Voice Lesson: How To Sing From The Diaphragm (Part 1)

and she's on my mind like oh all the time take a deep breath seriously right now take a deep breath now if your shoulders did this then you're already robbing yourself of 25 to 50% of your vocal power before you even begin to sing quick water down anatomy lesson the diaphragm is the muscle that precise within our ribcage it's the main muscle that allows us to breathe so it's like like a suction or a pump you can kind of think of it that way so when it moves down it draws air into our lungs and we can breathe when it moves up it helps to release the air or push air out air a arrow did the idea most singers that come to my studio for the first time utilize far too much but their accessory breathing muscles when inhale this means that you're already tight before you begin and you're only utilizing the upper portion of your lung capacity when most of your lung tissue is not only lower but also in the back so it's a really inefficient use of your respiratory system so the solution is to learn to breathe low and utilize the longer stronger muscles of the torso to draw the threat in low into the lungs and help the diaphragm to expand thus releasing the throat and releasing a whole bunch of tension and eventually we can utilize this to also lower our larynx and beliefs that as well giving us more space and more vocal freedom and blah blah blah one important note is that the goal right now is not necessary to strengthen the diaphragm the diaphragm has been working for as long as you've been born it's the only way that we can breathe so all breathing is diaphragmatic in the sense that the diaphragm has to move in order for us to breathe so when we inhale the diaphragm moves down helping to draw air into the lungs when the exhale the diaphragm moves up that action is happening 24/7 so the goal is to maximize the diaphragms movement in to free it to liberate for most people the diaphragm doesn't move as much as it should so by training the muscles that surround it we can open the body up and allow for the full release of the diagram today's lesson is about the 360-degree breath mastering this breath will relax your throat reduce nasality in your tone help to blend your registers and bring greater resonance it will also aid the protection of your voice and it will improve your range it's fundamental and it's important for any sample of any voice type of either sex of any genre if you use your voice professor only you need to know this and by golly I'm using this hand a lot whatever let's move on we're gonna approach the main muscle groups that you should be using to breathe one by one and then we're gonna tie it all together if you practice this every day it can become a permanent natural habit that you won't have to think about while singing let's start with the abdomen I'm gonna turn to the side so you can get a better look but you could just stay where you are we're gonna put our hands on our stomach and instead of breathing like this I want you to try to focus your breath to make your pan move forward like this and then just let the breath out as normal but I want you to really try to focus your breath and control it to where your stomach moves out but your shoulders remain stable I don't want this know it and anything else lowly let's do 10 do it with me just try your best okay right one to show us relaxed three or five six serving eight 9 you too if that was difficult feel free to pause the video and take as long as you need to get the hang out of feeling that movement in the Halfmann from the breath and remember we're not muscularly moving the stomach but we're breathing it out okay now the whole stomach belly breathing thing is very normal amongst voice teachers and vocal students and if you've taken voice lessons before you've probably heard of it but what often goes unnoticed is the back it's just as important if not more important the back muscles have to release in a fashion similar to the abdominal so you want to get a movement there this will help to immediately release the throat and also helps to release the diaphragm employee it can be a lot more difficult than the abdomen but be patient with yourself in practice apply some pressure with the palms of your hands on the kidney area and give yourself a focal point try to inhale against the pressure of your palm so if you press in well not like that but press in and try to inhale your palms off of you let's do 10 ready it helps if you kind of hunched over a little bit of course this is horrible singing posture but for the sake of trying to get this breathing thing down you get hunched over a little bit think like an old man with a cane kind of thing and one two three for by six seven eight No to now for you that might have been too fast and that's okay but just like I said with the other one pause it take your time get the most out of that back breath it's very important take as long as you need the inhale can be much slower like and then relax or even slower than that if you needed to be take your time you want to make sure that you're fully expanded also you might notice that it's your back expands with breath you might feel your stomach kind of expanding so just uh know that that's okay it's totally fine and before I have somebody pointed out because I know somebody's gonna be um somebody's gonna have to say technically speaking you can only fill the lungs with air so you can't really literally breathe into your stomach or breathe into your back but when you do this properly you'll have a felt sense of breathing as the stomach or breathing into the back it'll feel as if you're doing that okay lastly we're going to utilize the intercostal muscles the muscles of your rib cage now we're gonna focus on the side ribs here but keep in mind that the rib cage extends all the way up to the collarbone so over time this can help you to feel a sense of the chest opening up and releasing as well so put your fingertips or your knuckles into your side ribs and we're gonna breathe out side to side and then relax them and breathe out side to side and relax and people always ask is it okay if one Rios up more than the other that's typical but the eventually over time you should start to feel like they both do that this is so important too because the diaphragm attaches directly to the insides of the ribs so in order for the diaphragm to fully release the ribcage has to be has to open up and be free and flexible okay so here or here whatever is most comfortable let's do ten ready and one two three for by six seven eight No to excellent now you might notice that when we fully fully expand the wrists the stomach might draw in a little bit that's okay for this part of the exercise [Music]

Channel: EricArceneaux

Views: 3,656,480

Rating: 4.9362178 out of 5

Keywords: voice lesson, how to sing, diaphragm, vocal warmup, sing from the diaphragm, singing lesson, Eric Arceneaux, ericarceneaux

Id: -SeSL9WdVBo

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 14 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/lazybutter]

I really encourage watching his videos if you want to improve your singing. He cover almost all of the basics. It's good to start somewhere.

Just make a habit of getting yourself in a routine of reinforcing your foundation with your breath and you'll find that singing will come more freely.

Also, if you are thrilled to share you can download Audacity a free audio software that allows you to do basic editing with audio files.

In order to convert your saved audio via exporting to mp3 format, you will need the Lame add-on. I don't know why Audacity doesn't just incorporate this - it may be due to different licensing.. but, who cares - it's free!

[u/Drakonis90]

Interesting. I'll have to beat re-work my voice into shape again.

Now if only there were some male solos in Frozen! ^{goddamnitKristoff}

[u/thelonebyte]

Anyone here have experience getting started with singing? I have a music background (Saxophone, Trombone), but I'm an overall terrible singer stuck in the same loop: partially because I've never really worked at it, and because I'm slightly self conscious.

I feel like it would be overall beneficial for me to start learning somehow.. any advice?