How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

If your body and your breathing aren’t balanced, your sound won’t be on-point. For any singer or brass musician, correct breathing is essential if you want to achieve the purest notes. More importantly, musicians in general can definitely benefit from maintaining balance in their body and breathing. Finding that balance is not as easy as it sounds but, while it does take a lot of practice to get it right, the returns are immense, allowing you to play or sing using every cell in your body.

Note!

It’s strongly recommended to combine the techniques explained in this blog with the guidance of singing lessons. Even just a couple of lessons is better than nothing and will help prevent you from A) getting stuck and B) damaging your vocal cords.

Breathing

We’ll start by talking about breathing in general, which should be helpful to musicians as well as vocalists. When we reach the second part of this article, we’ll take a deeper look at vocal breathing.

Balance

When singing or playing an instrument, the journey to learning how to perfectly balance all of the muscles involved is a fascinating one. While the first teacher will take a more mechanical approach, the second will encourage you to simply feel it, and the third will insist that the sound is central. However, most teachers if not all will agree that your breathing plays a fundamental role in all of it. When playing music, the body and the instrument interact in such a way that they form a complete whole and it’s this melding of the two that’s what it’s all about for a lot of musicians – and they can spend years searching for the feeling. Since the instrument in your hands can’t be adapted all that much, any changes and improvements in tonal quality have to come from the body. The list of bodily parts that play a role in this is long: the diaphragm, the rib muscles, the larynx, the tongue, the jaw, the throat, the neck muscles, the abdominal muscles, all of your bones, the soft palate of your mouth, the floor of your mouth, your pelvic floor, your nostrils and all of the other holes and more…

What happens when we produce sound using breath? When breathing in, our lungs fill with air and when we breathe out, the air is pushed through to vibrate your vocal cords, pursed lips or the reed of the instrument we’re playing. This creates a standing wave inside the instrument and this resonance leaves the instrument while also returning to the body – when the note can actually be felt and heard. When singing, the vibration of the vocal cords actually works in both directions.

Image 1: The diaphragm is shaped like a parachute.

The Function of Breathing

The diaphragm is responsible for most of the work when it comes to the intake of breath. The diaphragm is a dome-shaped sheet of muscle that stretches the lungs lengthwise, allowing them to fill with air (see Image 1). The diaphragm then relaxes to release the processed air as the exhale, with or without the help of an extra push from the abdominal muscles. In the clip included below, you can see how the diaphragm moves up and down inside the chest much like a piston.

Image 2 illustrates the entire mechanism of the inhale and exhale. You can see that the comparison with a car engine can be taken quite far.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Image 2: A comparison of the breath cycle with a car engine.

Abdominal Support

As it contracts downwards, the diaphragm flattens and, when there’s no resistance from the abdominal muscles, your belly bulges out, simply because everything in the abdomen has to go somewhere as it’s pushed down (see Image 3). This weaker form of abdominal breathing is easily seen in the way that babies and young children breathe. However, for singers and brass musicians, it’s essential that every breath is supported. Books about vocal technique are full of tips about how to maintain a strong pelvic floor and abdominal muscles, all to ensure good breath support. Anyone with an active diaphragm will be able to demonstrate loose abdominal breathing without any issues, but if your breathing is shallow because it’s mainly supported by the rib muscles, then it’s actually a little harder to breathe loosely from the abdomen. This is why a lot of teachers and vocal coaches will instruct their students to lie on their back with a book resting on their belly and ask them to make the book rise with every intake of breath. This is a great way to wake up your abdominal breathing, but the key when singing and playing a wind instrument is to keep the abdominal muscles compact and firm before releasing the breath.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Image 3: During loose abdominal breathing, the diaphragm pushes the internal organs down and out.

Breathing is Like Sailing

Going on how we’ve described breath support and breathing in general so far, it all sounds pretty easy but in practice, it’s actually quite a challenge to feel all of that power and bring all of the forces involved into balance. Comparing the whole process to sailing a boat is maybe the most satisfying analogy: if the stay (the piece of rigging that keeps the mast from falling backwards) becomes slack, the other parts of the rigging (when breathing, this might be the back muscles) are engaged to support everything. In high winds (so at high vocal volume) you lower your sails (or tighten your muscles), and if you want to sail closer to the wind (reach those high notes) then you need to really tighten the sheets (the ropes that control the sails). Image 4 illustrates this analogy.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Image 4: The muscles hold the body in balance much like the rigging of a sailboat.

Muscle Chains

Muscles never work in isolation, but work together in groups that are linked much like a chain. For example, by standing and shifting your weight to your heels, the upper muscles of your thighs and your lower back muscles are immediately activated. The zigzag movement seen on the left in Image 5 below even extends to the throat which is slightly compressed. When you shift your weight to the ball of your feet (see the figure on the right in Image 5), then the distribution of power is precisely mirrored: so your hamstrings, abdominal muscles and your neck muscles are activated. The optimal position when singing or playing a wind instrument is the second, since it creates abdominal support and ensures that the throat is relaxed. In other words: by simply paying attention to how you’re standing, you can relax everything that needs to be relaxed and improve your sound.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Left: When the weight is shifted to the heel, the throat is blocked. Right: When the weight is more towards the toes, the throat is far more relaxed and open.

The Pyramidalis

There is a small muscle that can play a coordinating role in the whole complex setup: the pyramidalis. This triangular muscle is attached to the pubic bone and draws a line (the linea alba) that runs under the navel to the upper side of the sternum (see Image 6). If you stand with your back to a wall while singing or playing your instrument, you can immediately feel your linea alba stretching out, providing firm abdominal support. Playing while squatting down on your haunches (a tip used by a lot of brass musicians) also has a similar effect.

To feel your own pyramidalis, you can do the following: lie on your back and place the soles of your feet flat on the ground while your knees are bent at a 90 degree angle. Now, lightly push down the balls of your feet. This activates your abdominal muscles so that you feel a firmness beneath your navel. The distribution of force is now exactly the same as demonstrated on the right of Image 5. The next step is to raise your arms up and, just past the 90 degree mark, you’ll start to feel your ribcage starting to rise. Now, try to counteract the movement of the ribcage. What’s the muscle you’re using to do this? Your pyramidalis. It’s this muscular sensation that’s best for singing or playing. Just be careful not to harden any of your muscles too much.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Image 6: The linea alba is tensed by the pyramidalis.

In Practice

The pyramidalis is a delicate muscle and it does take some time to figure out how to activate it. With normal abdominal exercises like sit-ups, you don’t gain the same subtle muscular interplay. Anyone who’s curious about how to activate their pyramidalis and improve their technique can simply search for ‘pyramidalis’ and ‘breathing’ to find plenty of tips and information. Maintaining really good posture is difficult within our desk-sitting culture, but you do see it in people who do a lot of balance work, like dancers, people who practise yoga or tai-chi and people who are able to carry heavy loads on their head.

The Smaller Details

Now you have an idea of the effect that certain muscular chains can have on your performance as a musician, but even on a small scale, you have your mouth and your throat, which you can use to help improve your sound and performance. When singing or blowing, a lot of muscles are active, many of which you don’t actually have direct control over. For example, the instruction to ‘lower your larynx’ is just not something that the average person can pull off. You can sort of trick yourself into doing it by taking a little detour and saying ‘pretend you’re about to sing a low note’. Also, ‘holding your throat more open’ is impossible without doing something completely different with your body. This is also why some metaphors work surprisingly well when teaching. By taking an alternative route, the same muscle group is activated, giving you the same result.

The Wiring

It can be interesting to look at how similar different parts of the body are. For example, the larynx actually looks a lot like the pelvis but obviously, it’s a lot smaller. Another interesting thing about the human body in general is how muscle groups are sort of wired together by the nerve pathways. A really simple way of demonstrating this is to make a really tight spout shape with your mouth while paying attention to everything else that happens in your body while you do it. If the theory works, then you should actually be able to feel your anus contract (we’re not kidding). This happens because all of the sphincter muscles in the body are wired up to each other.

Mirroring

Musicians can take advantage of this internal wiring system to find the best form in their body to support the best resonance. For example, while the pelvic floor muscles and diaphragm work in tandem, the movement is similarly mirrored by the movement of the floor of the mouth, the tongue and the soft palate. This way, people who naturally inhale in such a way that the tongue and soft palate are in the optimum position can, in turn, stimulate the trunk muscles and automatically assume the optimum posture. Looking at it from the other way around, someone with naturally good posture and breathing should be able to call up precisely the right mouth and throat position. The best approach will differ from person to person. Some people have a natural talent for it and wonder why other people struggle so much.

Resonance

If you stretch a string until it’s taught and then pluck it, it’s going to produce a sound. Add some form of resonance chamber, like the hollow body of an acoustic guitar, then the chamber amplifies that sound, making it louder. The human body also has an array of similar chambers and even tissues that have an amplifying effect, like the chest cavity, the nasal passages, the larynx, the mucous membrane, the skull and even the entire skeleton. By making small adjustments to the posture, the muscles, the jaw position, breathing, the abdominal support and similar, can affect the timbre of the sound, because the resonance of the sound is conducted through the body slightly differently, making more overtones, different overtones or stronger overtones. For vocalists, this can result in a fuller and clearer sound and, if you’re playing an instrument, the body physically takes on this enriched frequency package and amplifies the whole. However, using the voice is the most practical method for feeling out all the possible resonant areas and overtones. If you sing a strong note and place one hand on your sternum, you will immediately feel the resonance in your bones and, if you put your fingers in your ears and start humming, you can’t help but notice that even the tiny movements of your jaw cause major changes in the sound.

Finding the Overtones

Using the Lichtenberger method, you can sort of scan the body by singing specific vowel transitions: ‘ah-oh-ah’ for male bodies and ‘oo-o-oo’ for female bodies. It can maybe take a little while, but at some point an overtone will become clear that sounds alongside the sung note. Usually the fifth shows itself first, or maybe the third, but it takes a sensitive ear to detect it. The sensation associated with producing this specific timbre then forms the foundation for singing or playing an instrument. This is a very different approach compared to the more mechanical methods we’ve described so far. The great thing about this method of seeking out these overtones is that, during the process, the body is sort of discovering its own shape. This method isn’t just successful for singers, but wind musicians, string musicians and pianists because it helps forge a more bonded connection between the body and the instrument. It might sound unbelievable but when a violin player bows a note while making an ‘a’ with their mouth it will produce a different kind of sound than when making an ‘e’ shape with their mouth. The resonance is transferred through the body, via the arm, the hand and the bow and through the violin. This is ultimately what it’s all about: becoming one with our instrument and being able to play freely.

Breathing Energy

While breathing is simply the function of moving air for the purpose of making music, for some, it has a much deeper dimension. Within yoga, for example, pranayama breathing exercises are central. The idea is that you can learn to perceive, feel and even control the energy of the oxygen you are consuming. Some exercises also have a cleansing effect, while others boost your energy, promote relaxation or even help you to stop snoring – to name a few.

Ilse Middendorf did a lot of work in this area of thought, and developed the method of Experiential Breath’. In short, there is plenty to discover for anyone who wants to dive deeper into the potential of simply breathing in and out.

Vocal Breathing

Both posture and breathing provide the base for good singing and are actually bound to one another. In an earlier blog, we covered good posture for vocalists in detail, and here, we’ll take a closer look at vocal breathing. Let’s start by saying that natural breathing is actually the best technique, but a lot of people have actually forgotten how to do it.

How to Breathe: For Vocalists & Musicians

Posture

To summarise our previous guide to good posture: we explained that good vocal breathing happens naturally when you maintain good posture. One of the most essential aspects of good vocal posture is to lengthen the body from the crown of the head. Usually, this releases both the chest and neck. It’s also important to activate the muscles used to lengthen the body when singing, while all of the other muscles are relaxed, so your neck should be long while your shoulders are relaxed. Your left shoulder blade should be slightly pointed towards your right buttock, while your right shoulder blade is slightly pointed at the left buttock. Visually, it’s a very dignified and distinguished posture and, physically, it immediately promotes natural breathing.

The Lungs, the Diaphragm and the Ribcage

Obviously, breathing is performed by the lungs, which are safely stored inside our ribcage. “Breathing is regulated at the vegetative level and, what I mean by that is that it’s an unconscious movement, just like the pumping of the heart,” singer and vocal coach Sabine Brachthäuser explains. “The lungs can’t actually perform the in-breath and out-breath on their own, but are, as it were, breathed by a lot of other moving parts. When inhaling at rest, your diaphragm descends and the sides of the ribcage expand. This creates more volume inside the lungs and the air pressure inside the lungs drops below the air pressure outside the lungs. This pressure difference is what causes air to flow into the lungs. When breathing out, the process is repeated in reverse. Rest one hand on your stomach and your other hand on your side, with your thumb resting just below your lowest rib. When breathing wide and deep, you’ll feel the most movement.”

The diaphragm is an essential part of the breathing process. This dome shaped muscle hangs from the lower ribs and lower back and sort of divides the trunk in two. Above the diaphragm, you have your heart and your lungs and below the diaphragm, you have all of your digestive organs, like your stomach and intestines. The diaphragm contracts as you breathe in, slightly flattening the dome shape and, together with the ribcage, this movement increases the volume of your lungs, filling them with air. This is referred to as ‘diaphragmatic flank breathing.’

“Not everyone breathes this way naturally,” says Sabine. “But, if you lie on your back with a book resting on your stomach, if everything is working as it should, then the book moves up and down as you breathe in and out. That movement is created by the diaphragm, so your belly doesn’t move up because you’re moving your abdominal muscles, it’s the diaphragm pushing the lower organs down and out to make space for all that air. This way of breathing is also really healthy since it actually gives your internal organs a massage, which really helps with digestion. The diaphragm also plays a part in your body’s circulation, since it helps the heart to draw deoxygenated blood back up from the legs.”

Breathing & Stress

Another perk of breathing this way is that, when the brain registers that the diaphragm is active, it takes it as a sign that everything is ok. In other words: low-breathing, or breathing from the belly, sends a stress-relieving signal to the brain. “This doesn’t happen when high-breathing, or shoulder-breathing,” Sabine continues. “That’s the way you breathe naturally in high stress situations. High-breathing can also be a learned breathing technique and can be used to stimulate the stress hormones related to the ‘flight or fight’ response. However it is a far less efficient breathing technique than belly breathing. Numerous muscles are involved, since you’re moving your head, your shoulders and your neck. So, to take every breath you first have to move your head and shoulders up. That’s pretty tiring and, with this way of breathing, you’re creating far less lung volume than you would when breathing low and wide from the belly.”

Besides being the most healthy way of breathing, belly-breathing is also the best breathing technique for singing. It would actually be very strange if you had to do something unhealthy in order to sing. “The foundation is relaxed breathing. You can then build further on this, which is quite a job in itself. And, while low belly-breathing is the most natural way to breathe, most people don’t breathe this way. This is because of various influences stacking up during the course of their lives, often starting during puberty and then steadily getting set in. You can only figure out how you’re breathing via close examination.”

Reversed Breathing

Then there’s ‘reversed breathing’, which is where you pull your abdomen in when breathing in. How does that work? It starts with adopting the right way of breathing: so when you breathe in, your belly expands and your lowest ribs stick out. When you breathe out, the belly deflates on its own and the rib cage relaxes and contracts. With people who ‘reverse breathe’ naturally, something has disturbed the natural breathing movement. “When reverse breathing, you’re actually undermining your whole system,” says Sabine. “First, the sternum and shoulders are lifted and the abdomen is pulled in to, as it were, push the breath all the way up. This constricts the whole area around the throat, as if your body is experiencing a shock reaction. This has a really negative effect on the muscles involved in singing. When breathing out, the belly is then pushed out which, when singing, is really not what you want.”

High breathing and reverse breathing are simply inefficient, because these methods actually reduce lung capacity. “But that’s not the worst bit about it. High breathing actually works against you. It causes stress and overstimulation and can result in hyperventilation. None of this happens when breathing from the belly. When belly-breathing, you’re not only taking in more air, but you have more control over the use of your breath, which is essential when singing.” Sabine continues: “Diaphragm breathing, so belly-breathing creates the optimum conditions for the voice. When you sing, you need to have as much control over your breathing as possible. This low and wide breathing movement gives you that control. Once you have that, then you’re there. This ‘control’ is generally referred to as breath support within vocal coaching, but I prefer the term ‘breath control’ because it better explains what’s going on. It’s all about awareness and control. If you keep your breathing low, you stay in control, even when you need to sing higher pitched phrases.”

Exercises

Using a range of exercises this can all be learned. We do recommend only trying any vocal exercise with the guidance of a professional. Of course, singing in itself is not dangerous for your voice but it can be when you start performing any structural exercises using even slightly the wrong approach. “Doing things the wrong way can be risky,” Sabine insists. “You have to realise that your vocal cords are extremely small and vulnerable – just 12 to 23 millimetre long. Placing too much strain on them could easily have a negative effect. If you want to work on a singing technique and you’re not getting it right, then things will start going wrong. You won’t achieve the sound that you’re after and you’ll increase the chance of injuring your vocal cords.” Sabine adds: “It’s really important to have a well developed feel for what you’re doing. Feeling is actually more important than hearing, because when you’re only hearing you may just be imitating others. When you can hear that your voice is getting hoarse, you’re already too late. The goal is to feel out what’s good for your voice, then you can learn to reproduce that moment using your sensor motory system. The same applies to breathing: you need to feel what works for you.”

In Summary

Before we move on, here’s a brief overview of what we’ve covered so far:

Diaphragmatic breathing – or belly-breathing – is the most healthy way to breathe and is the best breathing technique for singing. Which makes sense because, why would you do anything that might be unhealthy while singing? The diaphragm is a dome-shaped muscle that hangs between the lower ribs and lower back and plays a central role in breathing. When you breathe in, the diaphragm contracts and flattens slightly, pushing down the lower internal organs and pushing the belly out. Since this movement also expands the ribcage, the capacity of your lungs increases and fills with air. This way of breathing is called ‘diaphragmatic flank breathing’. At rest, exhalation occurs naturally as the muscles relax. “The entire singing world agrees that this is optimal for singing,” Sabine Brachthäuser, singer and vocal coach explains. “But this way of breathing first needs to be linked with producing vocal sound. When it comes to the best way to do this, there are divided opinions, which is understandable. You use your entire body to sing, turning it into a sort of musical instrument, and we still don’t fully know about everything that’s happening in the body when singing. Vocal sound is the result of the interplay between various different muscle groups, including the muscles involved in breathing, the vocal muscle and the muscles around your throat. It’s actually a very complex process. The results of new research in this area are still emerging and previous insights are being revised.” So, you could say that when it comes to breathing and vocal sound, no one knows for certain how it all works. “We definitely have yet to hear the last word about it,” according to Sabine. “As such, I always focus on the body itself. However, it’s hard to imagine that singing could ever be something unnatural or even unhealthy. Also, I think we should try to avoid overcomplicating things. My starting point for singing is always to seek out what your body wants to do naturally and then build from there.”

Natural Breathing

Over the course of their lives, many people have lost the natural way of breathing. Above, we’ve explained how to retrain it but again, we advise seeking the guidance of a professional. “This is because, once you lose the natural way of breathing, you can’t just get it back overnight,” adds Sabine. “Self-observation is extremely important here, especially when combining natural breathing with singing. Once you have a more natural way of breathing, then you can start seeking out what happens while you’re singing and which muscles are involved.”

During natural, diaphragmatic breathing, both the flanks and the diaphragm play an important role. The same is true of singing, or producing any vocal sound. It’s by using your flanks and diaphragm that you control the flow of breath, so you can dose the amount of air that’s released from the lungs to vibrate the vocal cords. “This is breath support, or breath control, and is crucial for singing healthily,” repeats Sabine. “Good breath control also has a really positive effect over vocal range; makes it possible to reach the end of a long phrase cleanly; and also helps singers to find the sound they’re looking for. That breath support is controlled by the diaphragm and flanks is not something that’s disputed within the singing world. By flanks, we mean the oblique abdominal muscles, the muscles between the ribs and various back muscles.” So, what is under discussion? “Things like how much the stomach should participate in the process – so the frontal abdominal muscles. When low-breathing with the diaphragm, the lower internal organs are pushed down and out, so the belly naturally sticks out. When the exhalation is forced out, you also feel your abdominal muscles, for example, because those muscles are pushing the air out of the lungs. While some approaches advise keeping the abdominal muscles contracted while singing, others, including myself, prefer the method of allowing the frontal abdominal muscles to move flexibly. In my view, it’s the oblique abdominal muscles that do all of the work.”

Breath Control

Getting back to breath control: the temptation when singing is to sing with too much power, which involves too much air and too big a flow of breath. This comes with a few disadvantages. The vocal cords may not close completely, allowing too much audible air to escape when you sing, meaning that you run out of breath too quickly and struggle to sing long phrases. Or, your vocal cords could, as it were, ‘flip open’ because of the build up of too much air pressure, causing your voice to crack and leaving you with no control. This is often accompanied by a pinched feeling in the throat above the vocal cords. If you experience this, you need to put a sort of cap on your windpipe so that less air escapes. In this way, your body is letting you know that the air pressure coming from your lungs is too high to make a vocal sound. As long as you have good breath control, you can sing with the right amount of breath flow and overcome all of the issues we just described above. Breath control also has a big say in the control of your vocal sound – so how you want to sound. Your diaphragm and flanks are like the control knobs for your vocals. Alongside all of that, good breath control can help you reach lower notes, because those are the notes where less breath is needed. When singing lower notes, your vocal cords are less tight and move more easily.

A method that’s used more and more to help with breath control development is Lax Vox. This method is described in detail below.

Using the Lax Vox method, you can effectively learn how to maintain your voice and, at the same time, gain some excellent self-observation tools. “When doing Lax Vox, you can actually feel what your breathing is doing,” Sabine explains. “It involves blowing into a bottle of water, so you can also actually see your breath in the bubbles you produce. By keeping your flanks wide, you can control the flow of breath and literally see the effect. When doing Lax Vox, you also quickly notice how precise the whole process is and how little air you actually need to produce a note.”

Exercises to Help Optimise Breathing

Only ever perform these exercises with the help of a professional. We’ve already explained why in this article. Reminder: all of these exercises work best when starting from an actively long posture. Every now and then, check that you’re consistently lengthening your body, also during a long exhalation.

The ‘Kssst’ Exercise

Rest one hand on your stomach while producing a ‘kssst’ sound, as if you’re shooing away a cat. A lot of people will do this using reverse breathing, as we explained earlier. The trick is to make the ‘kssst’ sound without breathing in beforehand. When you do this, your diaphragm automatically helps produce the sound, as a kind of reflex. Your stomach is then pulled in in a sudden movement before it’s released and springs out again.

Example: When Sabine takes a student through this exercise for the first time, she asks them if the sound is produced on the inhale or exhale. Half of the students say it’s on the inhale which is the wrong answer. Always assume that, if sound is made, then it’s made on the exhale.

The ‘Sss’ Exercise

Using the ‘ksst’ exercise, you can check that you’re using the correct breathing. If that’s going well, then you can move onto the ‘sss’ exercise. Here, the exhale is slowly released to produce an ‘sss’ sound. If this is done correctly, then you should feel your belly being pulled in (slightly) as your flanks follow. During this exercise, it’s important to feel how little air you can use to produce the sound.

Another variation of this exercise is to do the same as described above, but when your stomach pulls in, try to hold it there. Then, let your mouth fall open and let your stomach go, so that it relaxes and sticks out slightly. This exercise helps keep your breathing low, which is essential when singing.

Breath-Control Exercises

The Short ‘Sss’

Leg je handen in je zij. Hoe je je handen houdt, maakt niet uit. Adem uit op lange ‘ssss’. Je voelt je flanken geleidelijk naar binnen gaan. Maak dan een aantal korten ‘sss’-en achter elkaar. Daarbij haal je tussendoor geen adem, maar je stopt alleen de luchtstroom steeds even. Je bent bezig met ademcontrole!

The Long ‘V’

In this exercise, breathe out while producing a long ‘v’ sound (‘v’ is a voiced consonant). This will give you a good idea of how your flanks work. To produce a clear ‘v’, the right flow of breath is required, and to create the right flow of breath, the flanks need to create the right amount of counter pressure. This exercise is brilliant for fine-tuning the muscles involved in breathing and engaging the same kind of control as you would when singing.

The Long ‘Yo’

Produce a long ‘yo’ sound at a random pitch. The goal is to sing ‘yoooo’ for as long as possible. This won’t work if you’re not keeping your flanks wide. Try to end the note cleanly rather than simply running out of breath. If you can’t produce the sound for very long, then you know that you’re releasing too much breath at the start. With this exercise, you can learn how to best distribute your energy (so, your breath) when singing a full line.

The Belt Exercise

Find a wide belt or a scarf and put it around your waist. When you breathe in, your stomach and flanks are pushed out. Now, when you sing the ‘yo’ sound, use up all of the air so that you’re ‘running on empty’ as it were. The challenge is to keep the belt or scarf from slipping for as long as possible, despite the ‘deflation’ of your stomach. If the belt falls quickly, then you’re releasing too much air too quickly. This exercise can help teach you to use as little air as possible while singing.

Counting

Rest your hands on your sides and against your lower ribs, this time with your thumbs pointed behind you. Now, breathe out while sounding an ‘f’, then breathe in and sing 21, 22, 23, 24 and so on at a random pitch. You’ll notice that, the more often you try this, the further you’ll be able to count. This exercise also helps teach you to sing longer phrases by developing your feel for breath control.

Keep Your Voice Healthy with Lax Vox

Lax Vox is a method that developed within speech therapy to help relax and recover the voice. Literally meaning ‘relaxed voice’, Lax Vox works wonders for people who use their voice a lot and can be used to support the treatment of vocal issues. The method is like a massage for the vocal cords and completely relaxes everything involved in the resonant chamber of your voice – so the mouth, the nose, the throat, the cheeks, the lips, tongue and all of the muscles that link everything together. By relaxing everything, the larynx also descends and your voice sounds fuller. At the same time, Lax Vox helps develop breath control. While it simply involves blowing into a bottle of water through a tube, it requires careful attention to achieve the results you’re after. In the photos included below, Sabine demonstrates how it’s done and recommends practising this exercise a couple of times a day for three to five minutes.

What do you need? (Photo 2)

To do the Lax Vox exercise, you’ll need a flexible tube of around 35 centimetres long and with an 8 to 9 millimetre diameter. These are specialised tubes that are often used during speech therapy. Second, you’ll need an elastic band (preferably coloured) that you can wrap around the tube to indicate the right depth. Then you’ll need a transparent mineral water bottle (a 500ml bottle will do) filled up to around 5 to 8 centimetres.

The starting position (Photos 3, 4, 5)

Sit on the edge of a chair, sitting straight and with an active posture, holding the bottle close to your body and keeping your head as straight as possible. Place the tube between your lips. Here, you can choose whether you prefer to hold the tube between your teeth or against your teeth. Sabine prefers resting the tube against her teeth, because this helps to relax the jaw. Make sure that your lips are sealed around the tube but without tightening them. Put the other end of the tube in the bottle, around 2 or 3 centimetres deep in the water. This is where your elastic band can help indicate the right depth.

The basic exercise (Photo 6)

Now, breathe in through your nose and breathe out through your mouth and into the tube. The water in the bottle will start bubbling. During the exercise, make sure to maintain your natural breathing, so try not to suddenly start taking big breaths. This is the basic exercise. It might seem really simple but it’s actually harder than you think. The goal is to avoid applying too much pressure when breathing out to counter the resistance of the water. So you need to breathe calmly despite the resistance of the water, making sure that the water inside the bottle splashes and splatters as little as possible. What you’re aiming for is just a calm bubbling.

Allow the tube to vibrate (Photo 7)

While you breathe out and the water is bubbling, the tube will vibrate. Try to keep your cheeks as relaxed as possible so that they vibrate along with the tube. This has an extra massaging and relaxing effect. It might be that mucus is released, but that’s fine. Avoid trying to scrape it away or just swallow it when you can. Keep observing what’s happening.

Now with sound

If you’ve followed the first steps correctly, you can produce a note, like a low ‘oo’ sound, for example. Notice that your cheeks continue to vibrate and remember to ensure that the water splatters as little as possible. Now, slowly glide the note up and then back down in pitch, much like a siren. You’ll notice that, the higher the note, the more bubbles are produced. This is the idea. Higher notes require more breath power.

The Next Challenge

If you’re able to produce a gliding note, then it’s time for the next challenge. Try removing the tube from your mouth while continuing to sing the ‘oo’ sound, all while keeping everything as relaxed as it was before. Remove the tube slowly. The trick is to retain the same level of relaxation in the jaw, lips and cheeks and continue singing the ‘oo’ sound as before.