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YOUR
REAL VOICE - the vocal ezine for real people
August 16,
2006 #27
FEATURE EDITORIAL
Back
from Taking a Breather!
I'm finally
back from two separate
vacations in the month of July, and I definitely NEEDED that!
Taking a few days off and not wearing a watch or having a schedule to
follow gave my mind and body time to relax. How wonderful, since
you all know how much we focus on relaxation around here. Having
time to just relax got me thinking again about breathing, which is the
subject of this issue.
But the breathing I'm thinking about is not the typical breathing you
are used to doing while singing. Most singers, without thinking
about it, wait until just the last instant before making their first
sound to breathe in. I had the chance to really observe this
during a students' voice lesson, and what I noticed was how pervasive
the unconscious "last-second-before-you-need-it" breathing is in
singers. Once I found it, I decided to watch for a week and see
just how often this is in the singers that are around me. It's
happening ALL the time, and yet what I see is most singers never stop
to think about it or examine how to do this differently.
I actually spent about a year on this in my own singing a few years
ago, and it made a tremendous difference in my technique and the
quality of my sound. Things improved dramatically in my singing
when I very consciously gave myself more time to breathe in between the
phrases I sang. Let's say that I had a five second time gap
between the last note of one phrase and the first note of the next
phrase. If I took four seconds to breathe in lightly and slowly,
I got a much bigger and more relaxed breath. If I waited until
just before I had to sing and took in a big breath for a second or two,
I was not relaxed and could not sing as well. I spent a year
working on this because the more I explored the idea of "slow"
breathing, the better ALL my technique got. I improved my sound
dramatically in all areas just by consistently taking in a slower
breath. WHY it took a year is that I had to work against the
unconscious and automatic habits that my body and nervous system had
developed. I literally had to consciously reprogram my body's
breathing mechanism to work slower, and that took a lot of thought and
concentration and repetition before it became automatic. However,
it definitely was worth it!
So now I am seeing the same thing show up in my students, and that
tells me it's time for us all to explore "slow" breathing in our
singing. Without trying to sing anything, take in the biggest
breath you can as fast as you can. Feel comfortable? Not
really, now that you body has produced its own football gear up there
around your neck! Go ahead and let that one out. Now take
in a long slow breath for about five seconds on the inhale. How
much more relaxed were you able to be on the second breath? Take
in another slow breath, and see how relaxed you can stay while you are
inhaling. The goal here is to be able to breathe in without
creating tension, meaning all the muscles in your torso need to remain
relaxed while you are expanding your lungs. Practice just the
slow inhale for as many days as you need to to used to how it
feels.
In many songs that you want to sing, there are breaks between singing
phrases that allow you much more time to breathe in than you probably
have been taking advantage of! Listen to a song that you know
well, without singing along, and notice just how much time you have
between the phrases. If you have more time than you had noticed
before, that means you now have more time to breathe in and test out
your "slow" breath. Experiment with taking as long a time as you
want to breathe in and see how much more relaxed and easy your singing
is. I suggest you do this on songs you already know how to sing
because it will let you focus totally on the breathing. That's
what will really improve the singing in the song!
If you have any questions or comments about "slow" breathing, email me
at info@sing-in-tune.com
and I will be happy to give you and help you
need or more information.
YOUR
REAL VOICE is the best vocal e-zine for real people! It is a
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Contact Athena by e-mail at info@sing-in-tune.com
or learn how to sing
perfectly in tune at her web site at www.Sing-In-Tune.com
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