nice post Felipe.

"Support" is absolutely a holding-back of air pressure, so that vocal folds are free of the burden of working as an air-pressure-control valve. They like low pressure & steady flow, and the "big muscles" of lower ribcage /diaphragm need to work to sustain that over a phrase ... I'm glad more folks recognize this; "Sing from diaphragm" doesn't mean "push tons of air out"; that only gets vocal cords dry and tired and stiff!

lots of knowledge here, I like it.

"This sense of suspension should work together with your emission"... that just sounds completely disgusting!!!!

Anyways, if there any proof that physical exercises like situps and working out in general help these muscles or are they mainly developed from musical training? (Obviously they will probably help but to any significant degree?)

I have noticed that my voice tends to be a bit wobly. I don't know how well trained singers can hold a pitch but mine jumps around sometimes almost half a tone. It's much harder to hold a pitch pure the lower it is for me and any stomach movements change the pitch easy(But I can get some nice vibrato by using my hand on my stomach ;/).

Last edited by Stretto (2012-02-24 09:21:22)

Heavy-duty sit-ups & crunches can actually make breath support harder, b/cz the outer ab muscles overpower both the diaphragm and the deepest layer of abd wall ("transverse" muscle, running between the hips) that is most useful for breath stability. 

The "sucking in while singing" sensation refers to the feeling of staying expanded inside. In order to exhale just a little bit, sensation can be of inhaling while singing. Inflating the body from inside even while a little air is coming out through the voice ... This is the opposite of muscling up to push air out  ... but is the best way to stabilize tone and pitch in the long run.

Good support technique is to make it easier to have control over finely metered air, which will make pitch control much easier, high notes much easier and singing overall much easier. The vocal folds are tiny and not nearly as strong as our big powerful breathing muscles. Providing them precise amounts of "needed" air frees them up so they can do their thing, which is fragile and precision coordination. Otherwise they are having to brace against hurricane force winds.

A liberal use hyperbole, but what the heck.

By the way, I like to call it breath management. Inhale freely, controlled exhalation. There's a bunch of different ways to describe the sensation or the idea. You're not holding your breath, you're not releasing it all at once, either. But a happy comproimse in between.

Stretto,
You should do a forum search for everything Steven Fraser has written about breath management, support, etc. He writes about it in great detail… mechanics, sensations, exercises for developing it.

I’m a work in progress, as it seems you never perfect breath management, but continuously make noticeable improvement. Everyone’s sensations are different, but there are some basics you can work on.

For example, here is my take on it. You want a posture that gives you the best leverage over your diaphragm. Take a diaphragmatic breath keeping a noble chest with your floating ribs expanded. As you are releasing air, you use indirect musculature to help hold back the involuntary and powerful diaphragm muscle. The right posture helps that. If you aim to keep your floating ribs expanded as long as possible as you exhale, you have intercostal rib muscles helping and your solar plexus should kind of bulge. The lower abs will move inward in a continuous movement as the SP is bulging. What you don’t want to feel is a locking up rigidity to those muscles. It should be a continuous flexible movement.

People describe this feeling different ways including a sense of holding the breath back or the sensation of inhaling, sipping the air back, even though you are actually expelling it.

There are several exercises that Steven has posted that should help you.

Mark Baxter, a singing coach, talks about the delicate dance between the vocal cords and the breath. He likes to describe it as allowing the very quick and instinctive vocal cords to tell the breath mechanism how much it needs at any given time. It knows better than our conscious brain. What we do is get in the way and over rule what it already knows how to do.

Add to that, we consciously get in the way of our internal voice mechanism with commands to our external muscles around the voice box trying to help them make sounds, but in reality sabotaging the process.

People often use the example of how efficient babies breathe and how they scream all kinds of pitches. It’s only as we get a little older, we learn to override our natural “talent”.

Stretto, you said that you breath from the stomach, except for really big breaths. To me, it sounds like you are already breathing correctly.

Jaime Vendera says that when singing, one should feel like you are gently trying to drop a deuce.

The best way I can describe it is let the note control your breath pressure. That is, you are not pushing hard enough to lift a volkswagen. Feel how your belly moves when you speak. Singing is incrementally a little more controlled than that and for a longer duration.

Last edited by ronws (2012-03-01 00:48:35)

And actually, I may be the worst one to try and describe what the proper sensation is because I have been singing for a long time and what feels natural for me can be a struggle for someone going through it from the start. The one habit I have had to break is to quit trying to sound like a baritone because I am not a baritone. I don't have a 4 or 5 octave range. I have about 2.5 octaves, possibly a little more on certain days. And I am okay with that, as long as I can be strong and connected throughout the range that I have.

But I do like the way Frisell describes the concentrated air stream as one ascends the scale.