Breathing Exercises For Singing…
For Good Breath Support!
Before we begin practising some simple breathing exercises for singing, i have to make sure that you have read my section on ‘Breath’, and that you understand how to breathe properly when singing.
If you have not read it, please click here to read about how to practise better breathing habits for great singing! You can easily return to this page through a link on the bottom of the page on ‘Breath’.
Also, I have a video here where I debunk one of the greatest vocal myths about Breathing, so do watch this video before proceeding:
Ok, now that you know about diaphragmatic breathing as well as how to inhale a good breath of air for singing, let us proceed with some basic breathing exercises for singing that anyone can do anywhere without scaring away the people around us…
Imagine that there is a balloon full of air in your diaphragm area. You can also call this your personal ‘air tank’. First, fill this balloon or air tank with air, employing the techniques taught to you regarding proper breath inhalation.
I would now like you to slowly release the air from that air tank, or that balloon of air bit by bit, through a very small hole on the balloon’s surface.
In order to do that, I would like you to just produce this sound – ‘ssss..’ – using your breath as well as your teeth and tongue. Do make sure that the sound produced is a single ‘S’ sound, and not a ‘Shhh’ sound. (A ‘Shhh’ sound would be releasing too much air and would not teach our muscles proper breath control.)
Now, let’s work on our first exercise, which is to produce this ‘ssss’ sound, but focusing on making the sound stable and keeping the volume constant. This trains our diaphragm and its surrounding muscles to be able to maintain a constant amount of tension when we sing, and also trains our breath CONTROL, so that we will be able to manipulate the dynamics or the loud and the soft of a song with greater ease. Try it now!
That first exercise should have been relatively easy. Now, the second breathing exercise builds on the first one, but requires more TENSION in the diaphragm as well as the abdominal muscles. Produce the same ‘ssss’ sound, but this time, try to do it as loudly as you can, expelling the air through that small hole from your air balloon as quickly as you can!
“SSSS!!!!!!!”
You will find that you should be unable to sustain this loud sound for too long, but you would be using more force in your abdominal area when you are producing this sound. This trains our diaphragm and its surrounding muscles to be able to handle greater levels of tension, which would be necessary for us to support the high notes in a song.
Our 3rd and final breathing exercise for singing is slightly different from the first two exercises. Look at this series of ‘ssss’ and see if you can produce the sounds that i want. “sss! sss! sss! sss! sss!”
If you produced a series of light and bouncy ‘ssss’ sounds, congratulations! That is exactly what i would like you to do! This helps us to be able to train our diaphragm to be more FLEXIBLE, and to be able to sing fast songs and staccato sections of a song with greater ease!
If you wish to learn more exercises, or feel that you need more breath training, check out this link for more advanced breath exercises that combine the above 3 exercises in various ways to further challenge your diaphragm and its surrounding muscles!
If you would like to gain access to our complete set of breathing exercises, do click here to find out how!
Do practise these exercises for singing at least once everyday, allocating a minimum of 5 – 10 minutes and making sure that the basic breathing techniques are adhered to strictly. There are also some important breathing control tips to note when practising these exercises, and these tips will help you to make your breathing training more fruitful!
You may also be wondering how these breathing exercises actually relate to how we sing! Do check out this link to find out how each of the above exercises for breathing will aid us in various songs as well as singing techniques!
Also, check out this video I made about how not to feel breathless when we sing:
Ok, enough about breathing! Let’s move on to actually producing some wonderful sounds with our voice!
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Thank you very much. This is great and very simple to understand explanation and exercises not only for singers, but also for woodwind players like me. I am a flute player and you helped me a lot! Thanks! 🙂