Voice Training Tips

"Music gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything."---Plato
This is the first entry on the Free Your Voice blog. I'll regularly post questions and answers regarding voice training and vocal health. If you have a question you'd like answered here, please email me at: lessons (at) reisastone.com.

Q: I keep hearing, "Sing with your diaphragm. Use your diaphragm," and I don't have a clue. Is this something everybody else knows, and I'm just stupid?

A: No, you're not stupid, but that advice is, uh, misinformed. You can't sing 'with' your diaphragm, and you can't use your diaphragm on its own. It's a flat sheet of muscle whose squeezing on your lungs depends on other factors. "Use/sing with/support from your diaphragm," has been causing misery to singers for way too long.
What the diaphragm is not:

-A "singing organ" you squeeze to produce sound
-A shelf with which you support your voice
-A something or other you can "sing from"
-Easily felt from inside, as it has no nerves running through the portion that acts on the lungs
-Possible to feel from the outside, as it has no external face

What the diaphragm is:

-A horizontal sheet of muscle underlying the lungs. It divides your body in half. It attaches to your lumbar spine, and to your sternum and pericardium (heart sac).
-A muscle that pushes on the bottom of the lungs upon exhale, squeezing out the air. Remember that your lungs are 360 degrees. When the doctor checks your lungs, where does he/she put the stethoscope? On your back! You're 3D, my friend.
-Only part of the system of muscles and bones that regulate breath and sound. It's more a 'middleman' than the "support system." Your diaphragm helps control the quantity and velocity of air that rushes through your vocal cords, producing sound. It is not the starting point.

How it actually works:

-Your thoracic diaphragm is triggered by the movement of the entire network of abdominal muscles, starting with your pelvic floor. Also called the pelvic diaphragm.
-When you inhale, your diaphragm flattens. It pushes down, moving your internal organs out of the way of your lungs. When you exhale, this thin sheet of muscle rises in a dome shape, pressing your lungs.
-You know how your tummy pops out when you breathe? That's not air! It's organ displacement. Which is why you don't eat before you sing. We'll cover that topic later.
-The more in shape your vocal anatomy is in its entirety, the stronger and more controlled the squeeze. When I say, "in its entirety," I mean the pelvic floor and surrounding muscles, your '6-pack', your intercostal muscles/your ribs.
-The more control you have over all this, the more strength and control you have with your voice.

As Randy Jackson's book, What's Up, Dawg? says, "If the teacher starts talking about the diaphragm as a support mechanism, you should think about leaving. Thirty-eight years ago, Dr. Frank Cornell at the Juilliard Convention in NYC medically proved that it is not the diaphragm that supports the human voice..."

After thousands of years of guessing how the voice works, we now have MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, etc. to tell us for sure. If someone's still guessing, they're not paying attention. Randy J's book was published in 2004. So if someone is still telling you to, "Use your diaphragm, they're 44 years behind!



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Copyright 2010 Reisa Stone. May not be reprinted without written permission