>> Now we will explore diaphragmatic breathing.
Obviously we're breathing.
You are listening to me,
you're alive, so you're breathing.
And we all are breathing every day.
But what happens with
diaphragmatic breathing is that it
is optimum breathing for singing.
In singing, the breathing tends to be different at
times because we have to sustain long tones.
We have to have breath support for
our high notes and for our low notes.
And because the breath is the thing
that makes the vocal folds vibrate,
breathing is what we must control.
The diaphragm is located at the base of the ribcage.
It assists us.
Even as I'm speaking right now,
my diaphragm is moving up and down with
my lungs because that's what it does every day all day.
However, with diaphragmatic breathing,
what we do is we control the diaphragm,
the movement of the diaphragm a little bit more.
So whenever we inhale,
the lungs fill with air and the diaphragm flattens,
and then the diaphragm begins to rise.
It pushes up against the lungs and it pushes up
the air through the trachea or through
the vocal folds and it makes them vibrate.
Have you ever heard or have you ever
experienced anyone talking and they're
talking like this or you get to
the end of a phrase and you sound like this.
It's because you've run out of air.
And nine times out of 10,
your diaphragm is very high
and you don't have the breath support that you need.
The thing that we're controlling right now with
diaphragmatic breathing is to
keep the diaphragm a little bit lower,
a little bit longer to make it rise a little bit slower
so that we have a little bit more
breath support as we're singing.
So to that end,
I have several exercises
to work with you for these techniques.
One is just a long tone.
You sing the tone. Let's choose enough.
High singers can sing here,
low singers can sing there.
[LAUGHTER] And so we're just going to
take this one note and sustain it.
And what we do when we're doing this is we
want our abdomen to expand,
and when the abdomen expands, the diaphragm flattens.
When it begins to contract
when we pull our abdominal muscles in,
the diaphragm is going to rise.
So for this,
we're going to sustain this tone and the whole idea
is to lead the diaphragm as flat for as long
as possible and to have the abdominal muscles expanded as
well as the ribcage because
ribcage expansion is very important as well.
If you look at my belly,
[LAUGHTER] you'll see that it expands.
What's happening on the inside is that
the diaphragm is flattening and
it's pushing my stomach out.
That's why the stomach goes out when we inhale.
The thing that we can see on the outside is that
the abdomen is expanding and it looks like this.
So whenever we inhale,
the expansion happens on
the outside, everything goes out.
And when we exhale, the muscles contract.
So they expand as we
inhale and they contract as we exhale.
As singers, we want to try to make this
happen as slowly as possible.
The thing that we don't want is for
our shoulders to be going up and down.
All of this movement is relegated to
the abdominal area and the ribcage.
So if you are standing in front of
a mirror and I encourage you to do so,
you want to make sure that you're not doing this.
I see this all the time.
So it's a little tricky.
One of the best ways to really
become aware of these muscles is to laugh.
[LAUGHTER] Whenever you laugh,
your abdominal muscles contract.
Most of the time, they
do it without us even being aware of it.
It doesn't matter whether you're a singer or whatever,
these muscles contract when you laugh.
As the sound is going out,
the muscles are contracting, they're going in.
So it's almost like a circular situation.
So now I'm going to sustain this one note.
So this is for the high voices,
this is for the low voices.
We're going to expand our abdomen.
And as we inhale and then we will sing the note,
the air will go out and slowly
your abdominal muscles will begin to contract.
We're going to count to let's say 15,
and I'm going to do this on my fingers or you can tap it.
[NOISE] But for me,
I just need to see this visually.
[NOISE] You want to
try to at least get to 15 on that,
and then if that's comfortable, go to 20.
[NOISE]
And then go half-step higher.
[NOISE].
You may wind up singing a straight tone or you
may wind up singing a tone with vibrato.
It's okay. The idea is to sustain the note,
making sure that when you inhale you allow
your abdominal muscles to expand
and as you sing your muscles contract.
Also making sure that you're not lifting your shoulders,
just letting your abdominal muscles do all of the work.
This is what you want to focus on.
So you don't necessarily have to start on an
F. This is for high or low voices.
You can start on a B flat
[NOISE] or you can start higher or lower,
whatever is comfortable for you.
You shouldn't be starting in a part
of your voice where you feel like you have
to do anything in terms of
making adjustments for the passaggio,
for that register break.
You really want to just focus on the breath.
There are so many things that
can take our attention away.
We can think about,
am I at this in this node,
in my register break,
or is my vibrato fluttering?
You don't want to focus on those things.
You just really want to focus on
your abdominal support, your ribcage expansion.
They should expand as you inhale.
So the expansion also not only happens in your abdomen,
but it happens in your back as well.
So when you're doing the exercise,
the long tone exercise for breathing,
you can count with seconds,
which are a lot longer than what I just did,
or you can do something that's a little faster like.
[NOISE]
The idea is
that you hold a long tone.
In this process,
there shouldn't be a lot of fluttering.
Your tone shouldn't be edgy.
If your tone begins to really crack or it's edgy, stop.
Take a sip of water because you might be dry.
You might need to hydrate and start the process again
and try to get the tone as clean as possible.