Last year, I gave a lecture on breathing for performance majors at a university voice department. My lecture focused on functional anatomy rather than technique, and during the Q&A that followed, a doctoral student asked me whether I personally favored a German, French, or Italian approach to breath management. On reflection, I realized that the way I teach breathing incorporates elements of all three.
There are a couple of reasons that I had to give this question some consideration before answering it.
First, it has now been more than 17 years since I endured my doctoral comprehensive exams, so my ability to recall this sort of pedagogical content largely depends on whether I apply it in the studio on a regular basis. I wasn’t entirely sure I had an accurate memory of which breathing strategies characterized each international school.
Second, as every singer brings to the studio a unique set of breathing habits and ideas, I have found that the most effective approach is not to impose a structured concept of breath building on them but rather to observe what they are doing, help them release any chronic tensions inhibiting their breathing, make them aware of any unintentional or unnecessary movements, and only then consider how they might focus on improving their breath coordination.
Attempting to master one or more breathing methods by rote can tie you up in knots, and the choices between them can seem arbitrary. Should you go with pear-shape up or pear-shape down? Should your gut move in or out while you’re singing? Should you “tuck” or not—and does “tucking” refer to your abdominal muscles, your pelvis, or both? Breathing seems like something we all ought to know how to do instinctively, so why have many complicated, often conflicting approaches to breathing evolved? How can there possibly be more than one “right” way to breathe?
All of this confusion can tempt one to conclude that breathing is something best left alone, and I know quite a few voice teachers who advocate a “less is more” philosophy: free up and coordinate the larynx, vocal tract, and articulators, and the breathing will take care of itself. However, as Richard Miller points out in National Schools of Singing: English, French, German, and Italian Techniques of Singing Revisited, “Pedagogical perils abound in ignoring the breath process, unless the singer has managed to achieve a coordinated breath technique through individual discovery, which is exceedingly rare. Since what appears to be natural to one singer will not be the same breath approach which comes naturally to another, a number of techniques (or great deficiencies in the application of the breath) often exist, side by side, within the vocal studio where so-called natural breathing is taught. Whatever the student habitually has done with the breath then generally continues to be done.”
Everyone develops unique breathing behaviors in response to their life experiences and activities, so each singer’s path from their default breathing habits to optimal breath coordination will be different. The purpose of this article is to define criteria for evaluating breath management techniques and to help you choose an approach that is right for you.
What Is Breath Management?
In singing, it is the breath that generates all sound. Those who hold the opinion that less is more where breathing is concerned have a good point, because when all other components of your technique are flexible and well coordinated, merely releasing your breath is sufficient to set your vocal folds vibrating and accomplish much of what is needed to produce your sound.
Anything you do beyond simply releasing your breath must be strictly for the purpose of optimizing your subglottic breath pressure. It is also very important to bear in mind that anything you do to optimize your subglottic breath pressure must not interfere with laryngeal function or dramatic expression in any way. Therefore, this is the criterion that determines the effectiveness of any breath management method: the extent to which it optimizes subglottic breath pressure while enhancing, rather than entangling, free and consistent phonation.
Optimizing subglottic breath pressure means increasing the degree of concentration, or compression, of the air molecules inside your lungs. After inhalation, this air is already subject to a high degree of compression due to the natural elasticity of your lungs. As Blandine Calais-Germain reminds us in Anatomy of Breathing, “The first expiratory force is the elasticity of the lungs themselves. This force is responsible for most of the act of exhalation.”
Imagine blowing up a rubber balloon to capacity, then just letting it go without tying it off—the air will be expelled from it quite swiftly because a) the rubber material of the balloon, having been maximally stretched, seeks to release the kinetic energy that expanded it, thus returning it to its default state and b) the air pressure inside the balloon is greater than the air pressure outside the balloon, and the swift escape equalizes the air pressure.
Your lungs function in a similar fashion. When we talk about optimizing subglottic breath pressure, we’re talking about the intentional generation of forces in addition to lung tissue elasticity that will either increase the air pressure inside the lungs or slow the pace of a decrease in air pressure while phonating. These include the following.
Forces that Accelerate the Release of the Breath
Anything that acts on the lungs to push the air out, including the abdominal muscles, the intercostal muscles in coordination with the external obliques, and the muscles that cause the sternum to descend. The normal closure of the vocal folds during phonation creates resistance, leading to an increase in subglottic breath pressure. Exaggerated closure of the vocal folds by over-adducting them or other means will further increase subglottic breath pressure, though at the expense of laryngeal function. (See my May 2014 column, “The Skinny on Weight Loss & Breath Management,” for an explanation of why this is a bad idea.)
Forces that Decelerate the Release of the Breath
Anything that holds the air back, including continued engagement of any muscle that has an inspiratory function, such as the diaphragm and intercostal muscles in coordination with the scalenes, as well as anything that slows the release of the breath at the glottis. It may seem paradoxical, but any force that holds the air back will delay a decrease in subglottic breath pressure—after all, the closure of the vocal folds themselves serves to slow the release of the breath.
Concentrating and compressing the breath requires that there be forces both acting to accelerate and decelerate the release of the air from the lungs. There are many muscles that can generate both of these opposing forces; this is the reason for the evolution of so many seemingly contradictory methods of breath management.
Achieving this in a way that does not interfere with laryngeal function and dramatic expression means that your breath management system must not:
-Create undue tightness in your throat;
-Compromise proper alignment;
-Inhibit freedom of physical movement;
-Require your conscious attention while performing.
An effective breath management system must also provide a steady flow of air to the voice rather than serve up a sporadic increase of breath pressure at moments that seem to require it.
Why You Shouldn’t Do Nothing
Less Isn’t Always More
As I mentioned in the previous section, the natural elasticity of lung tissue is capable of generating a significant measure of subglottic breath pressure—potentially enough to accomplish much of what is needed for singing. However, the ability to take a full breath and release it well depends on an absence of chronic tensions that can impact breathing as well as the resolution of any counterproductive breathing habits you may have acquired.
As I discussed in a previous column, “Let Your Breathing Be an Inspiration!” (February 2014), it is extremely common to develop muscular imbalances and habitual movement patterns that can inhibit full breathing. For example, when I first began to study singing, I discovered a tightness in my lower ribs that kept me from being able to expand fully—a habitual holding in my abdomen developed over years of wanting to appear to have a flat stomach combined with a weakness in my shoulders and upper back that allowed my sternum to collapse while I sang.
No one starts out with a pristine instrument, and some discussion and action are needed to restore your instrument to a balanced state where “natural” breathing can function efficiently.
Sometimes More Is More
While releasing the breath is enough to accomplish a great deal, skillfully increasing and regulating your subglottic breath pressure will endow the breath you have with greater impact. When the air is more concentrated, a lesser quantity of it is needed to produce your sound, resulting in less effortful high notes, more control over dynamics, and the ability to sustain longer phrases.
As every voice is unique, singers may have a greater or lesser need to focus on this aspect of technique depending upon the natural thickness of their vocal folds, size of their frame, and their body mass. But in most cases, learning to manage your breath so that you can safely optimize your default level of subglottic breath pressure will expand many of your vocal assets and skills.
Why You Must Customize Your Approach
The different international schools of singing (not to mention different individual voice teachers) have evolved a variety of approaches to breath management. When you consider that breath management boils down to a means of simultaneously accelerating and decelerating airflow in order to concentrate the breath, and that there are so many ways to do each (resulting in exponentially more possible combinations), it becomes easier to understand why we encounter such an array of complicated, conflicting methods.
Bel Canto aficionados recommend sustained expansion of the rib cage (decelerate) combined with an upward tuck of the abdominal muscles (accelerate). Adherents of the German school advise continuously distending the abdomen (deceleration) while singing, requiring the sternum and ribs to draw in and down (acceleration).
In my opinion, there is no universal means of optimizing subglottic breath pressure that could be considered the gold standard for everyone. The best way for an individual singer to accomplish this may in fact depend upon their unique anatomy and healthy instincts. In her paper “Breathing for Singers: A Comparative Analysis of Body Types and Breathing Tendencies,” Jennifer Griffith Cowgill examined the natural breathing patterns of singers in the early stages of training who conformed to different body type categories—endomorph (relative fatness), mesomorph (relative muscoskeletal), and ectomorph (relative linearity). She found that their body types instinctively predisposed them to particular breath management techniques: “endomorphs showed movement in the umbilicus area (appoggio), mesomorphs showed movement in the rib cage area (costal), and ectomorphs showed movement in the lateral chest area (pancostal).”
Cowgill does not necessarily insist that every singer adopt the breath management strategy corresponding to what is most instinctive to their body type. She recommends that the teacher “either teach a technique that correlates with the student’s specific breathing tendency or teach the technique he or she believes to be the most efficient, regardless of the student’s breathing tendency.” Either way, she concludes that “[k]nowing which body types have which breathing tendencies will be helpful for the teacher of singing in determining where to look for each student’s breath movement, and in guiding the student accordingly.”
Your best approach to breath management will be an organic one customized to your unique anatomy and behavior patterns. Restore balance to your body by alleviating chronic tensions and counterproductive habitual movements, learn to inhale and release your breath fully, and then explore a variety of ways to optimize your subglottic breath pressure. Rather than superimpose a set of strategies that is the gospel of one school or another, explore them all. Like me, you may find that what works best for you combines elements of more than one.
