Singing – The Lungs

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The essential elements for singing are

  • A source of moving air – (supplied by the lungs)
  • A constricted gap through which the air passes (the vocal chords or folds)

The manipulation of the sound is controlled by

  • All of airway passages, mouth, tongue, lips, nasal passages and possibly the sinuses
  • The external environment into which the sound is being projected (think reflective surfaces, sound absorbing materials, condition of the surrounding air/atmosphere and electronic manipulation through microphones etc.)

So anything that affects any of these elements is potentially going to alter the sound that comes out of a singer for better or worse.  Some of these factors will be within your control, and others have to be either tolerated or adjusted for.

I’ll start with the essential elements since the lungs and vocal chords/folds are generally within the singer’s control, with some exceptions.

The Lungs.   

For a singer as well as oxygenating the blood and keeping you alive, the main function of the lungs is to provide a controlled outflow of air through the vocal chords.  Sound can be altered by changing the amount of air being pushed through the vocal chords.  Generally the more air being pushed through the chords the louder the sound but the volume of air also affects the tone of the sound.  Think of the difference between whispering to someone and the “tone” of voice you would use if you were telling them off.  Both of these “tones” of voice can be used by singers depending on genre a wispy, breathy tone may be appropriate for some phrases in a song and a stronger tone for others.  Usually people consider the second of these tones as a “better” singing voice but vocal contrast can pull a listener into a song.   

The lungs also control phrasing.  It would be wonderful to take a breath and sing an entire song without having to take another one.  Most songs are between 3 to 4 minutes, and technically you would be alright not taking a breath for that length of time, but the critical issue is volume.  The nominal capacity of a pair of human lungs is about 6 liters (12 or so pints), and in normal breathing you inhale and exhale about 10% of that or 600ml (1.2 pints).  However, people can force air into the lungs and out of the lungs, and for a healthy person, with sufficiently elastic lungs and the right muscles, they can probably exhale up to 4.5 liters of air.  A significant difference in the volume of air available.  I personally do not try to inhale as much air as I possibly can when I sing for two reasons.

  • You need to be able to control the outflow, and when you have inhaled every last ml of air that is hard/impossible to do.
  • It takes to long to fill your lungs when you are singing a song. 

The second part of using the lungs is controlling the outflow across the vocal chords.  This sounds easy but its more difficult at the end of the breath and it does require both muscle control in the abdomen and throat as well as consistency of position for the vocal chords.

The mechanics of using the lungs to sing can be affected by lots of things some of which you can control and some you cannot

Physical body type affects lung capacity and you can look up what physical and body type features affect it.  Some are controllable (like high waist to hip ratio) others like height are not.

Disease, injuries and medical conditions can affect lung capacity some permanently, others temporarily.   For temporary respiratory symptoms I would always cancel a performance, in part because I am often close to my audiences and I would not want to infect them, but also because the performance would always have to be amended to accommodate the problems with breathing  

Posture is critical for singing and I will talk more about it in another blog, but it does significantly affect the lungs and the ability to control the volume and flow of air.  I always stand even if rehearsing.  Try leaning back on a high backed chair and see how it affects you ability to inhale and sing versus sitting upright with you back not touching the back rest

Training is very important for developing the techniques and building the muscles for good breathing control.   I do not perform specific breathing exercises but I do sing songs that I know require good breath control and incorporate longer phrases that require me to control the end of the breath.  For instance the chorus of the song “ I will take you home again Kathleen” last two lines are 

“And when the fields are fresh and green

I will take you back again Kathleen”

This can be sung with a break after the word green or you can hold the word green through and blend into the next phase without taking a break.   Using this phrasing helps to train the voice to keep the flow of air going even when you are getting short of breath particularly if you hold both the word “green” and “Kathleen” longer than their standard note value.

The positioning the vocal chords will affect the flow of air and the sound produced.  We naturally position our vocal chords to make sounds and I will discuss that in another blog, but the neck muscles do impact how air travels across the vocal chords.  Twisting the neck or moving the chin down or up will impact the flow of air as will tensing the shoulders and neck.   We do these things often without thinking, for instance if you move your head to read music from a book you influence the sound in several ways.   The movement probably alters the position of the vocal chords, may restrict the airflow before or after it reaches the vocal chords, the sound will be directed towards your book rather than the audience.  More on this when we discuss the vocal chords in a later blog.  

Singing regularly is not only important for learning and rehearsing songs but also to develop the control of breathing and airflow over the vocal chords.  Before I sing a song,  I usually exhale as much as I can and breath in deeply a couple of times.  Then I take a deeper breath than normal but not trying to fill my lungs to capacity.   Thereafter during the song, the breaths are shallow about the same depth as normal breathing when resting.   On long phrases I might have to keep the air flow constant by pulling in the Abs to force the air out of the lungs.  Of course it helps if you can stand reasonably still when singing, but if you genre requires you to move around or dance as you are singing then breath control become even more important because your lungs are providing your muscles with the air they need, as well as keeping the airflow moving across the vocal chords.

When looking at the phrasing of a song I tend to establish first how I want it to be phrased, and then work out how to control the breath to make that phrasing happen.   If it is not possible to phrase it how I want, then I try to identify which phrases need continuity and where I can take a smaller breath.  It is often possible to take a very shallow breath at then of a word without it even sounding like you stoped singing.

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