Using the Breath - questions and
answers.
Q What exactly is
breath control?
A The normal thing to do of course when you
breathe in every day life is just release the body and breathe out. When you
are singing you want to hang on to the breath. In other words you do not want
the lungs to collapse and push the breath out quickly. You want them not to collapse
suddenly at the onset of sound and, as the lungs are attached to the frame of
the body, the body needs to stay open and feed the vibration of the vocal cords
with a narrow stream of compressed air. You don’t want the breath to release
fast.
A Why is it necessary to hold back pressure?
Q The vocal cords are approximately 12 mm long
in women, 14mm for a man. They are only little. They work wonderfully when they
are able to vibrate regularly on a small narrow stream of air. When loose air
is pushed up at them from the lung they find it very difficult to come together
and struggle to make the delicate little adjustments needed. The whole glottis
is under strain. A simple analogy is that when we are expecting a gale we tie
things, weight things down. We can ask the cords to make the tiny adjustments
to pitch and move from note to note under these difficult circumstances but
they will not work effectively. This causes difficulty in going from one
register to another in fact a whole host of vocal problems in repertoire. Loose
breath also destroys your ability to form words. The jaw and tongue are very
stuck through tensions inside the throat. It is the coordination of the body,
the poised buoyant energy of the upper body holding back air that creates
colour, resonance, and the freedom to pronounce words on the regular vibration
of the vocal cords in repertoire.
Q How is it possible to regulate the amount of
breath used when singing?
A Well we can try to regulate it with the
throat but this strangles the voice so we can say it is the body’s
responsibility. There is a tube that goes from behind the nose directly down to
the chest (it has no branches off) and from there it fills the lungs. In order
to control the amount of breath reaching the vocal cords the pressure of breath
needs to be controlled. You do this by creating resistance. The centre of
gravity needs to feel as though its in the pelvis (article on balance). There are involuntary muscles there which
control the amount of air that goes out in the most miraculous way. It is your
power source.
Q What has to
happen to make this possible?
A Here are the areas in the body which help you
hold back pressure. The upper abdominal wall reacts gently in a pliable way
going out and wide, the back going out back and wide behind above the waist and
below it, and the chest also goes out, forwards. The solar plexus at the top of
it with the sternum goes lightly and gently forward as the lower part of it
lightly comes in. it is accompanied by a slow stretching either side of it
across the lower ribs.
It should feel
like muscles are going in opposite directions creating resistance. In other
words as the lung is reducing inside the ribcage the body is gently stretching
open against this loss and not giving in to it. This then is the opposite to
loose sloppy exhalation breath. None of these are rigid movements as you will
get a feel for reacting and adjusting the resistance in your body according to
what is happening in the music.
It is the reason
that a singer learns music on the body. Lamperti the great nineteenth century
vocal master puts it like this – ‘Violinists, cellists, et al., know and obey
this law governing reactions to desire. The voice (greatest of all instruments)
is absurd without this self control.’ In
other words the singer cannot relax floppily and just follow the pitch and emotion
as it goes and loosely follow the music but we need to concentrate on making
the instrument on which we need to play.
The singer is the player and the played.
Q What are some exercises you can do to begin
to see how that feels?
A The following are some ways to begin to feel
the reflex action of resistance compressing the air and holding back pressure.
·
You
can make your mouth posture as if to whistle and put your finger in front of
the air as you blow out slowly so that it is difficult for air to escape. You
should be able to feel the reflex action of the body holding back pressure.
·
Lie on
the floor on your stomach with your head on one hand resting to one side. Relax
your neck and body and just rest there for a minute as you just breath easily –
both your hand should be up near you head with elbows out to the side. Sing
‘eee’ high up in your range. Do several short ones and then a longer ‘eee’ and
then at the end go higher as you finish. Just at the end there you should feel
that the abdomen goes in just at the end to finish. This has the effect of
throwing open the body and means the next breath inhalation just comes sailing
in without conscious thought
·
You
can also try sitting on a chair with your elbows on your knees. Look at the
ground with you head nicely aligned with you spine and just gently move it from
side to side as if you were saying ‘no’.
You can do the above exercise and ‘ngi nge nga ngo ngu’.
Hope this helps
your vocal journey along
Cathy Pope
Email cathy@cathypope.com