How To Hold Long Notes When You Sing!

In today’s topic I will show you a practical exercise that will help you be able to hold long notes when you sing easily and effortlessly!

How to hold a note for longer when you sing – video transcript (adapted to suit blog post format)

 If you struggle to hold a note for more than a few seconds every time you sing, this video is for you!

In this video, I will explain what breath support is, and how it helps you hold long notes.

 My name is Jorgelina. I am a vocal coach and I specialize in training people to sing contemporary music from a holistic and integral approach.

 If you want to develop the capacity to hold long notes when you are singing, you need to develop the capacity to have strong breath support.  If you don’t know what breath support is, I have a video that talks just about that and you can take  a look at that.

But I’m just going to tell you very quickly now, that breath support has to do with the amount of air that you inhale, but also, and more importantly,  how you control the airflow to be able to sing more efficiently.

 This has to do with having a good balance between your inhaling capacity and your exhaling capacity.  Take a look at the video that I talk about because it talks about that   and you’re gonna find it very useful to develop your breath support naturally.

 I have for you an exercise to be able to develop the ability to sing long notes. So for this exercise, we’re going to breathe in in eight seconds, and then we’re going to exhale softly in eight seconds.  Next time we do it, which is immediately after,   we’re going to breathe in in four and exhale in eight.  Then we’re going to breathe in in two, exhale in eight,  and breathe in in one, breathe out, and eight counts.

(Watch the video to see the demonstration)

Alright, the next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to repeat this exercise.  This time instead of exhaling, we are going to sing an ‘UH’ sound.   So instead of hissing or just breathing out as you were doing, we’re going to go breathing in eight seconds and then we’re going to sing an ‘UH’ sound holding for eight seconds.

You can use any pitch you want. We’re going to repeat the same idea.  We’re going to inhale in eight seconds, sing an ‘UH’ sound in eight seconds, inhale in four seconds, sing in eight seconds, and so on. So you try it now!

(See video for demonstration)

I want to tell you a little secret about breathing for singers that not many people know and that is going to be useful. If you want to make the most of your breathing exercises, make sure that you not only practice your exercises with inhaling and exhaling, but you are also practicing them with voice as we did right now. So first we practice in what is called an open system, meaning we breathe in and then we breathe out and there is no voice, because the vocal cords are not coming together. That’s when you exhale. The second time we did it, we practiced our breathing with a closed system, meaning that we inhaled, and then we sang. That is called a closed system. If you want to make the most of your breathing exercises for singing, you need to do both, This is what is going to make your progress with your breathing and your singing much, much faster. 

If you would like to know more about singing, I left in the description below a link to Master The Basics, my introductory vocal technique course. This is a course that is designed for absolute beginners, and there you’re going to find the absolute basics of vocal technique. You’re going to learn scales, you’re going to learn vocal exercises, breathing exercises, and how the voice works.

I hope you enjoyed this video, if you did, subscribe and I’ll see you next video!

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