Learn to Sing Tips: Breathing

Breathing is the absolute essential skill in singing. If you cannot control your lungs and how you breathe the force that creates sounds is crippled leaving you without power, without pitch and without the capability to develop your own style!

To teach yourself to sing you must learn how to breath from the diaphragm and not from the chest as so many people do. The diagram to the right explains a little more.

The diaphragm is located below low on the ribcage and when you breathe in properly the air goes deep down into your lungs rather than just into the higher parts of the lungs. This is the difference between deep breathing and shallow breathing.

The advantages of this for singing is that you will have more air to sing louder and longer with. It also forces your posture to be more correct which helps with the expulsion of air through your vocal cords giving a better sounds and helping you achieve the right notes.

To become proficient at this you must practice however. To do this you simply need to breathe in and out being mindful of how deeply your are breathing. Stand up straight but relaxed and slowly breathe in deeply and hold the breath for a few seconds then exhale slowly until you are empty then repeat for a number of times. When you do this however make sure that it is your diaphragm that is moving and not your chest. Hold your hand on your chest and your diaphragm to measure this ... your chest hand should remain still the whole time.

This is a good warm up before singing and it will ingrain good breathing technique as you go. On of the Voice Training Software downloads i highly recommend has an excellent section on breathing and posture that explains this further ... this is a quick summary:

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Audio Lesson 3: Breathing and Posture

Your breathing will affect your vocal tone as well as your pitch. That's why today we are focusing on Breathing and Posture. In Lesson 2 you will have learned some incredibly easy and effective warm ups that will help to strengthen your voice and give it more flexibility This 3rd lesson is about breathing technique and correct posture for singers.

In the last couple lessons we talked a little about breathing and just how important it is to have the correct support and control. Your breathing affects you as a singer so much because the reason you can even produce your sound in the first place is through the flow of air!

So the goals for this lesson are to:

• Understand the importance of correct breathing technique and posture,
• Learn how to breathe from your entire body,
• Learn the effects of using proper breathing techniques, and
• Learn how to “ground” yourself to produce a fuller sound.

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More on this great download here: Sing-O-Rama