Top 5 Breathing Exercises for Singers
No matter if you’re a surgeon, sharpshooter, yogi, ballerina, stressed out student, or singer: breathing is an integral part of life. For singers, breathing is one of the core elements of your craft, and in this blog post, I am going to be sharing my Top 5 Breathing Exercises for singers so you can build your breathing skills and ultimately become a better singer.
In my experience, breathing for singing wasn’t explained very well to me, so I want to clear up any confusion and set you on the correct path.
Let’s be honest, we don’t want to spend hours and hours practicing music, even if we love it a lot. These exercises are designed to take only a few minutes and will greatly improve your breathing technique. As a professional singer myself, I have used these exercises consistently, which has allowed me to have great success in numerous genres of music.
If you’re ready…let’s dive in!
While singing isn’t all about breathing, it is a crucial element of what we like to call “technique”.
If you are having difficulties with your singing voice, managing your breath is the best place to start.
Why Is Breathing Important To Singing?
This answer may seem obvious, right?
You need to breathe to make sound.
While the above statement is true, it goes a little deeper than that, and by the end of this post you will truly understand why this is the case.
Your breath is the fuel for your singing voice.
What singers of all experience levels continuously do (or should do) is work on their breathing technique. The purpose of this technique is to achieve a consistent and healthy airflow.
Breathing Technique
“Technique” is a word that is thrown around a lot in musical contexts, but what exactly does it mean?
For our purposes, technique is the process of doing something.
Everything has technique: performing surgery, dancing, playing soccer, etc.
A large part of musical training consists of improving technique, and perhaps the most important aspect of technique is breathing.
There are three main body components when it comes to breathing:
1. The Ribs / Lungs
2. The Diaphragm
3. The Abs
Breathing Animation
These three components are what make up the breath support system in the body.
Inhalation. This typically occurs unconsciously in the body - in fact, as you read this, you’ve probably had a few breath cycles already!
Exhalation.
Much of our daily breathing would be considered “passive” breathing, meaning we don’t think about it as we do it. However, when we’re singing, our body takes on a much more active role when it comes to breathing.
For example, as singers, we should try our best to feel the expansion of our ribs on the inhale. Many singer call this “360” breathing, as the entirety of the ribs expand.
If you are an inexperienced singer, you may notice that you can’t sing for very long without running out of breath.
Over time, and with more experience, you train your body to expand and extend this breathing process, giving you more control over your breath.
Reasons for Poor Breathing Technique
We just hinted at one potential reason for poor breathing technique: inexperience.
Inexperience
This is a completely acceptable reason. If you don’t have the training, you won’t know how to maximize your breath potential.
If you are new to singing, you likely won’t have the body awareness or strength to breathe as a trainer singer might be able to.
My advice here is to trust the process and be patient!
Lingering Illness
As we live in a Covid-19 world, many people are suffering the effects of lingering illness.
This may include issues with your respiratory system, causing your breathing to be strained or difficult.
If you are someone who is experiencing respiratory issues due to a lingering illness, please seek medical advice.
Bad Instruction
As with everything, if you have a bad teacher, you’re going to struggle. When it comes to breathing, I find that things get a little…confusing (to say the least). If your teacher has said things like “Breathe as low as possible”, or “Pretend to drink in as much air as you can”, then you probably need to re-think your breathing strategy,
Examples of Good Breathing Technique
Before we get to the 5 Breathing Exercises for Singers, I want to highlight one of history’s greatest singers: Luciano Pavarotti, as our example of good breathing technique.
Pavarotti was the King of Opera in the world for decades, and it wasn’t by accident.
He had impeccable technique and was able to blow the roof off Opera houses because of it.
Listen to Luciano sing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’
Exercise 1: In for 2, Out for 10
Difficulty: 1/5
This exercise is a very straightforward and easy way to improve your lung capacity, but more importantly, it will allow you to figure out how to produce and maintain a consistent stream of air.
How To: breathe in through the nose for 2 beats, and breathe out for 10 beats. Here’s a tip: when you exhale, create a small “oo” shape with your lips.
I will leave the speed of the beats up to you, but pick a slow tempo!
Exercise 2: Release your Abdominal Muscles
Difficulty: 1/5
The purpose of this exercise is to release your abdominal muscles, specifically your lower abdominals.
If you are able to release your abs, you will have much more flexibility and room for breath.
How to: Put your hands and knees on the ground and get into a cat or cow position. When you inhale, let the weight of your stomach help to release your abdominals.
Not only will your abdominals relax, but you will feel nice expansion in your back and your shoulders will stay still (these are both really important elements of vocal technique!)
Exercise 3: Make a “Sh” Sound
Difficulty: 1/5
The “shh” exercise is a variation of exercise number 1.
How to: Breathe in through the nose for 4 beats to allow for proper thorax (rib) expansion and abdominal release, and exhale on a “sh” sound for 10 beats.
You may find that 10 beats is too much, or you may find that it's too little.
Whatever the case, feel free to adjust the exercise to your liking! As long as you use your air consistently, you’re in good shape.
Exercise 4: Singing on an S
Difficulty: 1/5
Exercise number 4 is the exercise where we begin to add a bit more musicality into our practicing.
How to: pick any song you like (If you can’t think of one, try singing “Happy Birthday”) and instead of singing it on the words, you’re going to take a healthy breath in and sing it on an “S” sound!
What you want in your “S” sound is for your mouth to remain slightly open. You do not need a tight mouth to make this sound, and by doing so, you run the risk of getting light headed!
Disclaimer: When doing breath exercises, you want to be careful you don’t do too much at once. If at any point you feel faint or light headed, please stop.
Exercise 5: Lip Trills
Difficulty: 3/5
Ah the lip trill. The greatest vocal exercise of all time (at least in my opinion).
How to: lightly press your lips together and blow air through them.
Why is the lip trill so great, anyway? A lip trill is great for developing something called breath pressure.
Let’s break the lip trill down:
When we get it going, the lips are opening and closing at an incredibly fast rate. The breath is coming from our lungs, up our vocal tract, and finding that our lips are closed.
What the breath wants to do is escape out the mouth, so the body increases abdominal pressure in order to break through the lips.
This process is repeated over and over again, creating breath pressure!
We want our abdominals to be engaged when we sing, and the lip trill will help us to learn that ability.
Bonus Advice
If you enjoyed this post and want to learn more about vocal technique, then I encourage you to watch the video below! I find I always learn better in video format, and if you’re the same, I think you will really enjoy this video.
