About Singing

Some silliness I have read or heard about singing

-To “get into” your high notes, you have to kinda hook it in.

-To breathe correctly, you take the air in like sucking up with a vacuum cleaner.

-To properly use the breath, you gradually squeeze it out. Think of rolling a toothpaste tube from the bottom.

-Don’t push air to make a tone. Rather than using a wall of air to achieve sound, visualize “spinning” a column of air before it reaches the larynx.

-If you focus the voice forward while keeping the larynx low, all of the sudden you will find that there is a mechanism where it seems that the forward buzz hooks up to a vocal fry position in a way that the slightest appoggio makes your sound explode.

Now a little sense

1. Singing and speaking tones start in the throat at the site of your vocal cords. You cannot
   start the tone at your diaphragm or at your gut or anywhere else but your larynx.
2. Breathing for singing is exactly the same as breathing for speaking, with the exception that we sometimes breathe more vigorously to sing than we do to speak because powerful singing is more vigorous than the loudest speaking. But, other than occasionally using a little more vigor, you don’t have to pay much attention to breathing. You don’t have to think that much about it at all except to make it rhythmic. Breathing should be in tempo with what we are singing, more or less. This enables the vocal cords to automatically come together without our trying to make them do so.  The great American tenor, Jan Peerce, said it best, “Take a breath and forget about it.”[1]
3. Resonance (richness and power of the sound) cannot be separated from the act of phonation (making sound). There is nothing you can do to improve resonance. You can’t work on resonance. It happens as a result of achieving healthy singing technique through ideal registration.
4. Proper breathing techniques will not improve your voice. Proper breathing techniques will not even teach you to breathe properly! As a matter of fact, you do not need to learn how to breathe properly. You already know.

*Singing and speaking tones start in the throat at the site of your vocal cords. You cannot start the tone at your diaphragm or at your gut or anywhere else but your larynx.

*Resonance (richness and power of the sound) cannot be separated from the act of phonation (making sound).  There is nothing you can do to improve resonance. You can’t work on resonance. It happens as a result of achieving healthy singing technique through ideal registration.

*Proper breathing techniques will not improve your voice. Proper breathing techniques will not even teach you to breathe properly!  As a matter of fact, you do not need to learn how to breathe properly. You already know. How energetic your breath intake is will depend on what you are singing, but the intake of air is something you *know* how to do.