A wrong breathing technique can lead to out-of-breath when singing. Breathing is one of the most essential skills singers need to comprehend. You can effortlessly manage your breathing with proper breathing exercises for singing. Singers are taught to breathe from the diaphragm to sing with speed and power. In order to do that, diaphragm needs to inhale enough air and maximize lungs’ full capacity. The deeper the inhalation is, the greater voice support will be. Not only creating a strong and powerful singing voice, deep breathing from the diaphragm are also giving other health benefits that are important for overall fitness.
Reasons behind losing your breath when singing
The vibration inside your vocal cords creates sound. To create more sound out of loosely vocal cords, excessive amounts of air are needed to be pushed out which can cause shortness of breath or losing breath because of so much air leaking out very quickly. The lack of vocal fold closure and resistance is the reason why singers often run out of air. Taking a big breath is not enough but how efficiently you use the air is what prevents you from losing your breath when singing. Breathy or husky voice style singers sometimes can also become one of technique issues.
Unhealthy voices can also be the reason why you lose your breath when singing. Health issues such as apparent nodule, polyp, or hemorrhage singers experience can cause lack of natural vibration of the vocal folds resulting in excess air leakage. Vocal damage can also be caused by allergies, acid reflux, or excessive throat clearing resulting in raspy tone and causing singers to lose their breath.
Sing without any breathing problem!
The first step of singing without losing breath is to ensure that you are taking enough air with a low and enough breath. Enough air would not be reached by inhaling a shallow high breath, upper lungs filled with chest and shoulders rising when you begin to sing since it will expel the air as your ribcage collapses. Humming is an exercise that requires your vocal folds to vibrate with the minimum amount of air needed. Singing technique that mimics cry sounds can help you produce clearer and less breathy singing tone because the inner muscles around the vocal folds are engaging to create vibration with higher tension that prevents extra air to be released so you will not be out of breath when you sing.
It is very hard to assess why singers run out of air when they sing. But prevention can be done by practicing breathing exercises regularly to improve how to breathe and increase voice cords quality.
If you want to prevent or reduce losing your breath while singing, we can help you improve your breathing with a WellO2’s breathing exercise device. Deep breathing with warm steam into your lungs helps you train your vocal chord to get the necessary air for singing. Contact us for more information or order your breathing exercise device.
