Become A Better Singer With Breathing Training

Control Your Breath To Control Your Voice

Singing focuses on breath, rhythm, tune and phrasing. With voice training, you can develop your range, clarity, strength and flexibility of voice, using vocal exercises.

Learning to control your breath helps you to control your voice. Using POWERbreathe Inspiratory Muscle Training (IMT) as a component of your vocal exercises will help you make full use of your lungs, and how you inhale affects how well you exhale.

Good posture, strong abdominal muscles and strong breathing muscles are also required so that you have the force to propel your voice when you need to deliver clear articulation or volume. Strong breathing muscles are also essential in controlling your breath when you need to be quieter.

You need breathing stamina too for helping you achieve higher notes and slow phrases. The aim of breathing exercises for breath control is to inhale as much as possible, as quickly as possible, so that you can then release that air, your breath, in a controlled manner as you sing.

Train Your Breathing Muscles To Improve Singing

For excellence in singing, you must be able to regulate breathing pressure and airflow, going beyond basic respiratory demands. This is because singing requires a wide range of lung volumes and therefore increased respiratory muscle activity to control the resulting lung pressures.
 
Therefore, training both your inspiratory muscles with IMT and expiratory muscles with EMT is hugely beneficial. However, this research into the influence of IMT/EMT on rowing performance shows that performing IMT and EMT within the same breath cycle can impair the training response. This concurrent loading on the inspiratory and expiratory muscles is also uncomfortable. And because of this discomfort, it is extremely difficult to train with maximal effort when both breathing phases are loaded. So perform IMT and EMT independently.

Vocal Warm-Up For Singing

Just as you would perform a warm-up prior to exercise, so it is equally important to perform a vocal warm-up prior to singing.

The Flow-Ball Ultra is a breathing exercise device designed to help you control and release a focused, steady breath. Soprano Kari Ragan, is an author, singer, and voice pedagogue. She uses the original Flowball by POWERbreathe for Respiration Coordination Exercises. In fact, Dr Ragan uses the Flowball for Voiceless Staccato, Voiceless Messa di Voce and Voiced “Flownation”.

The Tyler Wysong Method also utilises the original Flowball for ‘Flow Phonation – How To Sing Without Strain’.