Breathing Exercises for Singers: A Crisp Guide

Perex: Singing requires a lot of effort and practice. Hence, artists resort to breathing exercises to master their craft. 

Singing is an incredibly beautiful but equally demanding activity. It takes weeks of practice and wholehearted efforts to execute a single music performance. Singers resort to various measures to enhance their single skills, one of which includes breathing exercises. Effective breathing is crucial for learning how to sing well and is a skill that can be mastered over time. Trained singers engage in breathing exercises for singing daily and build it into their warm-up routines. If you are interested to know more about the phenomenon, read ahead!

Three Best Breathing Exercises for Singers

1. Releasing Tense Diaphragm Muscles

Constantly breathing from the diaphragm is one of the most prevalent respiratory problems among individuals in general and vocalists in particular. The best way to achieve the feat is exercising the diaphragm muscles and releasing the pent-up tension. To engage in this exercise, you have to start by focusing on the muscles around your diaphragm. Then, strive to release the tension by starting on your hands and knees.

This position lets the abdomen hang freely rather than extending from the body. Then, let gravity take it from there. Keep your abdomen and shoulders in place. When you pull your bell in towards your body to exhale, you must leverage some extra strength to tense the abdominal muscles. 

If you can inhale more slowly than you exhale, this exercise is a good way to engage your muscles. Similarly, go more slowly to keep your muscles engaged while you fill your lungs.

2. Snatched Breathes

The second best breathing exercise for singing is snatched breaths. It helps you focus on releasing tension in the throat as you sing. To engage in snatched breathes, you have to follow the steps given below -

• Gradually breathe in, filling the lungs with air in small fractions
• Count as you breathe and fill the lungs till the count of four
• Slowly release the breath from count five to 12
• Then, start again on the count of 1 and attempt to hold your breath for a longer count than before 

3. Breathing Exercises to Warm Up Your Vocals 

Breathing exercises can be a boon for the warm up sessions of singers. Engaging in regular vocal cord warm-ups improve the elasticity of the muscles while removing excess mucus and mitigating the chances of vocal cord injury. Warm-ups that are particularly well-liked include trills and scales. They enable the singer to focus on particular goals, such as breathing quality, tone quality and more. 

Wrapping It Up

 So, there we have it, the top 3 breathing exercises for singing (singers)

Summary

Singing is an incredibly hard working craft. It takes years to master the art and breathing exercises for singing might help.