Hi, I'm James Davey. In this short video we're going to be learning about the
three types of breathing for singers. Let's think about breathing. There are
three main types of breathing for singing. There is ceiling breathing, which
uses just the small spaces at the top of the lungs. There is wall breathing, which
uses all of the sides of the ribcage and all the muscles around here. And there is
floor breathing, which is controlled by muscles that lie deep in the pelvis and
kick upwards to control those short, sharp sounds that we make in singing,
like accents and the starts of notes. So we're going to focus on the three types.
The first one then: ceiling breathing. We don't tend to use ceiling breathing very
much when we're singing, but it
provides a useful exercise for being able to get the vocal space ready. Okay?
So ceiling breathing is short breaths here. Like panting. So let's do some
panting. Very good. That's just filling up these small
spaces here. But panting isn't very good for the voice. If you can hear the air
moving, then the likelihood is it's drying out the vocal folds. So what we're
going to do is try to pant without making any noise. So we're going to take
a vowel shape that we can use for this which is the vowel 'O' as in the word 'hot'.
You say 'hot', 'hot' and find 'ho'. Okay, so we're going to pant just air, softly,
on an 'O'. First of all, so we can hear if there's any breathing noises. Very good. Now
to stop the sound of the air, what I'd like you to do is to raise the roof of
your mouth as high as you can. The bit we're looking for is called the
soft palate and it's the movable bit at the back of the mouth. So see if you
could do it silently by making lots of space.
Very good. So let's move to our floor breathing next and we're going to start
with what we call diaphragm kicks. Short, sharp kicks of air. Good. So with a letter
'F', just push the air out.
Very good. I'm going to try some rhythms.
Good. Well done. We're really using the learning part of the brain already. Okay,
so let's think about our wall breathing now.
So our wall breathing is controlled by all of the muscles around the sides of
the wall of the ribcage and to find where those muscles are, so we can feel
them, we're going to put our hands there. So walk with your thumbs pointing
forwards, please walk your hands up until you find the bottom of your ribcage, so
your hands can just rest in that space and I'd like you to make a good strong sound.
Very good. And you should be able to feel those muscles kicking out against your
hands. Is that right? Let's try it one more time.
Very good.