It’s blog time again!

And I sit here with a mind like a drain, everything running away and nothing staying.  Just when I want to write some profound words for you….!

I never find writing easy, it is like struggling to give birth.  How do I know?  I have done it four times.  It doesn’t get easier each time; it just has to be done in order to get the rewards that I do it for so, get on with it, I tell myself!

I scribble some lines.  Tear that up and start again.

A second start!  And bin this too.

Half an hour later the bin is full of scrunched papers and my brain is completely empty and so is my paper.

I get up and fetch some water…  Come back and start again.

Speak of water; the pot plants must be thirsty too.  Off I go and give them some too.

Settle down yet again.  But of course, time has slipped by.
It’s now four days later and here I am!! Get moving so this will be ready.

So……words come now!

Doesn’t that feel a bit like wanting the rewards you get from singing, but just never having enough breath when you need it?

No matter what you try, it is stuck!

I was watching Andrea Bocelli on TV the other night singing Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera.  What exquisite sound, what an effortless voice.  And what’s so amazing is that he cannot see who he is singing to.

The only tension I saw was in his eyebrows!  If you can call that tension!

Click here to watch him on You Tube.

So what is Andrea Bocelli’s secret?  Look closely as he sings.

His breathing is easy and consistently enough for every phrase.

His in-breath is hardly visible.

He starts the phrase smoothly with total absence of tightness or gulping air.

He connects deeply with the audience, almost as if he IS them.

What’s most amazing, he can’t even see the audience!

Or is that part of his stress-less state?

Well, if it is (and I don’t think it is all there is), then nearly all singers who battle with not enough breath for the phrases have a lesson to learn.

BUT theirs is to learn it with their eyes open.

So, here’s the thing.  No matter what your singing career, what your voice/genre preference, it’s time to tear up the ‘mind’ scripts you tell yourself that prevent the natural breath from working effortlessly and do the real thing.

Three things to look for when you start your phrase

1.   What are you thinking about as you prepare for your first inhale?
Is your first thought focussed solely on the words of the song, or worse…the fear you will forget the words.

2.   As you take in that breath, are you concentrating too closely on if you are doing it ‘the right way’?  e.g. Using the diaphragm correctly?  Or breathing from the right places? All according to instructions you have been given?

3.   Do you notice if there a clear sound to your inhale, or is it slightly raspy and noisy. When you listen to audio recordings of famous and not so famous singers, do you ever hear that noisy in-breath at the start of a new phrase?  If you take an audio recording of yourself and play it back, can you hear this rasp in-between breaths?

If you find you are doing at least one of these things, there is a strong possibility you are interfering. 

You are unknowingly getting in your own way of that first beautiful sound that will last you for your whole phrase and more. Although it is subtle and you may not have noticed it before, this indicates there is muscular action constricting your in-breath from the get-go.

If you now go back and look at Andrea’s singing, look again at his whole song.  By that I mean his voice, his in breath, his inner stillness, and most of all if you can see how he prepares himself to start, you may discover some limiting things you are doing yourself to sing.

I challenge you to see in yourself, in a mirror, what you are doing that you don’t need to do.

As you expand your Self knowledge so you develop more Self healing, increased breathing capacity, more vocal strength.

As Irene, one of my students said, “When I sing if I can only breathe through my nose my singing improves tenfold.  My control has also improved thanks to the knowledge that there is always more air in my lungs than I think”.

This she discovered about herself during her lessons.

More ‘Ask Jann’ answers are coming.

Got a question for me? Ask, email me, I will answer within 24 hours, promise.