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NNerissa Rout 4 years ago
I run out of breaths everytime I try to sing a phrase of song in one breath(not that long phrase) or even sometimes in vocal warm-ups and exercises. I also sometimes think that I don't take breathes properly. What should I practice or keep in mind to fix this problem?
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CCamille van Niekerk 4 years ago
Hi, Nerissa! Please see below for my best breathing tips!
Breath (general)
- Maintain good posture with the chest lifted and ribs expanded! (That's more important than anything else, because once your shoulders roll forward and your chest collapses, it's much harder to stay supported).
- Relax belly muscles for a low, relaxed (medium-sized) breath.
- Engage those muscles (intercostals and lower abdominals) to keep the ribcage expanded - but know that you will lose some of that expansion as you use your air. We do want air flow, and we don't want "locked" muscles. Feel this action by breathing in and suspending (holding) the air for a second or two before exhaling. You can also feel the correct (gentle) muscle engagement by singing on a lip trill.
- If your posture and body are working well, but you're still running out of breath: be aware of extra air leaking through your vocal folds. If that's an issue, try singing with a slightly stronger, "clean" tone. If you can't do that yet, train firmer cord compression by using a warmup syllable like "GIHG" or "GUHG".Breath support within songs:
- Within songs, we typically have less time to breathe, and the spots where we can breathe are somewhat irregular.
- The first thing I'd do is plan your breaths out. Print the lyrics out and mark the places where you could take a breath if you needed one (between sentences or phrases, or any spot where there would be some sort of pause or punctuation if the lyrics were written as prose). Most of the time, that'll be the fix! We often forget to breathe, or don't take breaths where we could.
- The next thing to pay attention to is your posture. Once your shoulders begin to roll forward and/or your ribcage starts to collapse, your breath support is essentially a lost cause! Maintain that tall singer's posture at all times.
- And finally, you can train short but efficient "catch breaths". For example, sing a pattern like "1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1", with a quick catch breath between each pitch. Your belly should move for every breath you take, and this will train your diaphragm to drop for quick but full breaths when you need them.