Tips To Overcome Out Of Breath When Singing

Out of breathe while singing! No worries. It’s as common as a kid falling while he learns to walk. It’s the easiest thing to control with just little ground work on it. It’s after all about breathing we cannot live without.
If you ask yourself how to become a better singer, first thing people say is to learn to breathe correctly. If we do not breathe properly, we cannot let out the voice or sound. Without emitting the sound, there is no singing. Let’s learn the best breathing exercise to accomplish your dream.
Adjusting Breathing And Voice Modulations
Initially, let us gain some awareness on why we go out of breath while singing and learn on how to adjust the breathing and voice modulations.
Before you start singing, inhale enough air to be able to complete the chosen phrase. If we don’t do that then, we will go out of breath while singing. This is called shallow breathing. To build strong foundation in breath taking, vocal trainers emphasize on this right from the beginning.
Singing with more airy voice can also result in out of breath situation. The voice gets distributed and sounds weak and less solid. Letting out more air while singing results in out of breath and will not allow us to complete a long phrase or sentence. To overcome this situation, we need to balance breath and voice by avoiding overly solid and tight sounds. Otherwise, it can affect badly on your breath control and even damage the vocal cord.
Unconsciously, but sometimes it happens that we forget to breathe regularly while singing. We think to finish the phrase and take a deep breath. Meanwhile we lose control over the breath and fall into breathlessness situation. It’s rather easy to solve, if we make proper breathing points of the song then, we can overcome this situation easily.
Significance Of Diaphragmatic Breathing
Before we jump on to the breathing exercises, first know how to execute good breathing for singing. Diaphragm and other supporting muscles around the diaphragm are involved in breathing. Diaphragm is actually a thin sheet of muscle separating our rib cage from the rest of our organs below our stomach and intestines. This is the main organ that regulates the flow of air in our body, by contracting and relaxing as we breathe in and breathe out. It moves involuntarily as you inhale and exhale, and this causes the diaphragm to contract and relax.
To gain full power and study high quality voice, belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing will play a major role. While breathing with your belly, your voice rises on the exhaled air creating the best tonal quality. For singers who sing for longer durations, belly breathing technique will be of much advantage.
Best Belly Breathing Technique
Practice the below mentioned exercise to get used to belly breathing
- Lay down straight with your back on the floor. Bend your knees pointing up. Keep your hands flat on your sides and feet flat on the ground.
- Place a heavy weight book on your abdomen.
- Slowly inhale the air through your nose to fill your belly with air.
- Take notice of how the book rises up as you inhale the air. Once you inhale enough air into your belly, hold the breath for 10 seconds.
- Now, gently breathe out or exhale the air using your nose and mouth. You can also notice how the book on your belly lowers down. As you release the air slowly make the sound “haaa” or hum a note.
- Repeat the above process for 10 more times.
- You can practice different notes each time as you exercise.
This is considered the best breath control exercise for singers as it will gradually build the strength of your abdominal walls and retains your control on belly breathing. You can keep increasing the size of the book or books to increase the strength of your diaphragm muscles and become more comfortable in singing for long hours.
Practice To improve Your Singing Quality
As you work on these exercises, you can improve singing voice quality. This is applicable for any child who wants to become a singer as early as 11 years.