Singing For Beginners - The Dangers Of Misunderstanding Breath Support In Singing

This is an article I wrote about a week ago, which recently got published on Ezine Articles. Hope you find it helpful.

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Breathing is the foundation of life, and efficient breathing spells unmistakable importance in great singing. However, it is very easy for novice singers to mistake breath support for necessary vocal power, and in the process, cause harm to their voices. This article aims to help clarify this dangerous misconception that so many new singers have.

What is considered good breath support?

Before all else, it is important for everyone to understand what good breath support is. Good breath support stems from what vocalists like to call "diaphragmatic breathing". Yes, it is very likely that you have heard about it, but no, it's not anything you haven't done before. With diaphragmatic breathing, each inhale of air should have you feel your stomach expand, and each exhale of air would suck your stomach in. If this happens in reverse for you, that is, your stomach gets sucked in when you breathe in, and out when you breathe out, you aren't breathing from your diaphragm. This article will not go into the physiology of breathing, but it is important to at least know if you're breathing right for efficient singing or not.

Now here comes the misunderstanding...

Have you ever heard someone comment on a weak and "airy" singing voice, saying how the singer lacks breath support? Well, that comment is not necessarily true.

Sound is produced when our vocal cords close, interrupting the flow of air pushing outwards from our lungs. With excellent breath support, one would have a lung filled with air that is just waiting to come out. Along with that, our vocal cords will instinctively position themselves in a way that allows sound to be produced. Even so, one should be aware that not everyone's vocal folds can do that effectively. The absence of a balanced vocal cord closure would in turn, produce a voice that would sound both weak and airy. With that much air blowing rapidly past the vocal folds, it wouldn't be long before the singer feels the desperate need for a drink. Singing in such a manner would in time, cause vocal damage.

In essence, it is unreasonable to expect a voice to be powerful or pleasant to the ear, if the vocalist's vocal cords don't have the coordination and strength to handle the magnitude of a strong exhale of air. It takes years of vocal cord training, good breathing technique and a battery of other skills to make a singer sound good, or even just powerful.

Otherwise, all professional athletes would be fantastic singers, especially swimmers!

Understanding Open-Throat Singing and Its Uses in Different Styles of Music

Here is a helpful video for those of you with a choir background. It will help narrow the gap a little for you, between your understanding of classical and contemporary singing. But even if you don't have a classical singing background, I'm sure you would still pick up little anecdotes here and there.

I know I did.:)

The importance of sounding you

Okay, now I'm going to pass on to you a little piece of wisdom that has been taught to me so many times by teachers and online material that it has turned into a preset mentality and expectation of mine.

You have gotta sound like you when you are singing!

"Duh," you might say, but you'd be surprised how so many people manipulate their voices while singing, to the point where they don't even notice it anymore. It's a little sad, to be honest.

Have you ever heard the saying,

"Copycats will never be number one,"?

Especially if that particular style you're trying to imitate was created or made famous by a great artiste, copying it may bring you closer to that singer emotionally, but it's going to be really hard to succeed as a singer that way. You have a unique voice of your own, a one-of-a-kind combination of your physiology, personality, predispositions, sense of style, habits, even a native accents etc.. Use it to chart your own territory in the music world! Don't trap yourself in someone else' shadow.

Let OTHERS copy you! Be the one leading the trend!

Still, while that's all well and good, how does one know if he or she is singing with their unique voice? That's simple. We have already covered that in our first post. If you're singing the same way you speak naturally, that should be your own voice that you're using. It's important that you get a vocal coach to help you with that, just to be safe.

It takes a little practice, but over time, if you have seen enough vocal lessons and heard enough singing from professionals with sound vocal technique, yours ears will learn to anticipate a person's singing voice from his or her speaking voice. I don't know how, but I'm somehow able to tell if a person isn't using his or her natural singing voice. My guess would be that if one is imitating another singer, apart from him or her sounding strikingly similar to the original, there tends to be inconsistencies in the tone as the singer goes up and down their vocal range. And of course, the sound of a strained or tense voice on top of that just confirms suspicions, lol.

Hmmmm, what do you think?