For months now, the Billboard chart has looked pretty similar each week, with Adele perched at the #1 spot with her hit album 21. Adele has maintained that spot for 18 weeks now,  needing only 3 more weeks to pass previous records made by the Bodyguard soundtrack and Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawaii. With an accomplishment like this, we don’t see her leaving the spotlight for some time.

As a singer, you’ve no doubt heard about the importance of proper breathing.  In fact, deep breathing can help all musicians, as it helps to relieve tension, enhance focus, and even alleviate stage fright.  It doesn’t surprise us, then, when musicians sing the praises of practicing yoga to improve vocal skills.  Can yoga really help you sing better?  It certainly won’t hurt.  But consider it your warm-up – and with any warm-up, there are both effective and ineffective strategies.  Here, speech pathologist Joanna Cazden shares some important guidelines to keep in mind when it comes to yoga and singing, as published on SingerUniverse.com.

Inside your voice box, or larynx, your vocal cords function as a valve in the airway, and they are exquisitely sensitive to airflow. They can get dry, tired, or irritated if the airflow is too forceful. If it’s too weak, the cords tend to tighten and squeeze, rubbing against each other and thickening over time. So while hatha yoga postures (asanas) are generally good for singers, the way you use your breath during those postures is even more important. Advanced breathing exercises (pranayama) should be approached with extra care.

First, the singing breath does not use the balanced, equal-in-and-out rhythm common to most yoga teaching. Voice production requires a very swift inhalation followed by a long, slow exhalation. You do this automatically when you talk, but it takes practice to quickly inhale enough to sing and then exhale very gradually. Try occasional cycles of breathing in fast and out slow during your asanas, with a relaxed throat, to reinforce this asymmetrical rhythm.

Second, some yoga teachers train a particular sequence of inhalation, such as drawing air into the belly first, then the waist, then the upper chest. These techniques are not harmful, but when singing, you don’t have time to inhale in stages—the whole breath system must open simultaneously. Again, just being aware of the difference can help you switch gears from yoga practice to vocal rehearsal.

Third, the vocal cords are vulnerable to dryness and fatigue when vigorous forms of audible breathing, sometimes called ujaya, are focused in the throat. The louder the breath sounds and the longer such practice, the greater the risk of vocal cord irritation. If you do this type of pranayama, place the friction higher, near the soft palate, and allow at least half an hour of rest before vocalizing.

In general, politely avoid any teacher who always wants to hear you breathe. Effective breathing for most styles of yoga can be totally silent, and experienced teachers can check on you by sight rather than sound. Vocalists need this extra safety to avoid drying the cords.

Keep these guidelines in mind when you reach for your yoga mat – and if you’re not currently a yoga fan, why not give it a try?  As long as it’s done correctly, any breathing exercise can benefit musicians of all types and levels.  Have you seen improvements with the help of yoga?  Leave a comment on our Facebook page and join the discussion!

You might also like…

- Do You Sing? Prevent a Vocal Hemorrhage and Keep Your Voice Healthy
- Just Breathe: Tricks for Mastering Breathing for ALL Instruments
- A Santa-Approved Warm-Up Exercise

Photo by Synergy by Jasmine.

It turns out a lot of fans want to be someone like Adele when it comes to the karaoke stage.  According to Lucky Voice, an online karaoke simulator, two of the singer’s hit songs,  “Someone Like You” and her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” ranked as the two most sung karaoke songs in 2011.  Out of the 3 million karaoke performances tabulated through the website, one in four singers chose “Someone Like You”.  “Rolling In The Deep” also placed high on the list.

Singing your heart out on stage is a great way to get over fears of performing in front of a crowd, but it’s always a good idea to keep your audience in mind.  And by that we mean… at least try to stay on pitch.  Need a little help?  We found a great article about how to sing on pitch that we wanted to share:

Landing Gently
Sometimes we are off pitch when landing on a particular note because we land on it too hard, too fast, or with too much tension.  Here is a great technique to practice called Ghost on the Stairs:

First, emphasize the problem:  Imagine a heavy basketball bouncing down a stairway.  Sing the difficult phrase as if your voice is that basketball bouncing down (or up) the stairway of the notes in the phrase.  Try to land hard on each note – you will probably overshoot pitch.

Now, do the opposite.  Pretend your voice is a ghost floating gently around the stairway.  Sing the difficult phrase by floating gently from note to note, rather than bouncing.  You may need to slow down fast phrases – that’s fine!

Now, find the happy medium between the two, where your pitch lands gently but accurately on each note.

Avoiding Overshooting High Notes
Individual, short high notes can be particularly tricky – they are easy to overshoot since they are psychologically far away.  To increase your accuracy of such notes, first hear the pitch in your mind first, before singing it.  With practice, you can learn to do this even while singing the preceding notes.  Next: If the note isn’t staccato, slide up to it so that you have a chance to calibrate your ears with your vocal cords.  In practice, sing the note by itself (be sure not to strain).  Notice where you feel the pitch.  Does it feel like it’s behind your eyes?  In your nose?  In the top of your head?  Mark this location so that you have a physical reference for where to aim when singing this note.

Repetition to Ingrain Muscle Memory
This approach is especially helpful for fast pitch transitions, such as quick vocal embellishments.  Quick embellishments don’t allow time for pitch adjustment based on hearing, so using muscle memory to ingrain the feel of the intervals will allow you to let your body take over and sing the intervals easily based on familiar feel.

Like most techniques, this approach is most effective done over several short practice sessions than in one or two long practice sessions.  Don’t try to make too much progress on a single day – just push to the tempo that’s currently just past your limits.  If you do this for just a few focused minutes every day or every other day, your brain will integrate your progress at night and you’ll find that the next day, you have improved.  Soon you will find that you have a number of vocal embellishments that you can sing effortlessly because your muscles and body know exactly how they feel.

Singers, can you provide any other tips for hitting each note with perfect pitch?  Let us know – stop by our Facebook page and leave a comment!

Photo by tinou bao, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.