Breath | Ian Sidden

Breathing for Singing: The Vocal Contest

By maintaining the feeling of inhalation while you’re exhaling, you can protect your vocal folds and maintain a beautiful tone. This is often called breath support, the vocal contest, or “la lotta vocale”.

Breath as Relaxation

The main point I took away from a lesson with Dr. Martha Rowe was to use the breath as a moment of relaxation. This really worked for me.

Weekly Gathering

The Weekly Gathering (named after a singing concept taught to me by my current teacher) will feature some of the better singing and music articles I’ve found around the web in the previous week.

From Classical Singer Magazine: The Legacy of Richard Miller

NPR’s Report on Better Breathing: Baby Steps to Better

Move your Ribs!

Basics of Inhalation

When you inhale several events happen at once:

The diaphragm contracts and pushes your viscera out of the way. This causes the lungs to expand downward and in so doing, creates a vacuum in the lungs that allows air to come rushing in. Several sets of muscles including the

Ideas of the Week

So I am cycling through a couple of major ideas this week that I will describe in brief.

Soft belly. Through work by myself, with my teacher, and my students, I have found that really committing to having soft abdominals will force a singer to find deeper and more profound support.