Rock Singing With Control – Breath Control and Open Throat Technique
Just got an email from a former voice student who is now taking on new students of his own. Congratulations Dylan!
He asked for tips on how to teach and develop breath control for hard rock singing. Since abrasive hard rock styles (like AC/DC & DIO) require power the normal singer tries to kill it by throwing more air and compressing the hell out of their voice. Ouch! Wrong!
It’s all in understanding that the throat is NOT the valve. Here I’ll just paste in what I wrote to him:
For breathing: Managing air is the hardest part of what you will try to convey. It takes a long time for most students to understand that throwing more air is not how to create greater volume. Air must be managed by being completely relaxed from the shoulders up while being tightly controlled from the shoulders down.
Controlled does not mean tension. I simply mean that is where your visualization connects to the management of muscles. Relax the instrument and control the bellows (or pillar). It is this combination of a relaxed instrument and tightly controlled bellows that allows us to go places with our voice.
The relaxing of your pipes allows opening of your passages to create resonance — and that is what creates a brighter more powerful sound – not blasting more air which leads to drying out your vocal folds.
One way I like to help, is to have the student imagine a figure eight or hour glass. A large chamber at the bottom supplies a solid pillar of air support that is focused into a narrow opening to create a large open sound on top. Most people immediately envision the small passage being located in the throat but that is way wrong. If you constrict the air supply with your throat then you are wasting effort, straining your voice, drying out the chords, and cheating yourself out of natural resonance.
Bad Rock Star!
The small opening (or Valve) for your pillar must be in the chest area NOT the throat. First we learn to capture and store a massive supply of air using diaphragmatic breathing, then we learn to control that air with thoracic gating to provide the thinnest possible stream of air we need. Then that small stream of air is bounced off the back of the throat into the resonance chambers in our throat, mouth, and nasal cavities.
This give us a big voice with very easy placement and no strain. The resonance means we don’t have to work harder. Just keep the pipes open and let a tiny bit of air out to make a big sound. This also helps our tone to be clear and keeps our pitch on the vertical so we don’t drift. Lots of advantages when you trim down all the variables like that.
So just do it right?
It sounds simple right? Smashing air downward and holding your abdomen in a tight grip to provide steady air while simultaneously controlling the amount of air you let slip out so you provide just enough to make the sound (tone) you want while also simultaneously relaxing the throat and letting it stay wide open and hardly feeling any stress or work. Not easy.
But that is the goal for effortless signing that you can do all night long with no strain or stress or ever losing your voice!
– Start with four note scales no slurring. Work from definite pitches to slurs.
– Keep that throat OPEN and relaxed – control the air before it gets to your throat.
– Tongue down flat against the bottom of your mouth.
– Chest resting at half full – you need it to control air release – not for breathing.
– Abdomen squeezing as needed to provide air.
– Open your mouth WIDE OPEN when you sing. (You can stylize later)
Don’t worry about singing loud – in fact sing as softly as possible until you get the idea of ‘singing on the inhale’ as I like to call it.
Compression and growl will be easy to do once you learn how to protect your voice. And if it’s easy then you can do it for hours.
Peace!