Singing is all about good technique, and like any sport you can train yourself to be better at it. By using various breathing techniques singing related you can exercise your lungs, diaphragm, vocal chords and breath control in order to make your voice deeper, more powerful and to be able to hold notes for longer.

Before you start using breathing techniques singing however, you should learn some basics about how you should be breathing normally and it can help to know how the lungs, trachea and diaphragm work in order to help you to breath.

Firstly the lungs fill up with air when you breath in, this should happen fairly naturally and easily – you should not be ‘sucking in’ your stomach in order to make room for the diaphragm. Here your body will extract the oxygen from your lungs leaving only carbon dioxide which it will breath back out. Similarly when you breath out your diaphragm, the sheet of muscle beneath your lungs, will gently squeeze the lungs and you should not feel you have to ‘push’ out the air. Lick your finger and hold it in front of your mouth or nose, when you breath out the air should feel warm and moist if you are breathing correctly. In general then you should be breathing deeply, exhaling all the waste carbon dioxide from your lungs without ‘forcing’ it in order to make room for more new air on your next in breath. The more you manage to breath in and the more you manage to breath out the longer you will be able to hold your notes. Similarly, by breathing naturally and easily you won’t sound forced or as though you are ‘shouting’ your lyrics. When you sing it should feel as though it is coming from the pit of your stomach, with you ‘projecting’ rather than ‘yelling’, the latter of which will make your voice sound strained and weak (‘forcing’ out your breath can also put unnecessary pressure on the vocal chords which can permanently damage your singing voice – quite the opposite effect we’re going for).

Correct Breathing: One breathing technique can help you test just how well you are currently breathing. For this you will need to lie flat on your back. Now put your hands on your stomach so that your fingers touch. You should have your little fingers touching just below your navel and the rest of your fingers splayed out to cover your whole stomach. From here you will then breath in and feel how your stomach and chest move as they are filled with oxygen. If you are breathing correctly you will notice your stomach first filling with air and expanding, then ‘moving’ upwards towards your chest so that you end up with your stomach concave and your chest puffed outwards.

This is how you breath normally and from here if you find you are breathing poorly you should use this position to consciously alter how you breath and force yourself to allow for that ‘rolling’ motion up your stomach into your chest. Using these breathing techniques singing you can then fix your general breathing to enable you to sing and talk with more power and with more available air.

However singing is quite different from breathing normally as it requires you to exhale for long periods of time and to control the rate at which you let air escape. This requires control and again this can be trained using breathing techniques.

Control 1: Using the breathing technique outlined about (where you hold your hands on your stomach in order to direct yourself to breath consciously using the correct method), you can now try to alter the speed at which you breath and how you let air escape. While maintaining good technique, breath in continuously for the count of five seconds, then hold your breath for five seconds, then exhale continuously for five and begin again. You will find that breathing out for five whole seconds can be tricky as you quickly run out of breath, it is here then that control comes in to play as you have to use your breath control to let the air out slowly enough that you can breath out for that long. This is how you learn to make the best of the amount of air your lungs can hold when holding a note. As you improve you can then begin increasing the number to control your inwards and outwards breaths for longer or shorter periods of time, just as you will need to in order to fit the phrasing of various songs.

Control 2: A similar exercise used by some singers to train control is to breath using a steady rhythm then ‘sing’ a number on each outwards breath, counting to say 20. This again requires control and each time it comes round to a count you need to be ready to have the right amount of air ready. This means inhaling and exhaling the correct amount at a steady rate.

As well as using breathing techniques singing style to control your breath, you can also benefit from simply holding more air in your lungs and so should work on increasing your lung capacity. You can do this with cardiovascular exercise which will help train your lungs, as will swimming underwater and holding your breath. By combining a larger lung capacity with a greater ability to control your breathing you will be armed with the ability to hold your notes and project them loudly and proudly.

On top of lung capacity and control however, your vocal chords also play an important role in the way your voice sounds. Like the strings on a guitar these work to change your pitch depending on how taught they are. Their natural position then is what will dictate the pitch of your speaking voice, and how flexible they are will determine how many notes you are able to reach by altering your pitch. This means that by stretching and training your vocal chords you can make them more malleable and versatile, and can even change their resting position to alter the pitch of your speaking. These techniques can be used either over time to permanently alter the pitch and range of your voice, or just before a performance in order to ‘limber up’ just as a runner would stretch their legs before the hundred metres.

Range: The most well known techniques that focus on limbering up the vocal chords are those that involve singing a scale that gets gradually higher. This also teaches pitch and annunciation/diction and the most commonly used phrases are ‘do, re, me, fa, so, la, te, do’. As you sing this scale (eight notes making up one octave), get higher on each word. Now start again increasing the pitch of the first ‘do’, until you cannot complete the scale. You can do the same with descending scales.

Pitch: To permanently alter your natural pitch however, more drastic measures need to be employed (if you’re Elton John however you can simply have an operation to permanently reconfigure your vocal chords…). The following technique is used by professionals in the broadcast industry and has been reported to work for many individuals. First of all repeat the phrase ‘Ding dong, bing bong, king konnnnnnnng’; really drag out the ‘n’ on the kong and get gradually lower as you do. Repeat this twice more but starting lower on each repetition. Now look down at your chest (to relax the vocal chords) and repeat the process. Finally look up at the ceiling and repeat once again with your chords stretched. If you try this exercise around twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening) you should find that your voice starts to sound naturally lower when you talk and sing.

Of course like all forms of training however, the best form is simply practice. If you want to get better at singing, and singing in a certain way, then simply make sure you sing often and try to enjoy what you do. That is the best way to improve on every facet of your technique.

Mack LeMouse

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