If you run out of breath here, look earlier

A singer can run out of breath halfway through a phrase.

The obvious response is to find a place to breathe just before the problem.

Sometimes that works.Sometimes the problem started much earlier.

 I was working with a singer recently who kept arriving at one section with very little left in the tank. We could have treated that as a local breathing problem.

Instead, we looked backwards.

She had been taking small or compromised breaths in several earlier places. None of them was disastrous on its own, but by the time she reached the difficult phrase she was already operating with very little margin.

The crisis was happening now. The cause had happened earlier.

I said something in the lesson that I rather like as a troubleshooting idea: “If you run out of breath somewhere, look two sentences back.”

Not as an absolute rule. Singing is rarely that tidy. But as a diagnostic tool, it is extremely useful.

Where did the breath debt begin?

Did you finish a long note and stay physically “hovering” over it instead of letting go and breathing?
Did you hold a word longer than the music really needed?
Did you miss an earlier opportunity because the punctuation suggested you should carry on?
Did you take several tiny breaths when one useful breath would have done the job?

Once we found some of those earlier moments, the difficult phrase changed without us doing very much to the difficult phrase itself.

Here’s the part I find interesting. We often treat technical problems at the point where we notice them.But singing is sequential. What happens now has been influenced by what happened five seconds ago.

 The same is true of register, tension, resonance and articulation. If you arrive at a note already working too hard, the note may not be the cause.

So next time you run out of breath, do not automatically stare at the place where the breath disappeared.

Rewind.

You may find that the real solution is hiding several bars earlier.

 

If this blog changes your breathing pattern, book a session and discover more about your own breath use here