Notes On Notes

Episode 42: Some Ways to Think about Breath Support

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Some Ways to Think about Breath Support

Few things are both as universal and personal as our breath. Everyone needs good breath support to sing or speak effectively, and we all describe what that feels like differently. In this episode, I share some physical practices and ways of thinking that will help you figure out what “breath support” means for you. 

More resources for working with your breath are available on my website:

https://www.mvmusik.com/video-a-good-breath-for-singing-is-a-great-breath-for-life/

https://www.mvmusik.com/speaking-with-the-low-breath/

https://www.mvmusik.com/video-singing-with-the-low-breath/

Michèle Voillequé is a singer and a voice teacher living in Berkeley, California. 

Yes, you can sound better! Opt-in for a free video training on the home page.

You can subscribe to Can’t Wait to Hear You wherever you get podcasts. If you have a question about your voice or how you’re using it, please email letters@mvmusik.com

Our music is thanks to Katya and Ada.

The show is edited by K.O. Myers at Particulate Media.

TRANSCRIPT

Your voice is unique to you. It grows as you grow. It changes as you change. If you’re curious about the relationship between your voice and your body, your heart and your mind, welcome. My name is Michèle Voillequé and I can’t wait to hear you. 

One of the things that can be really tricky to figure out about using your voice is how to support it. What do we mean when we say breath support? What does breath support mean for you? Whether you’re singing or speaking, how is it most helpful for you to think about breath support?

This is a conversation that will likely go on for your entire life once you begin it because as we use our voice, as we get better at using our voice, as we change how we use our voice, our body changes and our sensation of what constitutes support changes.

There’s a lot of information available about breath support from choral conductors, from voice teachers, from people on the internet, and it may or may not be helpful for you.

One of the things that I have noticed among the singers I know is that we all describe our breath support differently. And one of the things that I’ve noticed about my students is that any number of descriptors, metaphors, physical instructions are required for each student to learn their own way to support their voice.

Not one of my students is exactly like the other in this respect. And more than once, I think I have found the magic sentence, the magic words that will help people do what they need to do. And it kind of works for a couple of people, and then it’s sort of back to the drawing board.

Breath support is one of those things, again, that is a lifelong exploration and it really helps to have individual help along the way. You don’t have to study voice for years and years and years to get help with your breath support.

A couple of lessons could be sufficient to send you off in a new direction of exploration, you work with that for a while, and then when you need help again, you reach out for help again.

So what I want to do today is share with you the ideas, the metaphors, the physical instructions that have worked for my students and that work for me in the hope that it might broaden your vocabulary about how you think about breath support.

I hope it will confirm some of what you already know. I hope it might help you think about your breath support in a new way that’s helpful for you.

So when I’m talking about breath support, what do I mean?

I’m talking about how you use your body below your shoulders to support the sound that you’re making in your throat. Breath support is something that happens below your neck, and is something that is often focused in the center of your body, in your trunk, but it also involves your feet and your pelvic floor, your ribcage, your back.

I’m talking about, how do you use those body parts when you’re supporting your voice for singing or speaking? That’s what I mean by breath support.

I think probably the place to start is to remember that sound is moving air. How the instrument works is that we have an idea of a sound we want to make and then breath comes up from the lungs past the vocal folds and gets turned into sound.

The important thing here is that the breath comes before the sound.

It can be really easy to get into the place of thinking that it’s all coming out of your head, that there’s nothing actually below your shoulders that’s helping you to sing a song or express an idea. But actually, that’s the main source of energy for any sound you’re making, is below your shoulders.

There is no sound without breath. So the breath has to come first. The inhalation, the intake of air, and then the exhalation for the speech or for the song.

One of my favorite instructions for breathing, engaging your support on an inhalation, is to, when you breathe in, think, Santa Claus. Think about making your belly big.

If you’re struggling with notes that feel thin and squeezed and pinched and uncomfortable, check in with your belly. Are you sucking your belly in to support those notes or are you letting your belly feel big and broad to support those notes?

Generally, you’re going to be more comfortable the larger your base of support is. Which is to say, how big can you feel below your neck when you’re using your voice?

So, to that end, breathe in Santa Claus.

I have a whole, training about that on my website that you can find on my blog, Notes on Notes, “A good breath for singing is a good breath for life.” There are two or three video trainings that talk about breathing in Santa Claus. so go look for those.

Another thought you might explore is, since breath comes before sound, is to when you’re inhaling, consider the sound that you want to exhale as you’re taking that inhalation.

So a lot of us, when we’re inhaling for speaking, for using our voice in a normal everyday way, we don’t think about our inhalation at all. The air just happens to be there.

You might think about your inhalation if you’re about to say something really important, right? You take a big breath to kind of steady your nerves, or you’re trying not to say something.

You have a lot of emotion in your body, good or bad, and you want to be sure that you say the right thing, not the first thing that comes to mind. That’s a moment when we notice our inhalation.

You can notice your inhalation, though, whenever you want, and when you’re not worried that the outcome is going to be catastrophic.

So say, for example, you’re singing a song, and you’re coming to a point in the song where it’s very tender and gentle. It’s a quieter part of the song. You can engage your breath support on the inhalation by inhaling intentionally, tenderly, inhaling intentionally, gently, in the way that you want the sound to sound when it comes out of your body, so that there’s a congruence.

Similarly, if you are about to sing something feels very loud, very powerful, you can make yourself really big and have that intention on the inhalation.

Maybe not that it’s a forced kind of a thing – any inhalation which makes you tenser is not going to help you – but you can have a forceful inhalation in the sense that you’re making yourself as big as possible and feeling as powerful as possible.

You’re gathering up all of that energy that you want to express in this loud, powerful sound as you’re inhaling the air.

Another thing you can check in with is, if you’re standing, do you feel your feet underneath you? They are an important part of your breath support when you’re standing and singing or standing and speaking.

And so you might shift your weight from foot to foot. You might take your shoes off so that you can feel your stocking feet on the floor, and flex your toes and just really feel your feet making contact with the floor.

You can try this in different pairs of shoes. Believe it or not, your breath support is impacted by the kinds of shoes you’re wearing. So if you’re going to go do something in public, it’s a really good idea to practice in the shoes you’re going to be wearing.

Practice barefoot, practice in the shoes. Practice barefoot, practice in the shoes, like going back and forth, for different parts of the song, for different parts of the speech. And notice how differently you feel, how that affects your breath.

And when you’re singing or speaking that thing, can you keep track of your feet? Can you remind yourself at points – because you can’t think about your feet all the time when you’re performing, right? There are notes, there are words, there are other things to be thinking about – but you can build into the song places to check in with your feet.

Can I feel my feet? And similarly, if you’re the kind of person who tends to lock their knees when they’re standing, and that could be just about anybody that that can happen to, you can check in with your knees.

Are they still soft? You don’t need to bend your knees, you know, like you’re playing tennis or anything, but just to check in with them. Are they soft?

Are you standing balanced on your hips, or are you, posting? As one acting teacher I had called it, standing on one leg, you know, your hips are not even.

So, are your feet making even contact with your floor and does your pelvis feel balanced?

Your feet are going to be helping you less if you’re sitting down and speaking or singing, but you can still notice where they are. Are they flat on the floor? Are your toes curled under? Is one foot tucked underneath you on the chair?

How are you sitting? How aware are you of your posture, of your, your feet position?

And then as you’re sitting, your feet, so to speak, your main contact with the chair comes from your sit bones, the pointy bones of your pelvis.

If it’s a hardback chair, this is very easy to feel. If it’s an upholstered chair, it might be too squishy to feel your sit bones, but you want to find those pointy points of your pelvis, and rock back and forth, forward and back, and side to side, and find a balanced position for your sit bones. So, not too heavy on one than the other, so, even from right to left, and upright from front to back.

I find when I am in my typical slouching position, I’m rolled back on my sit bones. I’m like actually not really sitting on my sit bones because I’m, rolling my pelvis under. You know, I’m kind of, I’m making a C out of my low back, rather than being more upright.

I’m not sure if that’s going to make sense on audio, but anyway, it’s really possible to not sit on your sit bones at all.

But if you’re looking for help with your breath support and imagining the parts of your body that can help you to produce a good tone, you want to know where your feet are, you want to feel your feet in contact with the floor, and you want to feel your sit bones, if you’re seated, in contact with the chair.

Another helpful idea is to breathe into the center of your body.

Of course, all of the air is going into your lungs. But when you can give yourself the thought, “I’m going to breathe into the center of my body,” I notice in my students and other singers, that encourages a lower breath, that encourages a deeper breath into the lungs.

Because it is very easy to go through our day-to-day taking shallow breaths just into the top of our lungs, and that kind of breath is not going to support a song or a speech very well.

So if “breathe in Santa Claus” doesn’t make a lot of sense, try “breathe in to the center of your body.” They’re accomplishing a similar task.

Another physical aid you can employ is a TheraBand, or if you’re a woman who wears a bra, your bra strap. Although, I wear a bra, and I have found the TheraBand to be more helpful.

This is a stretchy, plastic band that, physical therapists use them all the time. They’re great for rehabilitating joints and building some strength and flexibility in the body.

The one in my studio right now is blue. I think that’s a medium weight TheraBand. Anyway, tie it around your ribcage where a bra strap would be so that it’s kind of snug. And take a few breaths, aware of the band and trying to expand it.

This isn’t a strength building exercise so much as an awareness exercise. Can you breathe into the band? And that may help you find some side-to-side expansion of your ribcage.

Our lungs are balloons, and they expand as 360 degree objects, they are not flat. And the sideways expansion of the lungs and the ribs is something that your daily life might not call for.

And the sides of your ribs may in fact be kind of tense. And so having the TheraBand or thinking of breathing into your bra strap, looking for that expansion, can help you find a new kind of, or a different kind of inhalation that can help support a better tone.

Untying the Theraband, you can also, while you’re seated, fold yourself in half, so let your head and torso fall forward so your chest is on your thighs and your head is hanging toward the ground and your arms are hanging toward the ground, probably touching the ground. And in that position of being folded in half, take a few breaths and notice the expansion in your back.

Because you’ve cut off your belly and the front of your chest, your lungs are sort of forced to expand toward the back. They’re still expanding toward the front, but you’ll be more aware of their expansion toward the back.

You want to let everything hang. Now this isn’t the most relaxed position for everybody, so don’t feel bad if this doesn’t work for you. But if you’re able to fold yourself in half and let yourself feel really slack like a rag doll, and breathe into your back and feel that expansion between your shoulder blades, and just take four or five breaths there, and then walk yourself back up, you will probably notice that your back feels wider than it did before and you might feel taller than you did before.

And then as you’re still seated, try to take another five or six breaths. and see if you can feel that expansion of your back as you inhale.

Being able to access your back in this way, to explore the full width of it when you’re singing or speaking, that is a very useful thing.

Two other ideas to consider about breath support have to do with playing with your balance.

So, it is a really good thing for your body to walk. You don’t have to walk super fast, you don’t have to walk super slow, but just a regular old walk. And as you’re walking, to have a conversation with somebody else, to use your voice as you’re walking.

That gives your body the practice of moving and talking at the same time, and you will necessarily find a deeper breath and a kind of support for your voice.

Now, if it’s a very strenuous walk, your voice isn’t going to sound very good, right? Because you’re partly out of breath, your brain wants oxygen, and your voice wants oxygen, and your brain thankfully is going to win, right?

Your body is going to sacrifice vocal quality for, in exchange for continued consciousness and that’s okay. So it doesn’t, you don’t have to be making the best speaking sounds or the best if, you’re walking and singing at the same time, you don’t have to be making the best singing sounds of your life for this to pay off.

But that practice of walking and noticing your breath, can help you figure out how your body supports itself. What’s it like to be you when you’re breathing and there’s a certain level of cardiovascular stress going on?

You don’t want to import cardiovascular stress into your singing and speaking, but by noticing what it’s like when you’re walking also to talk, it’s a good way to figure out what body parts are doing what to support that.

And then you can stop walking and stand still and take a breath or two or three and then walk again and notice how you’re breathing. And then stop and take a breath or two or three, and see if you can teach yourself how it is you breathe when you walk.

Now you might find that you don’t breathe very deeply when you walk.

You might naturally be somebody who holds their breath.Well, I don’t mean naturally, I mean it’s your habit. You have a habit of holding your breath, and you have a habit of breathing high into your lungs. You don’t have the habit of taking deep breaths, and they feel weird and they might even feel scary.

Moderate physical exercise can force your body to take deeper breaths, and if those are new to you, you can stop and notice them and look to those body parts to help you when you’re singing or speaking. Look to that series of sensations when you’re speaking or singing.

I say that when you’re walking, that this has to do with balance, right? Because you are, as you’re walking, you need to keep your balance. You might not be consciously aware of it, but you are engaging your core, your core abdominal muscles in order to walk.

And it’s those core abdominal muscles that are the center of your breath support system when you’re singing or speaking.

One way to access those muscles, to train those muscles, to engage those muscles, is to be standing. Notice your feet. And then pick one leg up off the floor. Bring a knee up.

You can hang on to something while you do this if you need to. But if you can practice, if you can work on your balance to the point where you can do that without needing to hold on, you will have generated not only balance, but also strength in the center of your body that will serve your voice very well.

A lot of times, when my students are having trouble finding enough, when notes feel thin, when they’re singing and it just doesn’t feel like there’s enough oomph behind what they’re doing, often if I’ll have them lift one foot off the floor, and all of a sudden the problem is fixed.

Because in lifting the knee, we’ve engaged their core abdominal muscles, and that has given their voice an additional boost of power.

So we practice lifting a leg, and then having both feet on the floor and trying it again. Can you generate that feeling, that sound, that sensation of breath that you had when your knee was up when both feet are on the floor?

And it takes practice. Sometimes it feels like I just waved a magic wand and miraculously healed them of some horrible No Breath Support Disease. But, um, most of the time, it takes practice.

These muscles are, they’re not muscles that we think about a lot, and the voice works even if we don’t use them, right?

Our voice, as I’ve said elsewhere on the podcast, our voice works even when we’re on our deathbed. We don’t need a lot of physical strength in order to use our voice well.

So the physical strength that we need in order to sing and speak with volume and conviction, that can feel really alien.

Playing around with your balance can help you find that power that is in your trunk, possibly untapped, and to use it to propel your voice forward.

The last collection of ideas has to do with, cultivating a sense of downward effort.

So as we’re singing or speaking, the breath is coming up from our lungs, past our vocal folds in our throat and out our mouth. So after we inhale, everything else that happens after that is heading in an upward direction, is heading up and out.

And in order to send something upward and out with any amount of force or conviction or energy, that needs to be counterbalanced in the body with a sense of either “wide” or “down.”

If you think about, jumping or watching other people jump, if you’re not a jumper yourself. If you want to jump, what do you do first? You bend your knees, right? You build up some power in your legs before you spring forward.

You can see this with cats. You can see this with rabbits. It’s really obvious how they will back up, bend down, in order to spring forward.

So, part of supporting your breath for singing, it’s not just all about forcing things up and out, but actually having a big well of energy below you.

This is a metaphor that might not be useful, but it might work. It might work for you – having a big well, a big reserve of energy, a low center of gravity in order to send a lot of sound up and out, to feel very big down below.

So, it’s good to not just be aware of your feet or aware of your sit bones when you’re singing, but actually as you’re singing out or speaking to consciously send attention to your feet, to your sit bones.

To think instead of, “I’m going to push a lot of energy out of my body,” rather, “I’m going to push a lot of energy down and that is going to send the sound out of my body.”

So whenever you’re going to use your voice in a bigger than normal way, bigger than kitchen table conversation kind of way, how can you make yourself bigger and feel more grounded?

And it’s often helpful for people to think, “down,” to think, “wide,” to think, “broad,” to think, “sunken into the earth,” to think, “heavy boots on my feet,” to feel heavy in the lower part of the body so that the breath can easily, artfully, almost magically leave as beautiful sound.

You might find it helpful if you’re standing and singing to press down on a table or a desk as you’re singing, or to hold on to the back of a chair in kind of a forceful way. Like you’re pushing the chair into the ground or you’re pushing against a desk.

Or imagining that you can move the piano with your hip, right? You’re gonna nudge the piano. So you might, that might put you off center for a moment, but just that feeling of like low, low strength, like to push the piano.

Can you push the piano and sing at the same time? Let that low effort help propel the sound.

And as a last idea, although I’m sure as soon as I stop, I will think of 15 more, but for now, the last idea for now is to be aware of your pelvic floor.

So you have a sense of your trunk that goes all the way down to your pelvic floor, and a sense of your pelvis, it might help to look at it, in an anatomy book, but just to see how those bones form a bowl, right?

And your torso comes up from there, so that you’re, the bottom of your torso is sitting in a bowl. And to imagine that bowl of your pelvis as something – again, we’re back to broad and generous, but specifically, picturing your bones, like really feeling the anatomy of it and thinking of the sound as beginning with the breath, and the breath beginning with effort, with strength from that pelvic bowl.

This is an idea that has been very helpful to me and has worked, with students of mine. Not all of the ideas work with all of the students, but enough of them work that I feel it’s worth telling you about them.

So the image is that you’ve got feet on the floor and then the bowl of your pelvis. And that there is a dynamic relationship between that low center of gravity, the bones of your pelvis, and the bones of your feet. And even that your tailbone can make a third foot for you.

So you’ve got your two feet, your real feet, and then a third imaginary leg that extends from your tailbone so that you have a tripod that you’re standing on. And that tripod is supporting a bowl, and that bowl is generating the most beautiful energy for your speaking and singing.

So it’s a little bit woo. It’s a little bit metaphor, but it’s also, I think, physically real enough. It’s the combination of those things that make the idea helpful.

I want to take a minute right now and say that you are not supposed to remember all of these things every time you go to use your voice. That’s not what this is about. If, maybe I didn’t make that clear.

This list is intended as just a list, a variety of things to try, things to think about, ways to think about the project of breathing. There is no way you’re going to be able to remember all of this and sing a song or deliver a speech at the same time. That is not the point. So, these are ideas to try on in practice sessions, in little bits.

Try one idea for a while, for a week maybe, or for whatever your routine of practicing is. Or even when you’re not using your voice.

If you just need a break at work, you’re not going to use your voice at all, you can fold yourself in half and breathe into your back, and that can be a really nice reset for your brain in the middle of a work day.

Similarly, if you’re waiting in line for something, you can use that moment to notice your feet. Notice your hips. How are you standing? Can you breathe into the center of your body as you’re waiting at the post office to buy stamps?

That’s useful practice and taking those few moments for awareness will pay off in your vocal performance even if you’re not following those activities immediately with voice use.

So those are some ideas about how you can think about your breath support. I really hope they’re useful. I would love to hear from you about it and what metaphors, physical ideas, physical actions you’ve come across in your life that really work for you.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new people find the show. Subscribing ensures you’ll learn about new episodes as soon as they come out. If you have a question about singing or speaking or being, please send me an email at letters@mvmusik.com.

That’s letters at M as in Mary, V as in Victor, M U S I K.com.

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