David tell us about breath and breath support
and what you think of for your breathing when you sing.
I remember Pavarotti saying in an interview one time
that breath is the thing that he will always work on
until he stops singing.
Um… And that has been true for me.
If that's not working, I mean, that's the engine.
To me, if that's not working everything else tries to
pick up the slack.
Yeah.
It doesn't work.
I think the first thing I do for breathing is,
on a given day, to expand my lungs
just try to take deep breaths and exhale
and just try to get the feeling of
this is singing breathing.
And not just, uh, sitting and reading breathing.
And just, you know, feeling that kind of expanse,
you know going on.
And uh feeling it, not only in my chest but in my diaphragm.
The feeling of my diaphragm lowering,
and being able to stay there.
So that's kind of one of the first things.
And your body starts to fill up with oxygen,
and all that good stuff.
The next thing that I do, and I’ll do this throughout the day,
I don't ignore what needs to happen
and then start an hour before I’m supposed to sing.
In my experience when I’ve had to do that
or when I’ve just forgotten and not done it,
I pay the price for that.
So I, throughout the day, I’ll just take those deep breaths
like that and then at some point
in the middle of the day after I just, you know,
tried to get in the right frame of mind,
I will inhale and then pay attention to my exhale.
Because for me, and everybody's different,
depending on the stress of the day,
if I’ve been able to get out and run or walk
or if I’ve been able to really get things going or not
my breath can catch on the way out.
If I feel it going tense, then I know I have to do some exercises
to release.
[Justin] So, it's about a smooth flow.
That’s right.
And even right now I feel a little bit, I feel it internally,
I feel a little bit where it's just not going.
So nothing catching, nothing hesitating.
That's right.
And so I just have to have this this circular flow
that's just easy on the intake easy on the out.
That's usually the next thing I do.
And that, a little aside, is usually a part of just trying
to lower the stress in my body.
That's the bigger section of that.
But as far as breath concern, that's a real important thing
for me because I have to have that [sigh] going on.
Does it change for a performance, do you feel maybe
more anxiety ever?
And do you have to really connect with that breath?
Or it's just the same every day for you?
You know everybody's different and every day is different.
There are days that I do that I’m like, I’m golden.
And there are days that it's like I just had like four bad phone calls
or you know whatever it is you know that
it's usually a life stress that makes you kind of tense up.
And it’s also, the other thing that feeds into that,
is how many days on the road I’ve been.
And it’s the third day in a row and my body is just
trying to go all right, yes, fight mode.
You know, that kind of thing.
You got to get it out of fight mode and be a little bit more
relaxed you know and oddly enough what I’ve learned is that
takes work to find that release.
It's like the results of yoga.
I mean you can't just be like, I’m going to get to the end result.
You have to work to tell your body to reduce these things.
Do you do any stretches or yoga for your breathing?
I do some light kind of things.
Things that I’ve learned over the years.
A lot of it is things that I learned in speech therapy
when I wanted to take speech therapy years ago.
That’s a real important thing and I’m always open to new things.
If you’ve got those release exercises.
You know, you never know what's going to work.
I’m always open to that.
The thing I do closer to the time when I step on stage
is get my engine going.
That is my trusted and tried:
[demonstrates]
Making sure that energy's going in there.
And that is what I have to get going sometime within an hour and a half
before I go sing.
Just to make sure that I'm revving that up.
If that's not working, I mean that is just critical to me.
My vibrato doesn't work right.
I try to manufacture that in a different way.
I will, just like what I said before, other mechanisms will try to take over.
And compensate for what that's not doing.
So that is my last thing of breath.
I like that.
So it's sort of a staccato H agility exercise.
Yes. This.
So when I first learned to do this-
well first of all the breath support that I learned,
I played trumpet when I was a kid.
And everything in trumpet is, you know, you're tightening up
and you're pulling in.
Singing, the way that I learned, you know you start saying
there's a certain way to do things and people start getting mad,
and people can do things so many different ways.
But for me it's a downward pressure.
My teacher, I remember the analogy was,
you have this slab of concrete around here that you
are pushing down like this.
So it's a down and out kind of pressure
that creates the stability under everything.
But to get to the staccato stuff I had to really learn how to engage
my mind to my diaphragm.
To go...
[demonstrates]
That dog pant was how I learned to do it.
But you know what I will always remember,
when I started learning how to do this I was flying to audition
for the Met when I was in college.
I was singing, from "The Messiah" that
♪ Every valley shall be ♪
You know, all that stuff.
And you know I was like, I've got to get my engine going, you know.
And so I was on the plane kind of in my bubble
trying to not be noticed.
And I was going...
[pants quietly]
and you can see when I start to do it, it starts up here
and then I have to go oh we gotta engage this.
And so I was doing that and this guy across the aisle said
do you want a bag to throw up in or are you getting sick?
And I'm like no, I'm doing weird stuff
just leave me alone.
And so we all have those things, we have to do weird things.
Hopefully we can hide somewhere when we do a lot of them.
But that is, uh, you called it um...
Diaphragmatic agility!
Oh that's so scientific, yes, agility.
Yes that's wonderful.
But um that is absolutely dead-on.
Because it's not about powering through, right?
And that's what so many, at least younger students, think.
Okay here I got to muscle my way through this.
And that's not really what it is.
I mean it has to be developed.
That's a really good exercise because when you pulse like that
it frees up the diaphragm.
Just like any muscle if hold on to it, you know, it gets tight.
If you move it around, it loosens right up.
Yeah and you can see a lot of those things that I do
are about freeing up.
You know that kind of thing about, you know, really letting go
and releasing.