Line: Hello and welcome to the Singing Teachers Talk podcast. I'm Line Hilton. I'm the founder of BAST Training, but I'm also a vocal and performance coach and performing arts medicine specialist. 

Our wonderful regular host, Alexa, is having a well-earned rest this week, and so you've got me. 

So today I thought I'd talk about something that's been bothering me for quite a long time, and I do mean a long time. So the subject came to the forefront of my thoughts recently because I was creating some lectures aimed at physicians and other allied healthcare professionals on specific health concerns relating to problems that are unique to singers. And this was for the Performing Arts Medicine Association and the CPD course that they're running. 

 So this thing that's been bothering me for quite some time is the continued and almost unquestioned use of the word support in relation to singing and breath management in vocal pedagogy. You might also have heard the term appoggio, [00:01:00] along with the insistence that singing is all about breathing. That if a singer isn't performing well, it must be because they're not breathing correctly. That the first fix and the default fix is always about giving more support, more breath, more diaphragm. I hear teachers tell students things like, give it more support. Support from the diaphragm. Support your breath, support your voice, support the tone, and sing with more support. 

But if I was to ask each individual that's listening to this podcast, what do you mean by the word support? I guarantee you I would get a different answer for every listener. And we have something like two and a half to 3000 people listening to this podcast every month. 

And something that really frustrates me is that this is not a new conversation. The research is already there. There's a lot of stuff in the literature from well-respected vocal pedagogues and scientists, [00:02:00] people like Richard Miller, Alan Watson, Johan Sundberg, , Scott McCoy, and Dr. Ingo Tize, and others who've been saying very clearly, with evidence that there is no single correct breathing strategy amongst elite singers. 

And that from an anatomical and functional standpoint, terms such as support and appoggio are imprecise and interpreted in a wide variety of manners. That audiences can't reliably hear the difference between so-called supported singing and simply good singing. That singers themselves regularly and significantly misidentify what their own respiratory muscles are doing when they're singing. And of course, That we have no direct conscious sensation of the diaphragm's action. That the correlation between breath and vocal quality is far more complex and far less direct than traditional pedagogy suggests. 

And yet, here we are still telling [00:03:00] students to sing from the diaphragm, add more support, still diagnosing every vocal problem as a breath problem, still using support as though it's clearly defined, universally understood, functionally demonstratable, when the evidence tells us it's none of these things. 

And I find that so frustrating. And of course It's not because the people using this language are bad teachers many of them are excellent, but it's because we have better information and we are not using it. And our students are paying the price in terms of confusion, unnecessary tension, years spent chasing a sensation that nobody can accurately describe. 

Look, I get it. Breath is rightly considered central to singing. Research has shown us that singing involves managing airflow across a broad range of changing pressures, which helps explain why it requires more coordination than simply taking a breath and letting it out. 

[00:04:00] So today I'm going to discuss what the research is telling us. Challenge some assumptions that we've inherited and leave you with some genuinely useful reframes, both in your language and your studio practice. 

This isn't about tearing down the profession, it's about doing right by our students, and frankly, by the decades of research that's been largely ignored in mainstream singing teaching. 

So let's get into it. 

So, why does breath matter and why is it so complex? Well, let's just start with the norms. So at rest we use somewhere around 10 to 15% of our vital capacity per breath. So with minimum effort, minimum volume. In conversation, we are going to draw in a little bit more, initiating roughly around 40 to 50, maybe even 60% of our total capacity. 

But singing, of course, is a very different demand entirely. There's studies that show that professional singers initiate phrases at 70 to a hundred [00:05:00] percent of their vital capacity and then terminate them at around 30%, whereas somebody who's talking or or just resting might only terminate somewhere around 40%. 

This is a range far exceeding anything that we would need at rest or even when we're speaking.  

I think it's also worth noting that these high lung volumes that we need in singing passive recoil forces can actually exceed the pressure needed for singing. Meaning that the muscular work is often about braking the breath, slowing deflation of the lungs, and resisting that recoil, which is that desire to then take another inhale. 

It's definitely not about pushing more air out or generating more pressure. 

And here's the thing, trained singers don't have bigger lungs than untrained singers. There's no significant difference in vital capacity or lung capacity between those two groups. But what elite and trained singers develop is a much [00:06:00] better coordination of the volume that they already have. 

So some key points. Nothing exists in isolation. Of course, we know that singing is a whole body experience. Breath really sits at the intersection of someone's physical stature, their physiology, their health and fitness, their laryngeal function, their musculoskeletal engagement, their psychology, their training, And performance demands and even environment. 

From a performing arts medicine perspective, poor breath management might show up as vocal fatigue, pitch instability, reduced efficiency , excessive laryngeal muscle tension, breathlessness or panic during a performance and compensatory neck, jaw, or abdominal strategies. 

Something else to consider is that breath management has to be task specific. It's anticipatory, so we have to think about it before we do it. And it requires [00:07:00] regulation and this will serve the pitch, the dynamic, the phonation, the phrasing, the emotion, and the endurance. It's not just about gas exchange. 

 So understanding this allows us to differentiate technique from pathology and to give functional guidance rather than vague instructions.  

In his book, the Structure of Singing Richard Miller says about support. Unless the singer, either student or professional, understands the delicate physical balance is appropriate to the shifting demands of breath management to call for more support only complicates the task of balancing subglottic pressure, airflow rate, and vocal fold approximation. 

In fact, it may well be that too much muscle activity is present in the torso, and so requesting more support may only exacerbate problems of dynamic muscle equilibrium. 

And he published that book [00:08:00] back in '96. And in that book, he also quotes research and data to indicate that there's a misunderstanding of how the diaphragm works and the concepts of support and how people sing and what they do when they're singing in terms of breath control. 

He also said in Training Soprano Voices, It should be emphasized that there's no way in which a singer can consciously exercise direct mechanical control over the diaphragm. 

And in 2005, Scott McCoy said, Viewing a single performance at a major opera house will confirm that successful singers do not all employ the same breathing strategy. 

So what is the problem with the S word? Well, as Ingo Titze said, support has become a catchall phrase. 

And why has breathing become so central to singing teaching? Both Watson and Sundberg identify a key reason that it's become so central to vocal pedagogy is [00:09:00] because breath is the only visible part of the singing mechanism. We can see the rib cage, the abdomen, the back. We can see these moving. We can't see the vocal folds or the laryngeal mechanism. And so this visibility has led to overemphasis. 

And as I mentioned earlier, there is research showing that physiological study subjects and their description of how they thought they breathed, bore very little correspondence to how they actually breathed. Because we have no direct conscious sensation from the diaphragm, we can only use secondary cues like abdominal displacement or movement of the rib cage. 

Back in '88, Leanderson and Sundberg did an EMG study. So this is where you put a needle into the muscle and then you can measure how active it is, during the process of whatever the activity is. And their study showed diaphragm use varied significantly between singers with some showing minimal diaphragmatic activity during a [00:10:00] sustained note and in others their diaphragm remained active throughout the sustained note. 

Another study by Baker et al found that abdominal activity reflected lung volume, not power. That the anterior abdominal muscles mainly compensated for declining lung volume rather than directly generating vocal intensity. So teaching strong or early abdominal contraction will ignore the respiratory /phonatory complexity and may actually reduce vocal efficiency.  

And as I alluded to earlier, studies show that it's nearly impossible for listeners to distinguish between supported singing and simply good voice quality. So to the ear, they're identical. And that comes from a paper from 2004 by Sonnenin et al.  

Appoggio, which is the Italian term for to lean and used probably more in the classical world, is probably closer to where we need to be. Ray et all in 2017 defined it as [00:11:00] the regulation of sub glottal pressure and airflow through the dynamic relationship between muscles of inspiration and expiration. This is not engaging your core or pushing from the belly. 

Maybe you resonate with me. I spent years, many years as a singer chasing this concept of support. I asked every teacher, I asked any pedagogue or scientists that I encountered, what is support? How do you describe it? How do I do it? How do I know if I have it? And I never really got a satisfying answer. It was so frustrating. And you know, ultimately I ended up feeling like the problem was me , and that I wasn't experienced enough or didn't understand it, or I just wasn't built the right way. And I assumed everybody else had figured it out and I was the one missing something. 

So of course it was a great relief to discover that the reason I never got a satisfying answer is because there isn't one, not in the way the [00:12:00] term is being used. 

 And I'm not saying this to be critical of anyone 'cause the teachers who taught me were doing their absolute best with what they had. But we have a lot more information now and I think it's our responsibility as modern singing teachers to make sure we use it. 

So how can we reframe support? Is there a better language for breath support? I tend to use breath management these days. I talk about breath management strategies so that we can account for all the different things that are involved in breathing and singing. Because we need to account for lung volume, task demands and singing style. 

I think it's really important when we are teaching that we use functional language. Yes, we can use imagery and metaphors, but at the end of the day, we need to help the singer understand there's a functional reason for what is going on in their voice. 

And this translates to airflow [00:13:00] regulation, control of the inhale and the exhale, making sure that we are coordinating between breath and voice requirements. 

Singing is an interaction between the breath and the vocal folds. This comes from the Source Filter theory by Gunnar 1960, and it's widely used in speech pathology. This is where the lungs provide the airflow in the pressure, so that's the power. The vocal folds modulate that flow, that becomes the source, and then the resonance systems above shape the sound that becomes the filter. 

 Something which had never really occurred to me in the early days was that different styles need different strategies. Now I think about it, it totally makes sense. So it's critical to understand that, especially if you're working across genres.  

Understand that there are up to a hundred muscles engaged in the act of singing. There's no single muscle, no single strategy, no one size fits all approach. 

We also need to [00:14:00] think about the performance context. What does a singer have to do, whilst they're singing and how does that fit in with what they need in terms of their breath management? They may need to dance. They might need to fly in a rig. There might be specific character demands. For instance, they have to be really angry or they have to be crying at the same time. 

There may be some physical demands that they have to move furniture around while they're on stage. Maybe they have to run across a huge arena stage and then jump down into the crowd, whilst they're singing. They might have to cross genres. Maybe they have to sing and play an instrument at the same time, whether that's a brass instrument or playing the violin or keyboard, guitar. 

All of these things, and probably some I haven't even thought about along with singing will have a different demand on the singer's ability to manage their breath. 

So what are some practical things that you could be doing that help support good breath [00:15:00] management for the singer? 

So I think awareness is first, encourage the student to simply notice what breathing feels like. The sensation of air in and out, the temperature of the air as it comes in, the temperature, as it goes out, any tension that they might be experiencing, and where is it? And get them to be more curious rather than correcting. 

Heidi Moss Erickson in her paper talks about audiation. So hearing the phrase in their head first, and this will prime the depth of the inhalation based on the up and coming phrase demands, before a sound is made. 

 This is related also to mental rehearsal. Alan Watson talks about practicing mentally, practicing the breath and the vocal tract movement before engaging physically. This helps to solidify and strengthen the neural pathways 

On our courses, we talk about the Underwood method. This comes from Keith Underwood who is a flautist. Shirley Emmons wrote about it [00:16:00] when she put on a workshop with Keith, where you create a fist and you suck against the knuckle, and this creates resistance so that the singer can feel this low, slow rib and abdominal expansion. 

So quite often I'll get my students to place the other hand on their tummy, on their back, on their sides, so that they can connect with that expansion. 

There are variety of ways of doing that. Of course, you can do the lying down method so that the singer starts to engage with what good abdominal breathing is, which is what we do when we are lying down and sleeping or relaxing. Sometimes sitting in a chair so that they can become aware of the expansion into their back. So we're encouraging a relaxed, abdominal area. 

And in fact, Janice Chapman, in her book Singing and Teaching Singing, she talks about the SPLAT maneuver. And SPLAT stands for singers [00:17:00] Please loosen abdominal tension. So this is when you rapidly loosen abdominal tension at the start of an inhalation so that the diaphragm can descend efficiently. 

And this is particularly useful for dancers and singers who habitually hold in their stomach. 

Heidi Moss Erickson also talks about the physiological sigh, which comes from Dr. Andrew Huberman, who's a neuroscientist. So this is a double inhale through the nose. Long, then short, followed by a long, slow exhale through the mouth. This reinflates the alveoli, clears the carbon dioxide and activates the parasympathetic system, which is really useful when you have a singer who's actually done all the right things in terms of their technique, but they are experiencing anxiety when they go to perform. 

So quite often we'll end up holding tension. We won't breathe correctly. We might actually have too much carbon dioxide in our system and we want to get rid of it. 

So [00:18:00] there's some useful inhalation strategies. 

For exhalation and sustained control. I think most of us know that sustained SS exercise. 

So you hold an S sound as long as possible. To establish a baseline. And then what I do is I will introduce a much better inhalation. So I usually use the Underwood method and I'll say, now take this kind of a breath and let's redo the exercise and see whether you are able to sustain that for longer. And so they start to connect. Actually, if I have the right kind of inhalation, then I'll have much more as I exhale. 

And this is also a really great exercise for helping the singer connect to controlling the exhale. We don't want them to lose all their air, even though they've taken a very good inhalation. If they allow all their air out immediately, then they're not going to have enough to sing the phrase or the note. 

Another exercise I do is counting. So I'll get them to count [00:19:00] at 60 beats per minute. I'll put the metronome on and they count until they get to the end of their breath, and then we'll go back, take a better inhalation and recount and see if that extends the count any further. And that has a similar impact to the sustained SS because it's helping the singer become more aware of a good inhalation and controlling their exhalation. 

Sometimes they'll take these exercises and apply them into scales. So I might take an Octave Arpeggio and just repeat that Octave Arpeggio until they run out of breath. And then I'll change the key and we'll do the same thing again until they start to settle down and regulate their inhale and exhale. And when they're comfortably inhaling and sustaining a nice long exhale, I'll then start to get them to tune into, what's your body doing while this is happening? What are you noticing? Is there any tension? Does it feel comfortable? Is it [00:20:00] easy to do? What are your thoughts as you do this? 

And so they start to recognise that actually breathing is something that they can manage better for themselves, especially when they're singing. And if they become more self-aware and start doing these exercises, they'll start to be able to expand their breath management over longer phrases, higher notes, longer sustained durations.  

It goes without saying that straw phonation, doing some semi occluded vocal tract exercises is going to help optimise vocal fold closure. And if we use a straw in water, it gives them a visual feedback on their airflow. So someone's not using enough air or using too much. It will be very evident in the bubbles. So if they use too much air, it will end up flipping back into their face. 

If they don't have enough air, it'll be a low bubble rate, [00:21:00] it's a good way to help physically regulate the airflow and to get a visual on it. 

Another physical strategy, which Moss Erickson mentions and also Miller, is Gestural Calibration. So the arm comes straight up when the lungs are full, and then you bring the arm forward, halfway is half full, and when the arm comes down to the bottom, that's the end of the phrase. This physicalizes the arc of the exhale. And for the singer, it becomes more intentional rather than accidental.  

There are many more exercises that I could mention here. If you want more inspiration, you could go to the Structure of Singing by Richard Miller. Those, of course, are more classical. And Vocology by Ingo Titze and Kitty Verdollini Abbott. You can adapt them into contemporary melodies or styles, of course, but as you do, just think about [00:22:00] what are the principles your trying to get across here in terms of helping the singer manage their inhalation and exhalation more efficiently. 

Some wider tools are things like score marking, so going through the lyrics or through the score and placing a tick where it makes sense to take a breath. There's going to be obvious places like if there's some bars rest or if there's a full stop or a comma. It may be more difficult in some passages, just depending on the piece. It might be that there's a lot of rapid lyrics or lots of rapid notes, and so that needs to be planned out a little bit more. 

We need to differentiate the difference between a full breath and a quick top up breath. 

It's important that the singer understands that they need to have a full exhalation before they inhale. We need to get rid of the carbon dioxide out of the lungs before we take another breath in. Otherwise, we end up getting to this stage where we've got [00:23:00] too much carbon dioxide and this feeds into the body thinking that there's some stress situation happening. 

 It might be useful for the singer to do some CO2 tolerance training, so box breathing or nasal breathing. This is particularly useful for singers with performance anxiety or with breath stacking patterns. 

Breath stacking is something that Heidi Moss Ericsson talks about when you take an inhalation before you've actually emptied your lungs. And this means that there's too much carbon dioxide in your system. And then this triggers elevated heart rate, hyperventilation and panic like symptoms. 

So breathing exercises and CO 2 tolerance training might be really useful in this situation. 

It is also important for us to help a singer understand about respiratory hygiene. We talk about vocal hygiene, but actually respiratory hygiene is also important. That includes good hydration, avoiding any irritants, managing [00:24:00] allergies and nasal obstruction. Making sure that they avoid any kind of respiratory tract infections or if they're asthmatic, making sure that they're managing their asthma rather than waiting until it's a problem. 

Methods such as Accent method, Breathing Coordination, Buteko method, Alexander technique, yoga, swimming, manual therapies can all support breath management from different angles.  

There was a study on respiratory muscle training. Which is supposed to increase muscle strength. It doesn't significantly change vital capacity in trained singers, but it can be useful in a rehab situation or for beginner singers. 

Okay, so where does that land us today? First of all, I'm not asking you to throw everything out because many of the strategies that I've spoken about you will have heard about, and I'm sure you are already using some that are really useful to help a student manage their breath better when they're singing.[00:25:00]  

And I'm not suggesting at all that what you've been teaching is wrong. What I am suggesting is that we owe it to our students to look at the language we use and to ask whether it's actually serving them or whether it's maybe creating confusion, tension, or frustration. That frustration that I had for many years as a singer when I first started out. 

The research is pretty clear there is no single muscular pattern for singing. There is no one version of support. What there is is a dynamic, constantly adapting relationship between inhalation, airflow regulation and vocal fold function shaped by the physiology of the singer, the genre, the phrase, the staging, the costume, the emotional demand, and the mindset of the individual that stands in front of you. 

When we shift our language from more support to, let's manage this phrase, or from singing from your [00:26:00] diaphragm to let's feel what a low efficient breath actually does we give our students something real to work with, something they can actually feel and monitor and adjust. 

And as Watson reminded us, understanding breath management allows us to differentiate between technique and pathology. To identify maladaptive compensations early and to know when our job ends and a referral begins. 

As we often say, singing is the equivalent of vocal athletics. Whether or not the singer is a vocal athlete is a whole topic of another podcast. But I think we can all agree breath is the instrument's engine. So let's talk about it in a way that does justice to this complexity. 

So thank you so much for being here today. I hope this episode has sparked something for you and that maybe you might even share this with some colleagues who may be asking the same kind of questions. [00:27:00] And if you have anything that you think would contribute and help people understand more about breath management, feel free to comment, drop me a message or share it in the comments. 

So until next time, happy teaching. Keep questioning, keep learning, keep listening, especially to our podcast, and take care.