♫
Hi everybody!
My name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Welcome to episode 62 of Voice Lessons To The World.
The show where we want to help you guys as singers
by answering your questions from all over.
And I'll give you a chance to ask questions later,
but our question for this week comes from
Alex K. in Yangon, Myanmar and Alex writes,
"Dear Justin, I'm always running out of breath when I sing.
Is there something I can do to not run out of breath
so fast and so often?"
Now Alex that's a spectacular question.
Because so many singers are struggling with this issue of
running out of breath too fast.
Now today we're going to talk about why that happens
and how to fix it.
We're going to look at a song and also give you
a great and very challenging exercise
to help you to fix this problem.
But first of all, running out of breath,
is not what you'd expect.
Most of the time we think, I'm running out of breath
because I don't have enough, I don't have enough air.
But actually as you guys are going to see,
it's not so much about how much air you have.
Usually, as a singer, taking more air is a mistake.
It makes singing harder.
What we want to do is make
the breath that you have more efficient.
So that's what we're going to be talking about today
as we discover how to not run out of breath.
So why do we run out of breath?
A couple reasons.
First of all, it might be our breath support.
Maybe we're slamming the air out,
from taking a high breath and then slamming that air.
I'm going to run out super fast.
But it's not just from the high breath,
which we don't want.
Even our small, simple, low breath,
we could still slam it...
Or still slam it...
Right?
So good breath support is maintaining the air that you take.
You don't need a lot, but what air you take
make sure you're keeping it in the body
and not letting it out too fast.
So that's one thing.
The next thing that might surprise you is larynx position.
If you're singing with too low of a larynx
you're going to run out of breath more quickly.
That's right, a low larynx causes air to get through quicker.
Whereas a high larynx causes it to get through less quickly.
Now I know so many of you are working on your
low larynx situations this is positive.
I don't want you to stop.
It's hard to keep the larynx neutral or low,
so do practice that and do have that in your technique.
But also be careful if you're singing with
too low of a larynx for the situation,
you're going to run out of breath more quickly.
A related topic is compression.
How tight are the vocal cords?
And I don't mean strained, but if you're singing breathily
you are leaking more air through the vocal cords.
A breathy sound is more leaky than a nice, clean, solid sound.
So, there's nothing wrong with breathiness as we know.
But if you're using a breathy sound you should know
that the air is getting through more quickly.
And you're going to lose it faster than in your clean sound.
Next is your mouth position and also your volume.
If you're singing with a mouthy, loud situation
you're using more air.
More is getting out the front and more is getting out
because you're getting louder.
So situations where you're opening the front and using
force out the front, that will also cause you
to run out of breath too quickly.
So those are some reasons that people
are running out of air too fast.
Now today we're going to look at a song called
"All The Things You Are".
It's a classic jazz song from the Jazz era by Jerome Kern.
And I picked this song because it has super long phrases.
Phrases that one could easily run out of breath very quickly on.
So we're going to look at this song called
"All The Things You Are".
♪
♪ You are the promised kiss of springtime ♪
♪ That makes the lonely winter seem long ♪
♪ You are the breathless hush of evening ♪
♪ That trembles on the brink of a lovely song ♪
Now I made it through those long beautiful phrases that Jerome Kern wrote.
But what if I start messing with some of these things that
we talked about today?
What if I let my breath support go out the window
and I start slamming the air?
♪ You are the promised kiss of springtime ♪
♪ that makes the lonely winters ♪
[Coughs}
I couldn't quite make it with poor breath support.
Now what if I decide to take too low of a larynx position?
♪ You are the promised kiss of springtime that makes ♪
[Coughs]
Again I can't make it with such a low larynx.
What about another option?
What if my cords are too breathy?
♪ You are the promise kiss of springtime ♪
♪ That makes the lonely winter ♪
[Coughs]
Oh man.
I couldn't do it there either with breathy cords.
And then finally what about a wide production?
♪ You are the promise kiss of springtime ♪
♪ That makes the lonely winter seem long ♪
Phew!
A little better because my larynx came up a little bit.
However, still, that loud mouthy production I can't make it through
like I could with my neutral, controlled, supported, production
that I started with.
So that's an application of some of the reasons
why people run out of breath, to a sum.
So, just to recap these because we're about to apply it
to an awesome exercise,
we want to have good breath support.
you can go back to episodes like the
"Hiss Contest", to work on your breath support.
Larynx position that's not too low.
There's been many episodes we've done on the larynx
so you can find different larynx positions.
Find the right one for the song that you're doing.
Compression, we've also talked about this.
Make sure that your voice is stronger
rather than weaker and breathier.
If you're trying to not leak air.
And then finally we know all about spreading as well.
You can go back and look at videos on that too.
We don't want to be spreading the front.
It's one of the worst habits that singers have.
We want a nice narrow production.
So today we're going to create an exercise for you
that incorporates all of those together.
Neutral, solid, narrow, and supported.
This is going to be awesome and also tough.
We're going to do a super long scale
on an M-E-M, MEM, five times in a row.
Check this out...
♪ MEM ♪
So that's five in a row on MEM.
So guys are going to be down here...
♪ MEM ♪
And ladies up here...
♪ MEM ♪
And here we go together!
♪ MEM ♪
So nice.
♪
So awesome.
♪
Good for you!
♪ MEM ♪
So nice.
♪
♪ MEM ♪
Good for you.
♪
Yep.
♪ MEM ♪
Awesome! We're coming down...
♪
Awesome. Hang in there.
♪ MEM ♪
So, so nice. How about a breath?
Good.
♪
Super good.
♪ MEM ♪
Great, hang in there for a few more.
♪
Awesome.
♪
So good, here's the last one, hang right in there...
♪ MEM ♪
♪
Oooo! Awesome work, that was a fight!
Good for you guys who hung in there for
seven on the last one just for a little extra challenge.
This is great and this is some awesome work
for extending the time period that you can
hold your phrases and not run out of breath.
So Alex and all, I hope that's been helpful
for you guys today as singers.
If you guys have questions that you'd like to see us
answer on the show, you can send an email to
Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com.
And so we just encourage you don't lose the joy,
don't lose the passion, don't let people tell you
that you can't sing because you and I both know
that is absolutely false, not true, you can do it.
Just keep working hard on your voice, [♪]
get with a great voice teacher in your area [♪]
or if you guys are in the New York City area, [♪]
or if you want to Skype with one of our staff, [♪]
you can visit us at www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com. [♪]
And if you like these videos I just encourage you to [♪]
download our free app, it's for iPhone, iPad, [♪]
and hopefully more in the future. [♪]
A lot of free resources, tips, articles, [♪]
great things to help you guys to grow as singers. [♪]
Or you can visit www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
♫