Ian Sidden

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On the Breath

Find the Overarching Breath Gesture

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Each phrase you sing can and should be prepared in the breath beginning with the moment of inhalation, and it should be followed through — like you’re riding on it — until the end of the phrase.

  • Determine how you want to structure a phrase in your practice.
  • As you inhale, hear the phrase (the pitches, the dynamics, etc.) in your mind and imagine how it should feel to sing that phrase. Tune your throat in advance of the onset and in reaction to your imagination. With practice, this can be done quickly.
  • Seamlessly integrate the end of inhalation and start of exhalation into one larger breath gesture.
  • Sing the phrase by shaping the exhalation with your body to your desired phrasing. Utilize both inhalation and exhalation muscles to find balance.
  • Repeat for the next phrase.

You can practice by doing simple sounds without worrying about more complex phrasing. Some body-connected sighing can start the connection. Do the steps above, just remove the music. Experiment with different inhalations and exhalations and pay attention to the resulting sound and how you feel about it.

There are, of course, smaller techniques within each of the steps above. Just the exhalation portion can be stuffed with other guidelines. But this is something of a macro overview, and the main idea is the mind/body integration around an overarching breath gesture, in which the actual sound-making is only a part.

Anyway, that’s my rough personal definition of “on the breath”.

Open Jug Breath Holding

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Holding the breath comes naturally to us when underwater or when lifting something heavy. This is the closed-jug technique (my name). Picture a jug with a cork in the top. We fill our lungs with air, close the glottis (bring the vocal folds together to block further inflow and outflow of air), and leave it at that for as long as we need to. We can relax the breathing muscles themselves since the closed glottis is doing the work. In fact, we can even tighten our abs and push.

In both of the cases I mention above, swimming and lifting, that’s a good strategy.

But for singing, this is not so helpful. We want to maintain a sense of inhalation and expansion. We want to reduce excessive abdominal pressure. We want onsets that aren’t glottal attacks.

Think of your body as an open jug. Inhale and then leave the body in the position of inhalation. The ribs remain expanded, the remains belly gently down and out, and the glottis remains open. The air in the lungs remains as long as the lungs remain open. Any collapse leads to the air leaving, and any expansion allows more air in.

We’re holding our breath, but we’re not trapping it. Instead, our breathing muscles are doing the work instead of the glottis.

From here, we can practice remaining in the position of inhalation, or we can sing a note.

Playing with Support

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Yes, that's a belly button. Sing through yours!

Yes, that's a belly button. Sing through yours!

I am playing with a few new support ideas lately that I want to describe in brief. Since becoming a tenor, I have had to really “up” the amount of breath support I give myself. Realize though, that this does not entirely mean pushing the breath out with a strong abdominal action. Instead, it means a regulation of air.

  1. Wide lower ribs. I have always believed in wide ribs, but lately I have been focusing more on the floating ribs at the bottom of the rib cage. In inhalation, I widen the lower ribs as much as I can. As I sing, I make sure that they never collapse no matter how strenuous the passage.
  2. Back breathing. Along with the wide lower ribs, I have focused more on the area between the bottom of my ribs (in the back) and the top of my hip bone. In inhalation, I  stretch this area out and feel as if I am filling that up with air.
  3. Singing through my belly button. This is one I sometimes forget about but wish I hadn’t. While ascending, it is habitual for most of us to raise our larynx. If we think about keeping the larynx low, however, we may force it down by depressing our tongues. By thinking about singing through one’s belly button, one can “trick”  the larynx into remaining low on its own.

If you are currently working on your breath support techniques, I would love to hear about them.