So to start with, we are going to breathe in through the mouth today. The method of singing that has been the most effective for me and my students (the Rabine method, Functional voice pedagogy), uses this way of singing, in a particular manner. And I know that a lot of people will tell you to breathe through the nose instead. Yes, nose breathing is healthier for most activities and for resting. But for singing, we are going to breathe in through the mouth as it is a more functional way to do it. However, you might find this itself threatening at the beginning, in which case you might have to come back to it later.

But the reality is that when we sing songs, we do breathe through the mouth, so we have to train it. We just don’t have time to breathe through our noses within songs. But also, breathing through the nose creates some resistance in the vocal system when you sing which is not beneficial for your voice.

I’m not gonna talk about that too much right now. That’s for another day (let’s take it easy with the controversial topics!). But if you want to give it a go, then watch the video and try the few little things that we are going to explore.

This is an exercise that you can apply to your songs right away, not only to your breathing exercises and your vocal warm-ups but also to your songs.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to explore breathing through different vowels, And we are going to try to figure out which vowel shapes are better for us today.

The objective of this exercise is to find a way of breathing that lowers the perceived threat. Of course, that is subconscious. But some signs are going to tell you whether your brain considers your environment to be safe or not. It’s extremely, important that, for singing, your nervous system associates singing with safety and comfort.