This month's topic is diaphragmatic breathing. This is probably the least understood, but at the same time, most important discipline you will ever study in mastering the craft of good singing. There are several parts of your body working together, each doing it's own job, when we sing. They are the Diaphragm, Lungs, Throat, Larynx, Sinus cavities, Tongue, Teeth, Jaw, Mouth, Nose, and Lips. Mastering the technique of diaphragmatic breathing will improve your vocal skills in many ways. It will give you a more powerful voice. It will improve your phrasing. It will increase your vocal range, and probably help improve the resonance of your voice. It will give you better control of your voice.

The Diaphragm: The diaphragm is a muscular plate that separates the chest cavity from the abdominal cavity. If you are hilly supporting your voice, you will feel your diaphragm lower when you take a breath.

Since singing is a physical exercise let us take a quick look at posture. Just as baseball player strikes a particular posture while awaiting the "pitch" so as to hit more efficiently, correct posture will make it easier to utilize the muscles involved in singing more efficiently. First try singing up and down the scale, do-re-me-fa-sol-la-te-do-te-la-sol-fa-me-re-do. Do this while sitting back or while slumping first and you will start to understand why posture is so important. You probably noticed some difficulty with the high notes. This is because high notes need added breath support. Now let's do it right. Stand, stretch toward the ceiling with your arms above your head, with your hands interlocked and palms facing upward. Now, keeping your body tall relax your arms at your sides. The stretch should have tightened your abdominal muscles. Relax your shoulders, but don't let them droop. Tighten your buttocks. If your shoulders feel tense, move them up and back, and let them rest in place. Your feet should be planted firmly on the ground, about shoulder width, with your toes turned slightly outward. If you are standing correctly, you should be able to lift your toes up and down without losing your balance. Your chin should be parallel with the floor and your neck should be lengthened in the back.

Holding good posture can feel very awkward when you have held your body out of alignment for years. Once you have learned good posture, you will gradually discover how much better you feel and how much better you can sing!

Assume a good posture and again sing up and down the scale. You may find that your volume has increased considerably. This is because you are starting to use your anatomy more efficiently.

When the diaphragm lowers, it acts like a piston in a vacuum, drawing air in automatically. As the air is used, the diaphragm rises and the pressure weakens until the process begins again. This process is called diaphragmatic breathing. Singing is first and foremost an exercise in controlled breathing. This being so, control of the diaphragm muscles are essential to good singing. Assume a good posture and take a deep breath, breathing through your nose. Do you feel your rib cage rising? This is because your diaphragm muscles are contracting and pushing your ribs upward. This in turn causes your lungs to expand. Air then rushes into your lungs to equalize the pressure.

Now exhale quickly this time through your mouth such as you would do when 'breathing' a deep sigh of relief. This is uncontrolled breathing. Now take another deep breath but this time when you exhale see how slowly you can do so and maintain an even rate of air loss. This is controlled diaphragmatic breathing. You control this with your diaphragm by letting it relax at a slow and even rate. Maintain proper posture. Keep the chest comfortably expanded and high. Believe it or not, this is a fantastic vocal exercise! We always think, that to perform singing exercises, we must sing. However this is one of the most important exercises that you will ever do and you don't have to make a sound to perform it. You can do it in a room full of people and no one but yourself will even be aware of it. Performing this exercise several times each day will build strength in your diaphragm muscles and thereby increase the control you have over them. A good variance on this exercise, which will show you how well you are exhaling at an even rate, is to hold a lit candle in front of your mouth while singing or breathing in this manner. Remember to sing very softly and evenly. Any "dancing" or flickering of the flame is a reflection of your lack of control. Slowly increase the volume of your voice while doing this. If you have good breath control, the flame will remain steady.

Now let's add sound and pitch to this breathing technique. Remember to start in with good posture and sing slowly up and down the scale. You should he able to sing the scale in its entirety and hold the last note for several counts easily without taking another breath. That's because breathing the right way conserves your air. It also gives your lungs more room to expand thus giving you more air to start with. You should have heard a noticeable increase in power with the same amount of effort. You probably also found the high notes sounded better and were easier to reach. This is all due to increased air support.

Years ago when I played baseball, the coaches always discouraged their players from performing anaerobic exercises such as lifting weights. Their fear was that the extra muscle size would slow the player's reflexes and thereby reduce their muscle's ability to react quickly. Today that has all changed as coaches recognize the importance of anaerobic exercise and strength conditioning. Similarly, we do not usually think of physical exercise as something we need to do in order to improve our singing skills. I believe that to be a mistake. Exercises that strengthen and stretch your diaphragm muscles have to improve your singing skills. Probably the most beneficial anaerobic exercise we can do is crunches. This is the exercise primarily used by body builders to get those "rippling" abdominal muscles. Those "abdoininals" include the muscles that we use when singing. So if you really want to build up your diaphragm muscles, try doing about three to five sets of crunches consisting of 20 reps to a set every day for a while - you should see a tremendous increase in vocal power. Another great exercise increasing your vocal power is singing staccato. Try practicing your scale in staccato. That is keeping each note short and light.

Sing: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-etc, etc. up and down the scale.

Remember however no matter how much muscle you build in your "abdominals" through exercise, it will not improve your singing if you are not breathing the right way that is practicing deep or diaphragmatic breathing when you sing. Happy singing

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