing. What does that mean? We're going to breathe in through our nose. So how do we make sure we're breathing in through our nose? We keep our mouth shut. To activate this, there's different techniques. They all are targeting the same goal, activate the diaphragm.
So first of all, what I've discovered works really well for singers is is that you open your jaw joint and keep your mouth closed. Lower your jaw, open your jaw joint, keep this relaxed, and breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Okay, this is kind of the same sensation like when you have to yawn in public but you are trying to hide your need to yawn so you can keep your mouth shut.
Okay, keep your mouth shut, open your jaw, inhale through your nose,
and let it out. By inhaling through your nose, you're activating the diaphragm because the nasal cavity is much more restricted than your oral cavity. So you, the diaphragm has to work harder to pull air through, through your nose than it does through your mouth. to pull air through your mouth. So now we can accentuate that.
We can make that one step more difficult. We're going to take one finger and plug one nostril. Just lay your finger on one nostril and now relax your abdomen and breathe in through one nostril
and back out. So what you'll do is you're going to breathe in to activate this and experience this. Just do this together with me. You're going to breathe in in through one nostril and out through the mouth. Relax your abdomen breathe in through one nostril
And right back out the mouth. Now I'm just going to keep holding this. It looks silly, I know, but this is what we're doing. Okay, every time you're just going to keep your mouth shut, open your jaw joint,
and breathe in through one nostril. You're going to repeat that five times, then you'll switch,
breathe in through the other nostril. After you've done that side five times, breathe in through both nostrils.
So you've got three key factors that make this work. Number one, you're keeping your abdominal muscles relaxed. Number two, you're opening your jaw joint. Number three, you're keeping your mouth shut. And you're doing all of this to breathe in, inhale through your [00:10:00] nose to activate your diaphragm. Great.
Pretty straightforward. Pretty simple. This takes some time. Now there's a reason why breathing is essential to singing, but breathing is essential to mindfulness. Breathing is essential to meditation. The practice of breathing is essential to all kinds of sports and visualization and manifestation.
Breathing is essential to human beings. Thank you So, when you learn to inhale properly as a singer, you just completed about 90 percent of breathing technique for a singer, right? There's a few other little things you need to do, but it's all in the inhalation. If you have an efficient inhalation. Your work is 90 percent done.
Now let's skip into subglottal pressure. What is subglottal pressure? The glottis is the space, the opening between the vocal folds. Right? That's the glottis. It can be closed, it can be open. Just that opening between the vocal folds. Everything below your vocal cords, in essence, would be considered subglottal.
So, what is subglottal pressure? Well, subglottal pressure is the air pressure inside of your lungs that's coming up and moving your vocal folds. So, when you inhale efficiently, You create subglottal pressure. The better your inhalation, the more subglottal pressure you'll have. Let's think about this.
Again, in order to sing, in order to have appoggio, in order to support, you must have subglottal pressure. The way to create subglottal pressure, and there is only one way, is to inhale air. So if you activate your diaphragm, you have an efficient inhalation, you just created air. all the subglottal pressure you're going to need to work with while you're singing.
Again, 90 percent of your work is now done. So this is how important your inhalation is during singing. Singing from the diaphragm really means that you are inhaling efficiently, allowing the diaphragm to extend through its full range of motion. Now, everything you sing after that will be diaphragmatic singing.
And it sounds a bit, it's not really a good use of the term because the diaphragm is a muscle that we use to inhale. It's not a muscle we use to exhale. We have other muscles And those are the muscles we need to develop their coordination to slow down the release of air. But the air pressure, the subglottal pressure we need to move the voice, it all happens on the inhalation.
If we don't have a good inhalation, we won't have enough air flow, subglottal pressure, to sing with. So, the more shallow and weak and inefficient your inhalation, the more difficult singing is going to be. So, if you're just tuning in right now, go back to the beginning and I have explained exactly how to activate an efficient inhalation in singing.
Okay. So, I'm not going to talk today about all of the different muscles that we use. For to exhale air because that's really excellent coordination building But it's only 10 percent of what we need to do if you can get a great inhalation Every time you breathe during your singing, you will improve everything about your singing.
It will get easier, it will sound better, you will have more power, you will have more control because you created subglottal pressure. So those are the steps. Efficient inhalation creates subglottal pressure. Subglottal pressure creates the exhalation which will move your vocal folds and keep them in motion.
Breathing Timing in Singing: Planning Your Breath
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Philippe Hall: So let's go on now to what I The second point I'd like to talk about is breathing timing in singing. How many of you plan out in your songs when to breathe? Just think about this. Do you plan every time you breathe in every song you sing? If you don't, you're not inhaling efficiently. Second question. Do you plan every time you sing in every song when you breathe out?
Hmm, very interesting. You see, a lot of singing, you're breathing out, okay? But if we have residual air in the, in the lungs, we can't have an efficient inhalation and we will get stuck, kind of suffocating in full [00:15:00] lungs. So this is, go with me now, we're going to talk about how the lungs work. The lungs are never empty.
They always contain residual gas, residual air, residual carbon dioxide, a mixture of gases. They have to stay semi inflated. In fact, if one of your lungs collapses, it's a medical emergency and you have to go to the hospital. So our lungs will never fully deflate. They always retain air. So if you take a bunch of little sips
in now your lungs are completely full and breathe out a little bit
breathe out one quick sip and suck in twice what's gonna happen is you're gonna be completely full and you will feel like you're out of breath. So if you've ever felt out of breath While you're singing, it's because of one or two reasons. One, you literally ran out of air. And the second, you have inhaled so much air that you're not releasing any of it, and you're literally suffocating with full lungs.
This is, this is a big deal. So you must plan during your singing when you inhale, and you must plan when you exhale. Ah, sounds a bit silly, right? But it's very, very vital. Say you got a great inhalation, you sing a nice phrase, and you're exhaling, of course, while you're singing. Now you're almost empty and you, you breathe in again and replenish your air, your subglottal support.
That's excellent. So, think about this. You should only breathe in what you can sing out. If you breathe in more air, then you can sing out. On the phrase, until your next breath, you will have too much air pressure inside of your lungs. So, breathing timing, breathing timing is the art of, of inhaling the right amount of air, and singing it out to the next breath.
Then, breathing it again, the right amount of air, and singing out that air until your next breath. Breathing timing is a breathing cycle. You want to be at ease in your breathing. The more comfortable you're breathing, the better you will sing. The longer you will sing. In my singing, and I recommend that you do this, whenever you have a break, even before the sing starts, you have an intro of music, I can promise you, I have timed out my exhalation
Oh, I've timed out my exhalation and my inhalation before I start the first note. And anytime, every song, no song goes forever with no breaks at all. There's almost always a bits of music where you have a pause. Anytime you have a pause, this is your chance to relax and reset. So during the breaks, plan your exhalation.
If you breathe out all your air, when you have time in a song, a break, When there's a musical break, breathe it out, now you will empty all that residual gas, all that residual pressure, and you'll get a brand new, fresh, full inhalation. Then you'll work with that. So it's very important in your songs that you actually plan it when you exhale.
We're going to breathe in, we're going to exhale. It's just a breathing cycle. If you don't plan when you breathe, You won't find relaxation in breathing in your singing. The more relaxed your breathing cycle is, the less you'll have to worry about your air, and the better your breathing will become. It's plannable.
It, you must plan when you breathe. And it doesn't matter, in most, most music, it doesn't matter how often you breathe. It just matters that you breathe well. Okay? There are some styles of singing where you don't want to show people you're breathing. You've got very, very long phrases. Okay? That's a given.
But, for the majority of singing, nobody cares when you breathe. There's no extra points. All they want to hear is your beautiful voice. So you need to plan out exactly when you're going to breathe. Okay, all of these things are essential. So let's just recap. To get a good inhalation, a good diaphragmatic inhalation is your first step in efficient singing.
You [00:20:00] must release and relax your abdominal muscles. And then your diaphragm can lower to activate your diaphragm and your diaphragmatic breathing. You're just going to start off your warm up phase by breathing, relaxing your abdomen and breathing in. Five times through one nostril, in and out, five times through each nostril, and then five breaths through both nostrils.
Remembering to keep your jaw joint open and your lips closed as if you were trying to trying to hide a yawn. You will notice when you open your jaw joint and with your mouth closed that the space inside expands, you will get in more air. Okay? This activates immediately your diaphragm, your diaphragm will go into gear, you will start working a little bit harder, and now you've activated diaphragmatic breathing.
If you activate your diaphragm on the inhalation, now you create subglottal pressure. If you create subglottal pressure, now you can sing, because without it, there's no air pressure to move the vocal folds. And now you're 90 percent of your work as a singer is done. Then we go on to the next step, plan your breathing.
When do you breathe out and in before you start your song? When can you breathe out and relax and reset while you're singing? I plan that in every single song. When do you plan to inhale? How much air will you inhale? Because if you over inhale, you can't sing it out. You only need to breathe in what you can sing out.
And if you have this steady flow of in and out, I breathe in what I need, I sing out the breath I inhaled. This is how we work in speech every single day. None of us go like this. Hi, how are you doing? Oh, I'm fine. Thank you. Yes. I'm doing great. Yeah. How are you? Good to see you Because we'd have way too much air for the vocalization.
We need our voice would sound strained It would sound unnatural and it would be ridiculous So just go ahead and try that breathe in as much as you can like you're gonna hold out a big note And then just say hey good morning. How are you? Yeah, i'm fine. Keep holding that air You can't get it all out at once if you do your voice is gonna sound really weird So We don't do that in speech.
Why should we do that in singing? It's inefficient, it creates tension, it creates It's an audible strain on the voice and the voice will never sound as good or as natural. You only breathe in what you can sing out. All right. Excellent. So let's say, all right, Philippe, that sounds great. How do I train this?
Your training begins with working on your inhalation, relaxed abdomen, open jaw joint, mouth closed, breathing in through the nose. Start off with five through one nostril, five through the other, five through both, then augment that. Take it up to ten. Okay, it's just very simple. As part of your vocal activation, your vocal warm up, start with your breathing.
If you have a good efficient inhalation, your voice will sound relaxed. You will have all the sub glottal pressure you need for anything. I do a demonstration for a lot of my Students, I'm going to breathe out all my air, okay? Breathe out all my air. Then I'm going to sing a very long, a very long high note.
I can sing about eight seconds with, with, after having breathed out all my air. Point is, you don't need as much air as you think. Have a nice breath. Breathe it out. It's the final
countdown! So you can sing with next to no air. Try it out. It's kind of crazy. You'll be able to sing for four or five seconds after you have exhaled all of your air. This helps you learn that you don't need much air to sing. You need a lot less than you think. And you're probably over inhaling. So, test yourself, how big does that inhalation need to be?
If I'm relaxed, it's going to be so easy. That's it. Short, easy breath. I can sing a good 15 seconds. So, when you're speaking, observe how little air comes in. It's always on the way, in and out. This is what you want to call a breathing cycle. [00:25:00] Plan it into your singing. Now, let's say you feel like you are running out of breath.
You can't sing long phrases. And you want to develop more coordination in the release of your air to extend your phrases.
Extending Your Breath: Practical Exercises for Singers
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Philippe Hall: We can work on that, and there's some very basic, basic exercises that work very, very well. Make some noise where you can hear the air. Start maybe on an S H. Easy. Practice your diaphragmatic breathing.
Okay, relax the abdomen, in through the nose. Jaw joined open
making an sh sound. Stay relaxed and make the sh sound sh as long as you can. If you put it under a ton of pressure, you won't be making that sound for very long. If you do it nice and gently, you probably can manage a good seven to 10 seconds. And that will extend, but it requires you control the release gently.
Now you can do the same thing with an F.
Manage that F. Keep the air releasing at the same speed. Go to an S.
Keep releasing the S at the same speed. And time yourself. You will be able to do this longer and longer every day you do it. Now, another, there's some other things you can do. You can use a straw. You can blow bubbles. How long can you blow the bubbles for? Let's see, I've got a little, I've got a glass of water right here.
So you don't need to make any sound to work on the control of the release of your air, to slow it down. Just sustain those light bubbles as long as you can. All right, there are two There are many different ways to do this. So, because the inhalation is 90 percent of our work as a singer, because once we've inhaled, all we have to do is release it, and we have to release it at a steady tempo.
And the way to do that is to use Some fricative consonants, S H F S, may blow some bubbles, blow through a singing straw, but just at a steady tempo. You don't need a lot of air. Remember, you don't need a lot of air to sing. A lot less than you think. All you need is enough to move the vocal folds. So we've got those.
Now we can switch and make some sound with those same consonants. How long can you then make your Z? A Z is just an S with sound. Zzzz. Theoretically, you should be able to make the Z as long as you make the S. Almost. Almost. Because it requires a tiny bit more air pressure to make a Z than it does an S.
The vocal folds create some resistance and do the same thing on an M. Hmm. How long can you sustain a hum? How long can you sustain the n hmm? How about an NG? So, by sustaining these gentle sounds and sustaining and timing yourself, make a list. Make your chest checklist. S, H, F, S, then put in a V, a Z, put in an M, an N, a G.
Blow bubbles, whatever, whichever ones you want to use. Time yourself and mark it down. Just do that a couple times a day. You will extend your breath control considerably. So, 90 percent of your work is the good, efficient inhalation. Allowing the diaphragm to lower through its range of motion, filling up your lungs, expanding your lungs, creating your subglottal pressure, which is what you lean on in the appoggio.
You've got to lean on that subglottal pressure. The subglottal pressure is the thing, the air pressure is going to move your voice. That's 90 percent of your work. The other 10 percent is working on the controlled release. through the exercises I just demonstrated for you. Very, very simple. And as well, a big part of that is planning your breathing timing into your songs, [00:30:00] keeping your breathing cycle comfortable.
How many of you go to hit a high note, breathe in and hold your breath before it starts? I see singers doing that all the time. If you find yourself holding your breath before you sing, your breathing cycle, this easy movement, is off in its timing. and your breathing is not relaxed. Think about this. You want to sing out, breathe in, and sing.
You must release. Breathing in, holding, and sing will always put your voice under pressure, under tension. So your flow is sing out, breathe in, sing out, breathe in, release, breathe in, no hold. No holds can promise you every singer you love to listen to does not hold their breath before they sing They breathe in before they sing and then they release it immediately think about that This is gold guys.
I I work with singers on this all
Diaphragmatic Breathing Demystified
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Philippe Hall: Okay, what is diaphragmatic breathing? What is apogee? What is support? What is low belly breathing? What what does it all mean? It just means learning how to have an efficient Inhalation that activates your diaphragm and fills your lungs with air, creating subglottal pressure to move your voice. That's what it means.
If your diaphragm is blocked through tension in the abdomen, you are, or raising your chest, tension anywhere, then you do not have and cannot achieve diaphragmatic breathing. You are always breathing with your diaphragm. But when we speak about singing from the diaphragm, or diaphragmatic breathing, we're speaking about an efficient, efficiency in breathing, efficiency in the work of the diaphragm, and it's so easy, and it feels so comfortable.
You can get out of the pattern of breathing in and holding your breath, and then singing. You will never feel out of air again. If you can get in that pattern and the habit of planning your breathing cycles, you will not come into breathing stress. If you can develop your coordination to extend the release of your air gently without squeezing anything.
Now you will come into a positive breathing cycle and it will be all the air you need for everything you want to sing. All right, I hope you've been able to glean a lot of the golden nuggets here in this short improvised session on what it means, diaphragmatic breathing and breathing timing. Remember these things, work with them.
They're deceptively simple concepts, but they will change everything about your singing and upgrade the sound of your voice. Upgrade for you the whole experience of singing and breathing together.
Join the Vibe Singers Community: An Invitation
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Philippe Hall: Let me know how this goes for you now Right after this live stream right after our podcast I always jump on a private call private zoom call where you can connect with me You can connect with me and singers like yourself in the vibe singers community.
So it's a private community We always start right after this podcast right after this live stream Go ahead, visit my site, Singing Revealed, click on the Vibe Community, and get the link to join our private community call. Connect with me. I want to hear your questions. I want to help and guide you. This is the only reason I do this, to help singers and change the world, one voice at a time.
I wish you a lovely week. Next Tuesday I will be here with Matt Edwards, a good friend of mine, a professor from Shenandoah University. Matt is an author, he's, he's been a very well respected. vocal coach, teacher, professor, pedagogue, author, and, um, we always just really enjoy working together because it's like one mind.
It's, it's amazing. So please join us in a few minutes for our private zoom community call, connect with me directly, and I will see you next week on The Voice 5. Have a great day, everyone.
