Continued from page 1
Fill
lungs from bottom up. Try to breathe so that lower parts of your lungs expand first, right down at bottom. Continue to inhale and feel lungs expand from bottom upwards. The first time can make one a little dizzy, but it is only first time.
Breathe in counting fairly slowly from one to ten. Hold breath for a second and then exhale over a count of twenty at same rate. You may not manage twenty at first, but with practice you will. And as you practice, over a prolonged period of time, gradually slow down rate of counting to one second each count. Eventually, you may be able to exhale over thirty seconds or even more.
4. Breathe Anytime You don't need to leave your breathing exercises at home. Take them with you whenever you are walking. Breathe in to a given number of steps, and then try to breathe out over twice as many. It's a harder excercise than stood at home, but rewarding in development of your technique and what you can and once could not do with your breathing.
5. Breathe On Your Feet And On Your Back Standing up is usual position, but there can be advantages in other breathing positions. For example. sit down in a chair with a firm back, or on floor with your back against wall. Breathe in deeply, filling from bottom as usual. Feel your lungs fill and expand as they push against wall or chair.
Try doing same laid flat on your back on floor. After some practice, try lifting a fairly heavy object up in your hands as you breath, lowering it as you exhale.
6. Developing Additional Breathing Techniques There are only a few basic principles attached to producing good singing. The problem is that they all take considerable time and practise to develop to anything approaching perfection. Breathing is just one example, albeit a very important one.
Sometimes in actual singing one needs to get as much breath into lungs as possible within a very short space of time, perhaps when there is a rest of only a quaver or eighth note. Sometimes composer has left no rest at all but a breath has still to be taken somehow between one note and next. In these cases it is important to be able to get as much air into lungs as possible in order to get through next phrase that has to be sung.
To help with this, practice taking very quick intakes of air and then exhaling over increasing lengths of time.
During early stages of breathing development it is useful to get some variation into practice period. If you spend, say, fifteen minutes on breathing, follow general approach outlined above. After a year or two,breathe in for usual count of ten so that lungs feel full. But then try continuing to breathe in for another ten. Then exhale in usual way.
Later still, follow last paragraph, but after second count of ten try holding breath for another ten, and then exhale over at least a count of twenty but working up to thirty.
In early stages, breathing practice can seem a bit deadly. Try to get some variation into it. Perhaps most of all, make regular assessments on your progress. That will help more than anything to keep motivation going.
About The Author A K Whitehead Web Site: www.christianword.co.uk Began voice training rather late in life, eight years ago. Sings publically (albeit not professionally) and his web site has two CDs available. Conditions of use: This article may be reproduced on condition that it is unaltered and that all this information is included.
