Controlling the Flow of Air

When the cords aren't able to keep the stretch for the resistance needed, the voice will feel like it's losing power. To compensate for this loss of power, or "weight," the tendency is to add more breath pressure for loudness. Without knowing how to rely on the vocal cords for the kind of resistance and weight needed, you rely on the breath to do it by adding pressure against it to force the voice out. This is what is known as overblowing, or pushing.

Pushing blows the mechanism apart by forcing so much air through the cords that they don't have an opportunity to adjust for the pitch until after the air has already started coming out. If the cords don't have enough stretch to create the resistance needed to control the flow of air, this will cause the air to escape too rapidly. Realizing you might not have enough to get to the end of the phrase, you begin to squeeze, hoping to save as much of it as you can. But if the breath is meant to take the voice out of you, how can it do that if it's being squeezed? Take an object in your hand and squeeze it. Can it break free? Squeezing the air to hold it in is only keeping the sound from coming out, and holding the breath makes you feel like you can't breathe! Though it's very true that the breath can add loudness and resonance to your voice, it can only do so if it is expelled properly.

Right Breathing, Everyday Breathing

The breath may not be the most important factor in voice, but if you're not breathing right it becomes the most important factor. So to get the idea of what it means to breathe right, let's start with normal, everyday breathing.

When you take a breath in through the mouth, the stomach automatically expands. When you slowly exhale, it contracts. To demonstrate, sit in a chair with your feet firmly planted on the floor. Relax and sit back. Start by taking in a deep breath through your mouth and then exhaling it. Allow yourself to hear the breath as you take it in—a "noisy" breath—and then exhale it. Pay attention to your stomach. Feel it expand on the inhale, and contract on the exhale. Put your hands on your shoulders to make sure they are not rising up on intake. If they rise up, it means you are not taking the breath in deep enough. The idea of this exercise is to experience your breathing as one continuous action, just as it is when you are sitting still with yourself.

When you take in a breath, concentrate on whether you are holding it for a second, and then starting the exhale. If you are, this is what I refer to as a "start-and-stop." Every time you take a breath in and then stop it before exhaling, it means that you are holding the breath. Holding the breath in any way creates pressure underneath the cords, forcing them to release too much air all at once. If you find that you are starting and stopping, try to stop this habit before proceeding.

As you take your air in, feel it as it hits the back wall of your throat and immediately begin to slowly exhale it. Do it until you feel this happening as one continuous action. Once you get it going without holding it in any way, try sighing with sound as you exhale. If you are truly sighing, then you should feel the first note of that sigh starting on top of the column of air created from the inhaled breath at the back of the throat. In fact, that first note should begin the moment you start feeling the air going towards the back of your throat. Taking in the air and starting the note is a simultaneous action, meaning that the first note actually begins on the tail end of that inhaled breath. If you don't feel the sigh starting on the top of the column of air, keep doing it until you do. Don't try to push the sigh out. There shouldn't be any pushing involved. It should be completely relaxed—a real sigh.

To sing with ease and freedom, the vocal cords and the breath must be working as a team. This means that the action between the two must be a simultaneous one. Taking in the breath and starting the note must occur at exactly the same moment. One cannot come out before the other. If it does, it will require some kind of body effort on your part to make it work. The entire goal here is to make this an involuntary action; to have your voice work the way nature intended. After all, the mechanism of the human voice is an organ that lives inside of your body, and—just like any other organ—is ultimately meant to be working independently of you.

Excerpts from
Advanced Vocal Technique: Middle Voice, Placement & Styles

By Dena Murray and Tita Hutchison

The Tape Can't Lie

Your voice must become the student and you must become the guide. To do this, you will have to use a tape recorder, preferably one you can keep rewinding after every attempt at exercising to listen for whether it was wrong or right, and not for whether it sounded good or bad. Good or bad will keep you judging in a negative way, but right or wrong will keep you evaluating and in the teacher/guide mode. We refer to this as listening from a higher perspective.

Listening back to yourself on tape will help you to pay more attention to breaking your bad habits and less attention to the sound. Nine times out of ten, the reason a voice is not going to the right places, and not bridging, is because there are bad habits in the way. It's these bad habits that are keeping you from having what you want. And without taping, it's easy to fool yourself. Sometimes things won't feel right but you'll rationalize that you are "getting it" because of the way you think it sounded, rather than the way it felt. With regard to bridging, middle voice, and placement, you will have to rely on the recording you hear, along with feeling and sensation, and not how it sounds to you at the time you perform the exercise.

Remember this: You can't do it right until you have done it wrong, and you can't do it well until you have done it badly. Our best advice is to do yourself a favor and invest in a good tape recorder because the truth will always reveal itself on tape.

Blowing, Squeezing, and Pushing

All your notes should be clear in tone. There shouldn't be any escaping air heard by you with or without the tape. If there is escaping air heard, it means that you may be blowing your air through the cords (which sounds on tape like you are blowing out a candle), or that you are squeezing and then trying to push your air through them to get the sound out, which sounds more like a hissy stage whisper.

Blowing is different from squeezing in that there just isn't enough cord effort; the sound will end up with more air than edge. Blowing means the cords are open too wide from side to side. On the other hand, if you are squeezing, the cords are too close together, forcing you to push the air through there to get the sound out, because no sound can come out unless air passes by the cords.

To get a feel for squeezing, try whispering. When you whisper you can actually feel the cords tighten to make the sound. Unless you are literally blowing air through the cords to try to whisper, which is very hard to do, whispering makes the cords rub together. It's this kind of tightening that is also known as squeezing. It means the cords are too closed up from front to back. (As a side note, never whisper, even when you are sick. If you are sick and have laryngitis and/or can't speak, write notes to communicate instead. Whispering too much can actually cause hoarseness and make whatever condition you have, like laryngitis, even worse).

Most singers are trying to get a more edgy sound for the pop, rock, and R&B voice by slamming their cords shut and squeezing them together. Singers are literally closing the entire mechanism to achieve these styles and types of sound when, in truth, it is only the back end (the arytenoids) that should be coming together and stretching further and further backwards the higher you go. Again, there must always be a slight amount of air passing through the cords for correct sound and that cannot happen if the entire mechanism is slammed shut.

The arytenoids, when singing correctly, will work very, very hard to stay together in the back and to stretch backwards the higher you go. You should not be tightening with your neck muscles or inside your throat (with the cords) to try to achieve this. It will only make it so no air can pass through and force you to squeeze and push the air up from your stomach to get the sound out. This will cause the stomach to punch inward, preventing the diaphragm from expanding outward to create the support needed for the cords. When your stomach works against you in this way it causes the diaphragm to collapse, leaving you with no support for the mechanism. If you allow yourself to put these strains on the cords, manipulating your sound (and body) in unnatural ways to achieve a style, you might sound really good to yourself and others for a while, but you also may be doing lasting damage at the same time.

If you feel strain in any way, or soreness in any part of your throat, then it is wrong, and you are probably squeezing and pushing. Habits like this are very hard to break but they MUST be broken. The only way to break habits is through repetitive right thinking about what to do, stopping yourself when you know it's wrong, concentration, and continued exercise of the two vocal cord groups. Only then will you become familiar enough with the right way to be able to transfer over the new habits/feelings and sensations into the singing of songs.