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kate-cosette-vocals · 2 years

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Everything You Need to Know About Singing (in a nutshell)

(I made a YouTube video on this exact stuff too. If you’d rather watch that, here’s the link!) One of my top priorities as both a singer and a singing coach is to simplify the singing process as much as possible. When I was learning how to sing, I filtered through hundreds of concepts, theories, exercises and read or watched any and every video I could find on singing. And sometimes, the things you find contradict with each other, are completely off track, or are just simply overwhelming.

So, as I was learning to sing to simplify my learning process, I came up with something I personally like to call the Holy Trinity of Singing, though it has no religious connotation at all whatsoever. (But it has a nice ring to it, right?)

Throughout my years of study and experimentation, I learned that there are only three concepts that singing boils down to. And no matter what you’re struggling with singing-wise, no matter the level of your talent, you can always pin your issues back to one, two, or all three of these three components in this Holy Trinity of Singing to fix what needs fixing.

The (un-religious) Holy Trinity of Singing

(AKA, the ONLY places you ever have to look to improve*):

1. Breathing

2. Vowels (Mouth Shape)

3. Vocal Placement

These three places (breathing, vowels and placement) are the only places you’ll need to look. This guide you’re reading has to do with how you’re singing, rather than what you’re singing.

If you learn each of these three components to your fullest potential, and you will have the voice you’ve always dreamed of. I’ve written these three components in the order I learned them, and the order I teach them. I suggest you learn them in this order, and I’ll explain why in a little bit. (But again; learn to hear yourself first if that's something you struggle with!)

Now first, let’s learn what each of these three components are, how they can be messing with your vocal improvement, and why they’re so important to learn correctly and fully.

Breathing

Anyone who’s done their fair share of research in learning to sing has probably heard of, “breathing from your diaphragm.”

Breathing from your diaphragm is so important because, without it, you’ll never have enough air, and you’ll never be able to use it wisely.

Diaphragm breathing is just a fancy way of saying to breathe lower. When you breathe normally, a muscle (imagine it as being horizontal) underneath your ribs called your diaphragm moves down as you breathe in. This allows your lungs space to expand as you take in air. When you exhale, your diaphragm moves back up, gently pushing your air back out.

When you breathe normally, your diaphragm only moves down a little tiny bit—barely at all, really. It moves down just enough for you to take in a little bit of air, which is all we need to simply breathe and survive and speak. You don’t need a ton of air to speak and breathe normally, so your diaphragm doesn’t bother moving down so much.

But with singing, you often hold notes a while, and often much longer than with speaking. So, that small amount of air you usually take in just isn’t going to cut it.

Singing is literally the result of how you exhale your breath. Which means that how you breathe is vitally important! And often, even after you learn how to breathe from your diaphragm, singers will simply forget to breathe during a song. Sometimes they don’t breathe low enough, they don’t take in enough air, or they aren’t controlling their exhale and they let all the breath out in an instant instead of pacing it.

Here’s some things you may be experiencing if you’re breathing incorrectly:

- voice is too breathy

- you’re out of breath quickly

- pitch inaccuracy

- unable to maintain enough air for long notes

For tips and techniques on how to breathe from your diaphragm, check out this post here!

Vowels (Mouth Shapes)

I have a post on what exactly singing vowels are and how to form them, but here I’ll just explain their importance to singing and the problems you may experience if your vowels are incorrect.

Vowels are very important. Without perfect—or close to perfect—vowels, you’ll run into a bunch of vocal problems, and you’ll never sound as amazing as you are capable of sounding.

If you’ve done even more digging into learning to sing, you may have heard the term “singing vowels.” Always remember: although we call them vowels, they aren’t the same vowels we know and love from English class: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y.

Singing vowels are: Ah, A, E, O, and Oo.

In essence, saying each of these vowels correctly (shaping your mouth in a very specific way as you do so) forms your mouth into a very specific shape. So you can also think of singing vowels as mouth shapes.

Each of these five singing vowels—mouth shapes—are the only five mouth shapes or vowels you’ll ever use while singing. Because, each of these five vowel sounds are the ONLY five different sounds that make up every word you’ll ever sing.

(Much more about vowels in the vowels post).

So, why is it important how we pronounce words when we sing? Why can’t we pronounce things the same way both speaking and singing?

Because—when we speak, we don’t care about how our tone sounds. We don’t need our voices to sound angelic. We just need to get our point across. When you’re trying to sound pretty, however, that has to do with how you pronounce things.

It all has to do with that air you’re breathing out.

We talked about how it’s important to take in enough air and release it at a controlled pace, but we also have to consider how you shape its exit.

Think of mouth shape and air the same way sound reacts in a room. A spacious room that has hardly any furniture or carpeting to absorb the sound and no open windows or open doors (such as a cathedral or a bathroom) gives singers and musicians great acoustics. The sound circulates freely and it’s very concentrated; it has nowhere to escape. On the other hand, if you’re singing in a room that has open windows and open doors and plenty of furniture for sound to absorb into, it has plenty of room to escape. You don’t get that glass-like, beautiful tone that you get in a church.

The same idea goes for how air circulates in your mouth.

Your mouth shape is your room, your breath is your voice. The more space you have in your mouth and the smaller/narrower the opening of your mouth, the more glass-like your voice comes out. If your mouth is open too wide, that’s like opening the windows in the room. You’re letting the air escape and breaking that glass-like tone of your voice. (Not to mention causing a bunch of other issues).

Singers like Ariana Grande and Kelly Clarkson have beautiful glass-like tone because their vowels—their mouth shapes—are so perfectly shaped. They’re both classically trained, and classically trained singers are usually taught very perfect vowels. Anyone can achieve glass-like or autotune-like tone if they perfect their vowel shapes.

With imperfect vowel shapes, you may experience:

- breathy voice

- pitch inaccuracy, usually too flat

- dull tone

- difficulty singing higher

- lack of flexibility in voice

- lack of air

If you’re experiencing any of these issues, go back to your vowel shapes. Polish them up… the results may astound you.

Vocal Placement

Last but not least, we have vocal placement.

Vocal placement is simply where you concentrate your voice when you sing. It’s where you place your voice in your body.

The reason I both learned and teach this last is because you often can’t learn this either easily or at all until you have breathing and vowels under control (and my definition of “under control” is the ability to do them without having to consciously think about it. After you’ve made them a new habit).

Now, why is placement important?

Where you put your voice in your body is so important because singing doesn’t occur in just one spot. That’s why, when people struggle to sing higher, it’s often because they’re trying to sing notes that don’t exist where they’re trying to sing them.

If you’re struggling with placement, you might be experiencing:

- a break in your voice as you try to sing higher, like you’re hitting a wall in your throat

- a light, soft voice that is unable to sing with power

- a heavy, thick voice that is unable to soften

- any trouble singing high notes

- any kind of tension or strain in your throat while singing

Another reason I leave placement until last in this Holy Trinity of Singing is because placement takes the longest to master (and for me, it’s been four years and I still wouldn’t say I’ve “mastered” it). If breathing and vowels are like a sports player’s equipment and uniform, placement is the player actually playing the game. Placement is the heart of singing.

But to put it simply, you have two major “places” to sing: head voice and chest voice.

Head Voice is located from pretty much the roof of your mouth and upward through the crown, or the back of your head. Head voice is comprised of the highest notes in your range, and sounds thinner, softer and lighter. We all use head voice when we talk to an adorable puppy or baby, in that soft, high voice.

Chest Voice is from the roof of your mouth and down, and you'll feel it resonate in your chest. Chest voice is comprised of the lowest notes in your range, and sounds heavier and thicker. You've used chest voice all day long; chest voice is your speaking voice range!

The problem occurs when you try to go from chest voice to head voice (or vice versa). The point where your two voices meet is called your “vocal break”. Everyone has one, and it’s different for everyone. You'll feel where your vocal break is when you have that “hitting a wall" feeling in your throat as you try to sing higher. Most beginning singers try to force their voice up past their break. But that's called straining. It also sounds like straining, and it's almost always unsuccessful. Trying to bust through your vocal break isn't just the way to sing through your break, it can be very damaging! So, don't strain! Ever!! Because there is a way to sing up and down your range smoothly and easily! And that has everything to do with where you're putting your voice: placement.

The way to stop that break from happening is by smoothing the transition between head voice and chest voice, and we do that by learning mixed voice.

Mixed voice is a mixture of head voice and chest voice. And it is one of the most beautiful things in the world of singing, because it opens you up so much!

When you try to sing higher in chest voice and you don’t switch to mixed voice, you hit what can be described as chest voice’s “ceiling”. Pretty much, all the notes below your break can be sung in chest voice, but those above your break cannot be sung in chest voice; your anatomy doesn't allow for it. You cannot “raise” your chest voice by trying to pull or force it upward. It physically cannot happen; it’s like trying to push a car to go 60 mph in first gear; it simply isn't made to work that way, and you’ll either stall or break the car or both. How do you go 60 mph in car? You switch gears. Essentially, that's what we're doing with vocal placement! You have three gears in your voice, and it's your job to make sure you switch them before you try going faster, or singing higher.

What we’re doing with placement is moving your voice to a different place. A place where you can hit those notes.

So, if you find yourself always tense and straining, running into that vocal break all the time… look no further than this. Learn vocal placement and you’ll never have to strain to hit the notes you want to hit ever again. (post on placement coming soon!)

So, that is my Holy Trinity of Singing. I’ve narrowed it down to the only three components of singing—so, master all three of these, and you’ll have the vocal freedom you’ve always wanted.

I’ll reiterate what I said about learning these in the order I wrote them if you’re a beginner; don’t try learning placement first. That would be like trying to bake a cake without proper ingredients; it’s not gonna work and certainly won’t taste good. Learn breathing and vowels until you don’t have to consciously think about them anymore. Because trying to learn all three components—breathing, vowels, and placement—at once is very overwhelming and a recipe for disaster. (Can’t get away from the baking analogy, apparently).

Take your time with these, and learn them thoroughly. You’ll thank yourself in the long run and save yourself a heck of a lot of time. Again—don’t take the cake out of the over before it’s done baking. (Okay, that’s the last one, I promise).

For those of you intermediate or advanced singers out there who are still struggling with one or two smaller, specific issues, really, honestly, ask yourself if you’re breathing correctly and using perfect vowel shapes.

I’ve had many clients who rolled their eyes at re-learning breathing or vowels because they “learned it already” in chorus or wherever. But often, they didn’t actually or completely learn how to do them correctly—they just thought they did. You can roll your eyes at the basics all you want, but you’re only hurting yourself if that is your problem and your pride prevents you from giving it another honest look. They may be basics, but they’re basics because they’re your foundation. They’re the wheels on a car or the walls on a house (or the chocolate in the cake batter… sorry, I had to). Set yourself a strong foundation to build upon, and you’ll be grateful for it, trust me.

With that said, use this little guide any time you find yourself struggling in any part of your singing; you’ll find the solution in here somewhere. Really pinpoint what’s wrong and revisit these three components of singing to figure out what’s going wrong, and you’ll be on your way to becoming the singer you’re meant to be in no time.

*Note: there is one other place someone may need to look, but that is only if you find yourself singing off-pitch (pitch is simply the note you're singing. If you're off-pitch, you're either singing flat, which is under the correct note, or sharp, which is over the correct note). If you have problems singing on the correct notes because you have trouble hearing yourself, you will first need to look at Pitch. When I say hearing yourself, I mean that when you sing, sometimes or much of the time, what you think you’re singing with what you really are singing aren't the same thing. I will make a separate post dealing with that alone!

Any questions? Drop them in an ask, a reply or an email on my website here! I’d be happy to help! If you need any one-on-one help, feel free to set up a consultation with me!

#singing #singing tips #how to sing #sing better #voice tips #voice teacher #singing teacher #voice #singing lessons #sing

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kate-cosette-vocals · 2 years

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How to Breathe from Your Diaphragm (Foolproof Trick!) | Singing Tip

One of the first things you’ll hear when you start researching how to sing is going to be breathing from your diaphragm. But what does that mean? And why do you have to breathe this way to sing well? Don’t worry; by the time you’re finished reading this page, you’ll know exactly what all these singing gurus are talking about and why they care so much about breathing this way.

I made a video about this exact trick, but for those of you who like to read rather than watch, this blog is on the exact same things I talk about in the video.

So let’s get started!

Why breathe from your diaphragm?

Why do we need to change the way we breathe?

Well, in all essence, your breath is the #1 most important factor in singing. Why? Because breathing out air is literally singing. You cannot sing without breathing out, and your exhale, shaped in special ways (singing vowels), is what allows people to sing in a way that’s very pleasing to the ear.

So, your breath is mightily important.

When we breathe in and out like normal, for simply breathing to survive or speaking, we aren’t taking in enough air to sing. We take in enough to survive, and to speak, but not enough to sing. When we speak, our words aren’t held like a belted note in a song or elongated, for example, like in the first few words in the Star Spangled Banner. It would take you about two seconds to speak “Oh, say can you see,” but it takes between five and ten seconds to sing it. We hold the words longer when we sing. That’s one reason why we need more air than we normally take in.

The other reason is so that you have support. When singers or singing teachers talk about a “supported” voice, they’re talking about the breath. They’re referring to having enough air to, well, literally support the notes you sing. Think of it like dragging a bunch of items along the ground. If you put a tissue beneath them, it’ll rip and the items will go everywhere and scatter. But if you put a nice thick blanket beneath them, it’s strong enough to keep them where they’re supposed to be for a long time. Think of normal breathing from your lungs as support like the tissue, and breathing from your diaphragm as support like the thick blanket. If you don’t have enough air when you sing, your exhale doesn’t have a lot to work with, and when you try to sing, there’s not enough air to both sustain the notes you sing, or allow them to come out clearly. When there’s not enough air, it doesn’t pass through your vocal cords in the right way to form the sounds you want. That can make you go off pitch or throw off the tone of your voice, and tone is the really crystal clear sound you want to make.

Bottom line is, if you want to learn to sing well, breathing from your diaphragm is the way to start. The best part is that it isn’t hard and doesn’t take too much practice to become second nature. But no singer gets by without learning to breathe from their diaphragm, and when you learn to do it too, you’ll see why.

How do you breathe from your diaphragm?

You already know how!

You just don't know you know.

First, I’ll quickly explain what the heck the diaphragm is.

Your diaphragm is a muscle in your torso, beneath your ribs. Imagine it as being horizontal. You can feel it right now. When you inhale, notice that something below your ribs moves down. That’s your diaphragm. It moves down to give you room for your lungs to expand with air. As you breathe out, your diaphragm moves back up, helping push the air back out of your body. And this repeats, your whole life.

When people say to “breathe from your diaphragm,” that makes it sound like you’re breathing from a completely different place. The term “breathing from your diaphragm” is huge and a very common thing to hear in singing, but I find it very misleading. What we’re doing is really just breathing lower than normal. So, continue breathing from your diaphragm. Just, well, do it more.

When you breathe normally, your diaphragm only moves down a few inches—just a couple. It’s a very small movement. But that’s okay; we don’t need a ton of air to simply breathe or to speak. But when we sing, we need a lot more air to work with. What we’re going to do is allow the diaphragm to move further down than it usually does, so that we can allow our lungs to fill with a lot more air. You’ll quickly notice just how much air fits into your lungs and how little of that space you utilize in daily life.

Remember when I said you already know how to breathe lower than normal?

You do!

Everyone naturally breathes from their diaphragm (deeper and lower) while laying down on their backs.

Try it! Lay down on a couch, bed or even your floor. The number one way to tell if you’re breathing from your diaphragm instead of your lungs is to notice that your stomach moves out when you breathe, your chest doesn’t, and your shoulders stay put. When you breathe from your lungs (like normal) your chest and shoulders rise. When you sing, your chest and shoulders should not rise (though everything is connected; you will see them move, but a tiny fraction of the amount they used to). When you sing, the movement you should make when you breathe is for your stomach to expand forward with your air. This is showing you that your diaphragm has moved far down enough to get a nice, low breath.

Put your hands on your stomach, and notice that, while laying down, your stomach moves outward. Your chest and shoulders do not. And this happens naturally.

But notice when you sit or stand back up, you’re back to breathing from your lungs and your chest and shoulders rise again.

Why?

Gravity! For whatever reason (I’m no scientist here) you always breathe up and down, so, toward the sky and back toward the ground. So when you sit or stand up, you breathe with your chest and shoulders rising to the sky. When you lay down, your stomach raises to the sky. I’ve no idea why, but if you were wondering, there’s the general answer. (If you're a scientist and you know why, please leave a comment letting me know why!)

But now, the big question: how do you train yourself to breathe from your diaphragm while sitting up or standing up?

There are a million tricks people have invented to teach you to do this, but nothing I ever saw helped me. I tried everything on the internet, but still, I really struggled with being able to breathe this way sitting or standing up.

So, one night, I invented my own trick, and I can 100% guarantee to you that it’s a foolproof method to teach you how to do this yourself.

My Foolproof Method

Step 1 - Lie on your back, preferably on the floor.

Step 2 - Notice that you’re breathing from your stomach, not your chest.

Step 3 - Lift your chest and torso up about an inch off the ground, propping yourself up on your elbows to stay there. Notice that you’re still breathing from your stomach.

Step 4 - Lift yourself up another inch. Notice that you’re still breathing from your stomach.

Step 5 - Lift yourself up until you hit the point where you switch to breathing from your lungs. Notice this.

Step 6 - Try to force yourself to breathe from your stomach instead. If this is hard, go back down an inch, see how it feels again to breathe from your stomach. Then raise yourself up and make yourself breathe into your stomach instead. Do not leave this step until you can do this.

Step 7 - Keep lifting yourself up inch by inch, repeating step 6 at each new level until you reach an upright sitting position.

This was a trick I made up one night after getting frustrated with the though, “I can do this laying down, why can’t I do it sitting up?” I wondered when the switch happened, from diaphragm to lungs, and I found it about halfway up. I made myself breathe from my stomach instead, and then made it to standing and breathing from my diaphragm.

Note: this took me several weeks to be able to do this upright. It took even longer for it to become second nature, where I could do it without thinking about it. Don’t get discouraged if this takes a while; this is something very new to you! Give your muscles a chance to learn a new habit. Habits naturally take 2-3 months to become new habits, so it’s only natural this will take a while. Don’t give up!

This is the first step in getting the singing voice you want, and are capable of. Give yourself time to learn this—it’s a brand new habit that you’ve never done before. You’ll get it! Trust the process and yourself, and as always, happy singing!

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