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Singing Tips: How To Breathe

By Rick Rakauskas

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Published: 13Feb2012
Word count: 1166
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You might wonder why singing lessons and vocal training would bother instructing people how to breathe properly. Everyone breathes, don't they? If we didn't breathe, we'd be dead. Inhale, exhale - it's instinctive, isn't it? Well, yes and no. It is certainly true that you are breathing (or else you wouldn't be reading this) but are you breathing properly to sing well?

Proper breathing is one of the key aspects to learning to sing. Breathing correctly affects the quality of your voice tone and also helps you sing long notes when you need to. One of the most common mistakes made by people when they first sign up for singing lessons is that they think that breathing for singing is the same as breathing for, say, aerobics or regular activity.

Instructors for fitness activities such as dancing and yoga often have to teach correct breathing. It's the same with singing - in fact, the breathing techniques for all these activities is the same, although singing lessons aren't going to teach you some of the more exotic breathing techniques practiced by yogis. One bonus of learning to breathe properly for singing is that these breathing techniques can be applied in other settings, such as relaxation and public speaking.

The sort of breathing required to help you sing better is known as "belly breathing" or "stomach breathing", as opposed to "chest breathing". Most of the time, we breathe shallow breaths, using the muscles attached to the rib cage to expand and contract the lungs. This is the sort of breath we use when we need a lot of oxygen quickly - notice how your chest moves when you breathe rapidly after intense physical activity. But shallow chest breathing is not the sort of breathing needed for good singing.

Deep breathing for singing is powered by the lowest part of the respiratory system - the diaphragm or solar plexus. This is located at the base of the ribcage and allows breath to be controlled. To breathe properly using the diaphragm, imagine that you have a huge hole in your lower back where air rushes in and out of - perhaps you can visualise your diaphragm and your stomach as a huge bellows. When you are actually singing, you will not be visualising this or concentrating on your stomach muscles - you'll have the words and the music to concentrate on - so it is important to practice proper breathing so you can sing better.

One key thing to proper breathing for singing is posture. The diaphragm works best when your stomach and chest are not compressed. The spine should be straight. This means that to breathe properly and to sing well, you should either be lying down or standing up straight. No surprises here - you will have to be standing up straight when you sing. You never saw a good singer sit down to perform, did you?

It may be argued that some singers do sit down. You may be thinking of Eric Clapton singing and playing the guitar unplugged on his chair. However, this is the exception rather than the rule, and you really do sing a lot better if you can stand up straight. And if you want to accompany your singing by playing the guitar - and plenty of people do - then look out for a guitar (classical, acoustic or electric) with a strap that allows you to play standing up.

How do you stand up correctly so you can breathe and sing better? It's not just a case of throwing your shoulders back and sucking your stomach in, as many people do when asked to stand up straight for a photo or to be measured. For one thing, you can't keep your stomach muscles sucked in the whole time - you've got to breathe with them. Again, you will need to use visualisation to help you get the correct breathing posture. Imagine that you have a string attached to the top of your head and that this string is pulling you up like a marionette. You should feel your torso aligning and straightening so your chest and stomach open up.

But even if you have the correct posture, you might not be able to breathe properly for good singing if you are nervous or tense. Stress or stage fright will make you breathe with your chest and lungs rather than in your diaphragm where you need to. And this will affect your performance. However, this is where you take control. First, raise your shoulders and shrug them up as high as you can go, squeezing them towards your ears and then releasing them. Feel the wave of eased tension pass down your shoulders and back. Now breathe consciously and deeply, deliberately keeping your breath slow. Now you're ready to sing.

Controlling your breathing is vital for good singing. There's nothing more embarrassing for a singer than suddenly running out of breath in the middle of a long note in a dramatic musical climax. This is why knowing your music and practising is so important. You need to know how to time your breaths so you have enough "gas in the tank" for those drawn-out passages. Singing is done on controlled exhaled breath, and you have to find a good gap so you can inhale. You will need to make sure that your intakes of breath are timed correctly.

Where do you breathe during a song? This really depends on the song, but a good rule of thumb is to look at the punctuation. The best place to take a breath is where the words of the song have a comma or a full stop. However, if the copy of the lyrics you have access to doesn't have punctuation - an all too common situation - then you will have to read and study the words so your breaths break up the words so that they make sense. You don't want to. Have your song. Sounding. Like this because it's. Awkward for people. To listen to and sounds really bad.

When you breathe in during a song, you have two options. First, you can take deep breaths during an instrumental passage. Secondly, you can take little "sips" where the sense of the words allows it just to top you up. If you need to "sip", then do this through your mouth as well as through your nose to allow the maximum oxygen in.

And if you think you've learned good breathing for singing, here's a challenge. Find the song "Summer Moved On" by Norwegian pop band A-HA, and try to sing along. If you can hold the 20-second note, you know that you've really mastered the techniques of breathing.

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