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Brenda Smith, associate professor of music at University of Florida and co-author of the book Choral Pedagogy, believes that singing is made out to be much more complicated than it really is. Her advice—get back to the breath.
Chorus America: With the choirs you work with, what is the biggest problem with achieving this thing we call breath support?
Brenda Smith: The biggest issue is misunderstanding posture. Unless the posture is right, when they're asked to take a breath, they end up tightening their tummies and lifting their shoulders. Then based on that, everything else is kind of out of order.
In principle, we live in a sea of air. Singing is vibrating air. Singing is based upon the same principle as sighing. We take a breath, our abdominals engage and we send the air back up our windpipe. We all need to be able to relax to get the lungs to be able to lengthen. Lungs don't expand out with inhalation; instead, lungs get long and skinny. In that process the air outside is heavier than the air inside your lungs, so the air falls in. The muscles engage to send the air back up the other way.
For choral singers, this relaxation for breath should always be possible. You engage the same muscles you would engage to sustain a sigh. It's not one particular muscle; it's muscle coordination. It's the same muscles that help you throw up—it's just not solid matter they are moving!
Chorus America: Now there's a lovely image!
Brenda Smith: Breathing for singing is just like breathing for sleep, in principle. It's just that you're standing up, which is a big problem. And you are slowing down the exhalation process to meet the music, as opposed to just letting the air go. So it is much more natural than people think. The vocal folds sit on top of your vocal chords like curtains on a window waiting to be rustled by the air that goes through. We just sing the pitch. It's the same principle as talking.
Chorus America: So how do you work with a person or a choir to accomplish this thing that is supposed to be so natural?
Brenda Smith: First, I relax the choir in front of me. I get their posture organized as far as seat balance, knees loose, bottom tucked a little, chest tall, head over the resonators. When that has happened, exhalation comes first. When the belly button goes back toward the backbone, that is where they are going to inhale. When the air is low in the lungs, I have them do some quick panting to see how the air moves. What we don't want to do is try to superimpose something else on the body. We use what the body naturally does.
Chorus America: So the panting is for that purpose?
Brenda Smith: Yes, to loosen everything up and get things to coordinate. Wherever that panting happens is the place where your abdomen and your diaphragm intersect. Those muscles are not resisting anything, so we don't have to make them work. It is much more instinctive than we think. It is just like chewing and swallowing. Your body knows how to do it. It's just how you apply this coordination to the music.
Is the process pretty similar from singer to singer?
Brenda Smith: Well, someone singing Wagner will sing differently than someone who is in Chanticleer or Anonymous Four or in the average church choir. The demands of the repertoire and the sound ideal are greater. But everywhere I go there is someone who says, "I am just certain I am supposed to tighten my stomach. I am certain someone told me that their fist should sit at my belly button and I should resist it." Or worse, some of my students are wearing Spanx, these girdle-type things, under their dresses and they feel so good breathing against this elastic. But really, you need to just let your body expand and enjoy.
What particular exercises help in building breath support?
Sighing. When you take a breath and do a natural sigh, you are going through the motions of a supported singing sound.
There is so much misunderstanding and I think singing loses a lot of its joy if you think you have to make air come and go from your body. So many other instruments have things you must do, fingerings and reeds and such. But we are trying to play an instrument that no one sees, and we think, "Wouldn't it be great if we could do something to make it better." The beauty of it is, the body works perfectly. Every other instrument is designed with all its valves and twists and turns to try to work as closely as it can to replicate what the body does naturally.
Chorus America: So what about the diaphragm? Choral conductors are always talking about breathing from the diaphragm, but what does that mean?
Brenda Smith: The diaphragm is the flexible floor of the rib cage, it turns itself inside out when you need breath to pull your lungs down to accept the air. It has to ascend in order for you to breathe again.
What happens is the diaphragm pushes down on your viscera—kidneys, stomach, all of that—and then those muscles engage and turn that air around so that the air heading toward the center of the earth starts to go back up through your body.
The muscle antagonism that people talk about is so that the diaphragm doesn't spring back up like when you are asleep at night or when you sigh. It slows down so the air moves evenly, emptying the lungs like a balloon on the bottle.
Those muscles continue to antagonize each other, sort of like a good handshake. And then the diaphragm goes back up to its happy home so it can breathe again.
The muscles in antagonism are your abdominal muscles and your diaphragmatic intercostal muscles. They know what they are doing. As a singer you don't pick them out and ask individual ones to work. They work together in a unit.
Chorus America: What do you tell someone who says they can't get enough breath or the right kind of breath?
Brenda Smith: The character of the breath does determine the character of the sound. If someone came in the room with a shotgun and we took a big gasp, that kind of breath is full of tension. If we take a breath where we have eliminated all the air that is available to us, the body will take in the air it needs quite easily. It will roll up like the ocean onto the beach. From that position the vocal folds are most likely to be able to do what they do. If we hear the breath, then the vocal folds are not as open and free as they should be. We need to do anything we can to dispel the idea that we need to fight for our breath as singers.
Whether you breathe through your mouth or through your nose is a big controversy among voice teachers. I used to have one feeling about it and now I have another. And I'm not going to tell which one I hold to now, because I don't want to be pinned with something! A lot of the time, it is whether they relax their tongue or their jaw when they take the air in or they try to suck it in. If you try to suck it in, it won't move.
Chorus America: What messes me up is when I'm told to take a breath several beats early.
Brenda Smith: Right, then you have to store it up and you can't move it. It needs to be in rhythm with the music, in tune with the music, and also in tune with your body. If you're tired, it will take longer. If you're well-exercised and you are toned, those muscles spring open happily.
I work with a choir here at a retirement community where the youngest person is 68 and the oldest is 94 and what they have achieved in the last five years in getting a good low breath is really a testament to the idea that breathing is natural and good for you. All of them say it is the being together and the breathing that makes them feel better.
Chorus America: What particular exercises help in building breath support?
Brenda Smith: Sighing. When you take a breath and do a natural sigh, you are going through the motions of a supported singing sound. Also panting lightly.
Sometimes I will pick a familiar song and have choristers sing it on the sound "f" or "sh" or "ch." Those same muscles will engage.
Chorus America: The lip trill works for me. Is that the same principle?
Brenda Smith: We sometimes call that the "raspberry." It's the same principle and the muscles work instinctively. It does not work if your abdominal muscles are not working. The body is teaching you how it would follow your sound if you just let it do that.
The vocal folds are cycling many times per second and they need to be fed the air all the time so they can do what they do. And if we tighten and pull the air away from the folds, it is the wrong direction.
The voice is an instrument we use but don't see. That is the problem. I think lots of singers are learning voice habits that may or may not be good for them. I think everyone ought to be able to sing happily to the last hour of their life. And these kinds of misunderstandings can keep that from happening.
