Don’t Waste Your Time with Diaphragm Work.

It’s not that diaphragmatic breathing isn’t a good practice. It’s just not all that helpful for singing.

When I was growing up, I wasted hours doing breathing exercises. My teachers would work with me on contracting my abs, releasing my abs, tilting my pelvis, counting and timing my inhales and exhales, all this body work and none of it actually affected my breathing. However, it does have a positive effect on your stress levels.

And that’s nice. But when you’re singing, you have a certain amount of time and space for breathing. If you’re losing your breath a lot when singing, it’s most likely not an intake problem.

It’s an outflow problem.

If you have a wallet and you’re walking around with that wallet unzipped, it doesn’t matter how many dollar bills are being put into it if they are all falling out. Your lungs are your wallet, your vocal folds are the zipper. The air in your lungs is your currency. You’re either spending it or losing it. But the amount that comes in isn’t usually the issue. It’s how you’re zipping up the wallet, or in a singer’s case, how well you’re zipping your vocal folds to keep your money and spend it efficiently.

Trying to breathe correctly is like putting a bunch of bills into an unzipped wallet.

The volume coming in doesn’t matter if it’s all falling out.

Well, how do we fix it? How do we zip our vocal wallets? Learn how to seal first. XYZ, examine your zipper. Then learn how to seal on all your vowels so you don’t have some vowels that lose you money and some that save you money and some that don’t spend enough money. Then learn how to seal on all your notes: high, middle, and low. Then you can rest assured you’re keeping all the money you’ve been saving and make better choices about where in a phrase you want to invest your money.

Oh, and make sure you know how to unzip your wallet. If you can’t gap, you can’t ever spend your money on things that matter.

Listen, as a singer, I love to spend vocal money. I spend my money on big notes. I spend my money on saucy, textured details in verses like a storyteller. I also love to save my vocal money. And I save it during moments in the song that cost less. Situations like: song learning, rehearsal or warmups.

An inexperienced singer uses the same amount of money on all phrases, just throwing all their money into it or hoarding too much and never investing. Understand the nuance and make an educated choice.

If you’re like, how do you know what parts of a song to save or spend or even what songs cost? Let’s chat. I can help you become a big saver and a big spender in all the right places. We’ll break it down with a vocal map and song strategy until you can speed it up so you can do it in real time as a song is flowing through you.

And it has so little to do with the diaphragm. So stop making yourself pass out while you sing, feeling winded, and getting dried out from all that air flow. Not to mention the mental frustration with doing all the right diaphragm expansion and getting so little bang for your buck. I’m talking to you, 16-year old Dianne. Also, those 4 years in braces… totally worth it.

Want to learn more? Enroll in my course today and become a singer who is wise with their vocal dolla bills.