Ep 3 Live Q&A – March 6 2019 – How can I get better breath control?

Mike Elson: Yeah, right. So, question number two is, how can I get better breath control? This one comes from [Angelique Daily 00:12:46]. Thanks for writing. Hopefully, I got your name right. Thank you so much. This is continuing on. We’re chaining these questions but this is the next question in line. So, how do you get better breath control?

Matthew Edwards: Great. So, we’ve done those first two steps. The first step is breathing like you have something important to say. The second step is starting to do controlled inhalation and exhalation exercises to start building up the coordination of your respiratory system. Then the next thing we want to do is start learning how to manage the pressure that is inside of our lungs over time, okay? So, we’re going to go back to using this balloon. When I fill the balloon all the way up, at this moment I have the maximum amount of air that this balloon can handle and I’ve got the maximum amount of pressure inside of this balloon that it can handle. That, therefore, gives maximum amount of pressure beneath the valve which right now is my fingers on the stem of the balloon. When we’re singing, the valve is going to be the vocal folds and how the vocal folds sing. All right? We have a visitor. I know.

Mike Elson: Yes.

Matthew Edwards: I’m going to give you our first visitor. This is a future singer. He’s disappeared over here, but future singers in training.

Mike Elson: Awesome.

Matthew Edwards: There we go. All right. He’s going to go back and take his bath. All right. So, here we go with the balloon that’s full of air, full of pressure underneath the lungs, underneath the vocal folds. If you just start singing and letting go, all this air is going to try to escape at once. It’s just going to automatically go down, okay? We can’t let that happen if we have to sing a four-measure or eight-measure phrase. We have to figure out some way to do what most pedagogues call resisting the collapse, okay?

Matthew Edwards: So, the idea is that inside of our lungs, yes we have this balloon.

Mike Elson: You’re building up pressure and then you’ve got resistance at the valve.

Matthew Edwards: Right. So, what we have is that the lung is attached to our rib cage through what’s called the pleural sac. It’s a little mucous membrane that helps attach it to the ribs. If the rim stays out, it’s going to hold on to that lung and it’s going to help keep the expansion so the air doesn’t rush out as quickly as if I crushed it in between my ribs, okay?

Matthew Edwards: So, one of the first things that we see happening with the beginning singers is they inhale, they fill up their balloon and then they crush on top of it right away and all the air comes out, right? That happens. You see the ribcage swing up and then it comes back in, so we get … and everything collapses back in. So, what we want to then start doing is teaching them to resist the collapse. So, this goes back to that counting idea that when you’re on that exhale for 10, what you’re going to do is try to hold your ribcage up. You’re going to basically ignore your abdominal wall for now and just focus on keeping the ribs up and out. So, we would inhale in-

Mike Elson: Right. I got to stand up.

Matthew Edwards: Then you’re going to keep holding it out as long as you can and you’re going to try to keep those ribs all the way out, right? So, when you first start to do this, you’re going to notice that they really want to snap back in and it’s going to take some training. The ribs that you were strengthening are called the external intercostal muscles inside the rib. You ever eat ribs, Mike?

Mike Elson: I love baby back ribs.

Matthew Edwards: Good.

Mike Elson: I want my baby … wait, I don’t think I can sing that.

Matthew Edwards: Probably not. The next time you’re eating some baby back ribs, you have to remember that you’re eating the intercostal muscles of a pig, okay?

Mike Elson: Yummy.

Matthew Edwards: A lot of singers realize that and they never eat ribs for quite a while after that. Those are what the muscles look like inside of the body. They’re these little teeny muscles in between the ribs. So, you’re training them and coordinating them and strengthening them by resisting the collapse, okay? So, after a while, let’s say we’ve learned to resist the collapse and we can now keep our balloon deflating ever so slowly.

Matthew Edwards: What’s going to happen though is that the beginning of this air releasing, there’s so much air pressure, it’s just going to speed out and you can’t really hear it but the pitch of the balloon is slowly dropping and that’s because what happens is as you start to use up some of the air inside of the lung or the balloon, the air pressure starts to drop and the volume a lot of times will drop or the pitch will drop. At that point in time is when we have to apply the active force that Thomas Hixon is talking about. The best way for a singer to do that is to start contracting their abdominal wall which then pushes their guts, all the … what I call the zombie food. You a Walking Dead fan?

Mike Elson: Yeah.

Matthew Edwards: Yeah. You watch Walking Dead, they always go to the stomach when they catch one of the people, right? So, the zombie food and you take your abdominal wall and you push it. As you push it in, it starts to accelerate the airflow. So, we can listen. I’m going to not really squeeze much. You can hear it kind of pitch up.

Mike Elson: That’s active contraction.

Matthew Edwards: That’s active force.

Mike Elson: Active force. Right.

Matthew Edwards: Or active contraction. Works as well because you’re actively trying to contract that lung instead of letting nature just take its course, okay? So, the idea is, is that when we sing a phrase at the beginning, we don’t need to apply active force because those vocal folds are already valving that air, trapping it inside of the lungs and your ribcage is already trying to recoil back in, the hundreds and millions of little balloons, the alveoli in your lungs are trying to collapse back in, so your body is naturally going to release air, but once it starts reaching that equilibrium point where your lungs aren’t overinflated, you’re going to have to use a little bit of contraction from your abs to start to accelerate that air. So, if I took a beginning pitch here … I’m going to try to sit on the edge of my chair.

Matthew Edwards: I’m going to show you. We’re going to start off just resisting everything down here. Lower just a little bit. So, I’m just relaxing my abs, going to keep my ribcage out. In the beginning, I’m just going to be feeling that everything is going out that way, out this way and as I start to feel that my volume level is dropping or the pitch is dropping, I’m going to start to contract my a little bit while I keep my ribcage out. So, here we go. (singing)

Matthew Edwards: Then we go to the end of it. Clearly out of practice, but that’s the gist of it is that you start by resisting that collapse. You don’t have to do anything and then once I started feeling, “Wow, it’s really going south.”, I started to apply active force to lift it back up so that I can maintain amplitude and pitch. That is the next level of learning to control your breath after you’ve learned to breathe like you’re saying something important and you’ve learned to start controlling the amount of time that you take to inhale, hold your breath and exhale.

Mike Elson: Sure. One thing to add to that that I’ve done because it does get as I practice this exercise, it gets boring to sing it on the same pitch as to make it interesting as take the pitch and you do it up three notes, do re mi, or you do, do re mi fa so or you do the full octave as you build up the skill and you change the pitch as you’re actually practicing release, right? It adds a little extra variable of difficulty to it and then obviously change keys as well as modifying the scale. So, you can do different parts of your voice and that will increase your ability to gain that control of your breath.

Matthew Edwards: Yeah. If you do this and I mean that’s a good point about it being boring and whatnot. If you do it at five minutes intervals throughout your day, you do a little bit in the morning while you’re doing whatever, making your bed and you’re trying to breathe and maintain your breath support. You do it while you’re putting on your eyeliner [inaudible 00:20:27]

Mike Elson: Just folding your laundry is … that’s like, “Oh man.” I mean I know a lot of … everyone has to fold the laundry unless you just live out your laundry basket, but you’ve got the laundry. That’s a perfect time where you got 10 minutes to do some vocalese and work on stuff.

Matthew Edwards: What’s nice about it is that when you were doing something like an activity like folding your laundry, it helps you not focus as much as what’s happening in your throat. You end up focusing on the breath component and then doing your activity. A lot of times that can help people relieve tension. Everyone’s individual but it can actually have a good benefit. No joke. I broke a lot of my tongue tension folding laundry and doing dishes while singing.

Mike Elson: Awesome.

Matthew Edwards: Right? [crosstalk 00:21:07]

Mike Elson: I don’t know how I knew that but I just knew that. That just like the good few for … if you got that one exercise you’re like, “Oh man, I don’t want to practice that exercise.” Do it while you fold your laundry this week. I’m telling you changes it immediately.

Matthew Edwards: It does. It changes your mindset and that can lead to breakthroughs.

Mike Elson: Yep.

Matthew Edwards: Definitely. So, I think the next question and starts diving up the layer-

Mike Elson: [crosstalk 00:21:28] Okay.

Matthew Edwards: … which takes us to the vocal folds, correct?