A Series On Cliched Expressions in Voice Lessons

In singing lessons, voice teachers use a bunch of cliched sayings that seem wacky at first glance.  “Breath from your toes” and “Sing like you speak” are some of my personal favorites in terms of the physical impossibility.  Yet these phrases have very specific uses in voice lessons that DO help students figure out how to sing, if used appropriately.
 
Before we get into one of these phrases, I do want to say that teaching voice is as much a psychological effort as it is a mechanical effort.  While our instruments, our voices, all work in the same way (generally speaking), our brains decidedly do not.  So much of teaching is understanding how your voice student thinks and interprets the information you are giving them in voice lessons.  One phrase may be incredibly beneficial to one student and do absolutely nothing for another student.
 
The first phrase we will discuss is one that has several variations on breathing.  If you have taken voice lessons, at some point you heard “Breath from your stomach/toes/whole body etc…”  We know that this is a physical impossibility.  We take air into our lungs.  It is impossible for the body (and probably dangerous!) to breath into our stomachs or any other body part!
 
But this phrase is used by almost all voice teacher.  What gives?  Well, to understand the phrase, you have to understand there are two types of breathing, both used for different purposes.  The first type of breathing is anaerobic.  Anaerobic breathing is when you take a quick gulp of air, typically gasping for air when you are exercising.  It is designed to take in as much air as possible in a short period of time.  For obvious reasons, that is pretty valuable for activities such as running or playing a sport.  However, anaerobic breathing is less useful for singing, which is why we use aerobic breathing.
 
Aerobic breathing is when we take a long, deep breath.  It requires our diaphragm to descend and push other internal organs out of the way so that our lungs can taken in a full tank of air.  This sort of breathing is much slower than anaerobic breathing, which makes it less useful for sports but of much greater use when activities are endurance-based.  Singing, for the most part, is an endurance test.  You know when you will breath and generally are singing at a slow enough pace to take an aerobic breath.  Finally, aerobic breath has a huge singing benefit in that it actually EXPANDS your vocal range by relaxing the larynx, allowing you to sing higher pitches.  Breathing correctly actually increases your vocal range!
 
In voice lessons, using the phrase “breath from your stomach” or any other variation is simply a tool a voice teacher uses to encourage aerobic breathing.  The phrase encourages students to take a slow, deep, relaxing breath that encourages the diaphragm to descend and make way for lungs to fully expand with air.  And when this all occurs, students do see their stomach move from the breath because they are displacing that organ so the lungs can take in a full breath.
 
My next post will be on personal favorite phrase – “Sing like you speak!”  Until then!