Tag: breathing technique

Trust Your Training

Life keeps sending me the same message: trust your training. Imposter syndrome is strong in the music community and I’m no exception. I wanted to let you know what happened to me recently to send me that message, once again.

The Proposal

A couple of weeks ago, the producer asked me to conduct for the pit orchestra for Kim Moore’s Phantom of the Opera. I hadn’t touched a conductor’s baton since college. We won’t talk about how many years ago that was. I turned them down because I don’t have much experience conducting.

I had been playing flute with that acting troupe for the past two years. There were times, as first chair, that it was my role to jump in and help with rehearsals. She called back and explained that they were so impressed with my ability to help with rehearsals that they wanted me to conduct. She pointed out that I have the training and I help people practice all the time as a teacher, I just need to trust my training.

She was right. I am good at helping people practice because of my interest in practice techniques. I also rehearse people every day as part of my job as a flute and piano teacher. My husband and I discussed it, and we decided to go for it. After all, I am technically fully qualified for the position. Also, I have a tendency to underestimate my abilities.

Several Weeks of Nervousness

When I got all of the information about the conducting position, they told me that I also had to rehearse the singers. I wasn’t just the pit orchestra conductor, I was the music director. AAAAHHH!!!

If you’ve read my post about singing, you know that I absolutely love to sing, but I’ve only recently overcome my insecurities about it. I have good reason for those insecurities.

What if I messed up? What if someone called me out on a mistake that I didn’t realize I did? What if they could tell that I haven’t worked with a choir in a very long time?

Reminding Myself To Trust my Training

When I was in college, I was required to take three courses on teaching people to sing and how to conduct a choir. Since then, I’ve been to educational workshops and had many in-depth discussions with a few friends who are professional singers. Flutes and singers have a lot in common with tone production and breathing. Even James Galway has mentioned that he’s interviewed famous opera singers to help him with his tone and vibrato.

I’m a Lutheran, and we’re famous for being the best in the world at teaching choirs to sing. In addition to the “street cred” that I get for being a Lutheran in the world of music, the information isn’t limited to music world. I even saw information on that little factoid on the travel channel. It’s a bit of a mystery why we’re so good at teaching people to sing, but it’s because we simplify everything to make it as easy as possible.

I spent those weeks of nervousness reminding myself of my training, reviewing my textbooks and workshop booklets, and bolstering my self-confidence.

The First Rehearsal

After those few weeks of self-doubt and reviewing my information from old classes and workshops, the day finally arrived. I spent all day reviewing the music, running the parts for myself, and practicing doing cues (that was the only part that it seemed I was rusty at). Finally, evening came and time for rehearsal.

This is a semi-professional musical, so some people are pros and some are amateurs. I knew that there would be the gambit of training from, “Hey, you have a nice voice,” all the way to classically trained.

I started with asking if anyone didn’t know how to belly breathe. All the kids raised their hands, so I taught belly breathing.

Then we dove into the music. I never came up for air. I was in my element. We were singing with the recordings. I was pounding parts on the piano and throwing out diction tips. We were having a blast.

I taught back-breathing to some of the more advanced singers to help them hold their notes longer. They were really excited to get that new skill. Everyone was very receptive to my working with them and everything felt completely natural.

I was going to teach J-breathing for one of the pieces because of some accented sections, but there were too many singers in that piece who were just learning belly-breathing for the first time. I mentioned that to the producer at the end of the rehearsal and one of the classically trained singers overheard me and asked me to teach him.

By the time I got to my vehicle, I was walking on air. It was one of those dream rehearsals that everyone involved in music education has ever wanted to have. I felt silly for worrying all those weeks.

How Does This Apply to You?

It’s nice that I felt vindicated, but this blog is about me helping you to be a better musician. I mostly share practice techniques, but sometimes we have to get past our psyches in order to be better musicians.

So, as musicians, we have specialized training. It starts with your private lessons, then goes to festivals, classes, camps, and workshops. Your training even includes the people you talk to in the bathroom at those events listed above. Sometimes you even learn more from those bathroom conversations than the event itself. Your training also includes reading articles, listening to or reading interviews, and being on web forums.

My whole message in this is to trust your training. Rely on your education. You know this stuff. You can do it. You might be a little rusty and that’s okay. You might have learned it a long time ago and have to review it, and that’s okay. You still know it and it will come back to you at the drop of a hat.

Back Breathing: A Tutorial

This is the final article in the series about breath. The other two articles are here and here. This is a very advanced breathing technique. It creates the most amount of resonance possible in the body, therefore making your sound better. It also increases the amount of air available to you.

How Do You Back Breathe?

Fill up your lungs to about 80% full. When you breathe out, keep your rib cage expanded. This will create a reserve of air that you try not to use. Try to keep your stomach muscles as relaxed as possible.

You know you’re doing it right when you bend over and feel your lower back expanding and contracting with your breath.

While exhaling, if you need to use the reserve air because it’s a particularly long passage, feel free to use it. Try not to use the reserve for every breath.

What If I Can’t Get It?

I learned this technique through reading a book. It said, “If you don’t understand how to do it from my description, talk to a singer.” That’s a common phrase when you read flute literature.

When I talked to a singer, she said to imagine the bottom half of your rib cage as a barrel that you’re holding around your midsection. It’s as full as you can get it and you shouldn’t let the barrel collapse.

An Odd Way to Practice Back Breathing

This breathing technique is hard until you get the hang of it. I practiced it while I was driving, doing tone work, etc, but I was holding too much tension in my shoulders and my stomach.

Enter marathon training. I tried breathing in this way while I was running and it worked! I was able to keep everything relaxed (because a 10-mile training run is exhausting) and my pace increased by a minute per mile! This was because I was using so much more air.

I was able to incorporate this kind of breathing into my flute practice within a week after my breakthrough while running.

How Should I Use Back Breathing?

You need to master the first two breathing methods first. After that, this should be your primary way of breathing while playing the flute. You can incorporate J breathing into back breathing if you wish – meaning, do both at the same time.

This form of breathing gives your sound more resonance because you’re allowing enough space for the organs in your rib cage to have a deeper vibration than normal.

Another plus is it helps you play longer without taking a breath.

Conclusion

Please don’t attempt this form of breathing until you’re fluent in belly breathing and J breathing. I didn’t learn it until after college, myself, but I could conceivably see someone learning it towards the end of high school at the earliest.

This form of breathing is very advanced, so don’t be upset if you don’t get it right away. It took me a whole year to figure it out.

When you do figure out how to back breathe, your sound will be better and you’ll be able to play longer between breaths. What’s not to love about that?

The First Advanced Breathing Technique

In my last post, I talked about Belly Breathing, which is the first kind of breathing that you learn. This article is about the first kind of advanced breathing technique that you learn, sometimes called J breathing. You usually learn this technique in high school.

J breathing used to be considered a different school of thought than belly breathing. Now they are both used because they each have their own purpose.

What is J Breathing’s Purpose?

This advanced breathing technique is for when you don’t need to use much air and you want to increase your resonance (I’ll talk about resonance a little later). It also helps with accented, short notes.

How Do I Do J Breathing?

Remember how I talked about pulling your belly muscles in for the exhale during the last article? With J breathing, you only pull in the top half of your muscles, leaving your lower abs relaxed. You’re making an imaginary J with your abs. You breathe in as if you were belly breathing.

Sometimes your abs make a gentle movement. This would be for short phrases where you don’t need much air, so you make it sound as good as possible.

Sometimes your abs make a sharp, quick movement. This would be for things like sforzando, accents, or marcato. The quick movement of the abs is putting quick pressure on your lungs, making an explosion of air, which helps with your quick volume changes.

What is resonance?

I’m about to get really technical, here. If you don’t want to know the science behind resonance, just know that it increases the overtones and the undertones of the tone that is played, making it sound better.

We all learned (or will learn) about resonance in physics class. Every item vibrates at a different frequency, on an elemental level. When a tone is made near an item, it can cause the vibration of that item to deepen, making the same tone that was made.

This is why the proverbial opera singer can make a glass shatter with her voice. If you want to learn more about resonance, this would be a good place to start.

Why Does J Breathing Increase Resonance?

Your whole body resonates with the sounds you’re making on your instrument. The more relaxed your body is, the more it resonates. By leaving the bottom half of your abs loose, you’re increasing the amount of resonance your body can do.

What Other Purpose Does J Breathing Have?

Sometimes when we do short phrases, we automatically breathe in between the phrases, even when we don’t have to. If there are too many short phrases in a row, it starts to feel like we’re hyperventilating. We get dizzy, light-headed, and tired.

J-breathing automatically decreases the amount of breath that you pull in and use. You aren’t using your lower abs, so the visceral mass (intestines, etc) that is behind the lower abs aren’t being used to put pressure on the diaphragm. That causes the lungs to not empty as much as with belly breathing, therefore using less air.

Conclusion

We only learn J breathing after we master belly breathing. It’s designed to be learned after we have learned to maximize our lung capacity. That’s what makes it an advanced breathing technique.

I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sore abs just from reading this! This technique takes awhile to master, so don’t be upset if it takes a month or two to get it down.

Next week will be the final article in this series. There’s one more advanced breathing technique, and it’s the best (and hardest) one!