I have a hunch your little cyber ears perked up when you saw the word "breathing" in the title of this blog. It's something many of us struggle with. I'm going to try to shed a little light on the subject for you today. And, true-to-form, I'm probably going to ask you to do some silly little excercise to help demonstrate what I'm talking about. In fact, let's do one now, lol! 

This will help you understand a little more about the mechanics of breathing, as it relates to breath control. First, a couple of questions.What controls your breathing? That is, how fast or slowly you can realease air? When you hold your breath, how do you do it? What do you use to stop the air flow? Chances are it's not what you think.

Try this with me now:  With your mouth open I want you to take a deep breath, hold it for about 3 seconds, then release it. ............

Did you do it? Ok. Now, the question again...how did you do that? How did you stop the air flow for those 3 seconds? Without fail, almost everybody responds to this little experiment with answers like "I held my stomach". Or, if they're a little more experienced they'll say something about "squeezing the diaphragm". Actually it's neither.

The answer may surprise you, but the way you did it had nothing to do with either of those.You stopped the flow of air by pressing your vocal chords together so tightly that no air could come through. Yes, it's the vocal chords that regulate the flow of air!

Now, be sure you understand what I'm saying here. You don't breathe with your vocal chords, but they do regulate the flow of air through your trachia. When you cough, sneeze, hold your breath while you're drinking a glass of water or anything along those lines, it's your vocal chords that are coming into play.

Since we know that now, it becomes a pretty smart assumtion that vocal chords play a major role for the singer in improving breath control. In partiular, we are referring here to what we call "chord closure".

When we sing, speak or make any kind of audible sound, our vocal chords come together and adduct, or "vibrate". How good that connection is when they're against each other has a lot to do with how efficiently they are using the air we send up when we're singing.

Here's an example: Let's go back a few years when everybody had manual, roll-up windows in their cars. You're driving down the highway. The windows are up. It's raining outside. But you hear wind coming into the car from somwhere. You know the window is up because no rain is coming in, right?

You still hear wind coming in though, so you grab the handle and pull up on it to tighten the connection between the window and the frame. Suddenly the wind stops. Obviously, the window was up far enough to make a "decent" seal. It was enough to keep the rain out, but not enough to keep wind from escaping into the vehicle.

A very similar thing is happening when we sing. In most cases; perticularly if you've never had lessons or done any excersises to develop them; your vocal chords are like the window. You have chord closure, but the seal is weak.

So what happens is much of the air you're sending up is "going out the window", so to speak. It's escaping and not being used to make the note. The consequence, of course, is that you need and use more air to accomplish the task at hand.

Properly trained vocal chords have a tighter, stronger connection when they're closed for singing. The result is that much of the air you send up to sing is actually used to make the note. Very little escapes unused. As a result you need a lot less to do the same thing. So if you need less, you use less...which means you have more to spare and can sing longer without running out.

So, am I saying that better chord closure is the single, be-all solution to better breath control? No. Not chord closure alone. The key to better breath control is proper singing. Most of the problems we have stem from simply using our voices improperly. Good chord closure, for example, is worthless if you're belting everything out trying to stay in chest.You'll push so much air through that the chords will be quickly blown apart.

When you begin to learn how to sing properly, things start to come into balance for you.When your voice is properly balanced you body will naturally provide you with all of the air you need for singing.

Ok. Now I know some of you may be still scratching your head about that whole "holding your breath is done by the vocal chords" thing. After all, it's undeniable that when you hold your breath, cough or sneeze, you definitely feel something in your stomach. What you're feeling there is not your stomach at all. It's your diaphragm. In part 2 of this blog we'll talk more about the diaphragm and how, with proper technique, it works in tandem with good chord closure to give you all the breath control you need.

I love your feedback and questions. be sure and weigh in. It makes the blogs more interesting.

Keep singing,

Ron