voice training: breath
Breathing: How it should feel.. are you straining your voice?

Taking a quick deep breath in, not raising the chest but sending the breath directly to the deep lower lung, you will feel an expansion and a pressure on the diaphragm. This is good, you want to feel that. Once you take the breath in don’t let it go right away, but contract the lower abdominal muscles to maintain and support the breath. That in turn controls the air flow that goes through the vocal chords and helps you to create a control and support over your voice to perform what you are singing with grace and ease.

You should never feel a tightness in the throat area, and if you do, that means that you are straining. This kind of feeling takes the joy out of singing and becomes quite a distraction which leads to loss of confidence and focus. In reality what is happening is that you are straining the muscles surrounding the voice box and they are screaming at you to stop. Once you learn the correct way to sing with a solid technique, that tightness in the throat will disappear, and you will have more freedom to enjoy singing and using your voice with more power, skill and creativity. Listen to your body as it always tells you what it
needs. To strain the voice generally can lead to developing nodules which are tiny bumps on the vocal chords or a more extreme larger nodule which is polyps. Once these grow on your chords generally your voice will become raspy and you lose a good portion of your range. You don’t want to let it get to that point. Once it does you will need to lay off singing for a couple of months with total vocal rest. If the condition persists it generally will lead to surgery to remove the nodes and polyps which can all me avoided by taking your time to study and learn how to use your voice safely and correctly. Learn to use the technique first and build up your strength over time. Then you get to know your voice, your range, and what your limits and strengths are.

voice training
click on notes to link
How to begin-Vocal Training for Singers
Stretching - Warming up before singing
Method - Breathing: What about the Diaphragm ?
Breath - Breathing: How it should feel..are you straining your voice ?
Method - Are you Singing correctly ?
Training - Voice Teacher: How to find one that's right for you

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