How to do more by doing less

When you sing, what are you feeling? Are you working hard, do you feel your whole body involved? Have you got lots of space, or plenty of buzz?

Often our feelings can be deceptive. Your mouth and tongue are very sensitive at the front, where you feel the texture and quantity of the food going into it. At the back of the mouth and in the throat, the sensation is very limited. In the larynx itself, we feel almost nothing. Our main muscles of breathing are the diaphragm for inhalation and the inner layer of abdominal muscles for exhalation. The diaphragm has no feeling at all – you have no idea how contracted it is. The core support muscles in the abdomen have very little feeling in them as we’re contracting to some extent all the time we are sitting or standing.

So the main things we use for singing – breath supply and sound production – these have little or no awareness of feeling connected with them. It doesn’t mean we can’t control them, it just means that our sensory feedback is limited.

Making Space

If you try to ‘make a space’ in your mouth – the chances are that you will open your jaw wide and flatten the tongue. This gives a great sense of space in the bit you feel, the front of the mouth. The pay-off for this is tension in the jaw, causing limited movement of the soft palate and back of the throat. Also, the flattened tongue will just fill the back of the throat and press on the top of the voicebox or larynx, limiting the larynx movement and upper pitch range. If you want ‘space’ in the throat, you’re better off just dropping the jaw in a relaxed way, and feeling your tongue filling your mouth. It’s counter-intuitive but it will give you much more flexibility in the bit that matters – the part of the throat that is just above the larynx.

• If you feel a ‘stretch’, you’re doing too much.
• If your mouth feels full of tongue, then it’s out of your throat.
• You will make the most space when you let go and do very little.

Supporting the sound

You know that you have to breathe well in order to ‘support’ the sound – but what does that actually mean? And, more importantly, what does it feel and look like? If you feel like you are really using your abdominal muscles, you’re probably doing too much. These muscles are the same ones that are used for lifting heavy weights as well as stabilizing the torso against more effortful activities. Singing is just blowing air – it’s just keeping the air-flow steady and consistent, appropriate for the sound that you’re making. A big shout needs less effort than sit-ups. Breath management is much more about coordination than strength.

And what does it look like? Can you see your shoulders or ribs rising and falling with each breath? If so, that’s getting in the way of the muscles in your neck which stabilize the larynx. Can you see your belly dancing? If so, you may be pumping more than you need to. An efficient breath in and out will use the minimum of effort: it will be almost invisible.

• Effective breath management will not feel like much effort
• Economising the effort will reduce the movement
• Aim for ‘secret breathing’ and you’re more likely to be using the right muscles

Squeezing and holding

Are you worried about over-working or constricting the sound? The best way to release tension around the larynx is to feel less going on. That’s really difficult isn’t it? We are programmed to think that the harder we work, the better results we’ll get. What can we physically do in order to actually do less? This is a gradual learning process of letting go, of softening, of releasing the sensations on the outside. It starts with good alignment of the whole body, then moves on to efficient breathing, then we can let go of jaw, tongue and throat.

• When we are singing at our best, we have the feeling of no feeling