Breathing is the most important component in singing ? (Chapter 2)
To carry on the last blog post, I said that some people are still having insufficient breath support even though they had inhaled deeply. It seems to be very contradictory, but the fact is, some people are really having this problem.
When you are having a good standing posture, your chest is stayed comfortably high and inhaled deeply, you might still be short of breath to sing due to some other reasons ...
Issue (1) ：Insufficient Closure/Adduction of Vocal Folds
I have mentioned that other than focusing on breathing when you sing, phonation system is also an important component. Vocal folds are one of the most important part in phonation system.
If there is insufficient closure of vocal folds, they cannot "resist" to the airflow exhaled, causing air leakage and vocal folds are blown apart. It results that you cannot produce the normal "frequency" with vocal folds vibration and making a beautiful voice/sound.
<Vocal folds open in V-Shape during Inhalation>
That is why you need to inhale once again quickly even you have taken a deep breath. You will then produce a breathy tone, instead of a bright and firm tone.
If you find you have this issue, don't worry, this can be fixed by doing some vocal exercises.
<Vocal folds close when you speak or sing>
Exercise 1 ：
Close your mouth. Making a Mm sound from lower range to higher range. As we do not need to open the mouth, it prevents from air leakage and also train the coordination of vocal folds, making them moderately closed.
Exercise 2 ：Singing G-ah (G consonant + AH vowel) in the following scale pattern:
Sol-fa names
do mi so do do do do so mi do
Simplified numeric notes
· · · ·
1 3 5 1 1 1 1 5 3 1
Actually there are also many other funny vocal exercise. I might introduce soon.
Issue (2) ：Horizontal (Narrow) Embouchure
We need to open our mouth to sing, and open even more with larger vocal tract space when singing higher notes. However, the embouchure should not be too narrow. If we open the mouth horizontally, we cannot making a pleasing voice. In addition, it causes air leakage, resulting throat and tongue tension.
In contrast, we need to keep a much "round-shaped" embouchure which enables the sound to be more focused and prevents from air leakage. In addition, we need to "drop more jaw" when we sing. The voice will then be firmer and as there is no tongue tension, our voice will not be caged in the oral cavity. We can then project a beautiful voice from our mouth.
When you are doing vocal exercise, keep looking at the mirror to see whether the embouchure is too narrow (horizontal), whether you have dropped the jaw. If you have jaw tension, that is because you rarely train the jaw. You need to train it more and make it to relax.
That is why one of the Hong Kong female singer has a nickname called "goldfish's mouth". 😄
