Dear Deborah et al, The term "support" is generally passe' and has been supplanted by "breath management" (which I think is a better term). I tend to not talk about it much anymore. I show them what to do and they do it. I find that if a student can find a way to do a sustained, unvoiced lip trill, say 15 seconds or so, they are already well on the road to good breath management without my having to explain. If they can demonstrate a voiced lip trill, without strain or discomfort throughout their range, bottom to top, and they can demonstrate a mastery of a balanced onset they are aware of what needs to be done.
You can't control what you can't perceive. Peception comes first, then the labels and the "whys" follow later. Posture is critical. The singer's entire body must be in balance, energized, flexible and ready for action. ********************************************************************** ************************************************ Deborah: There seems to be two schools of thought here, one being that support includes a full lung of air supposed downward pressure and expansion of the lungs. The other is a full lung of air and expansion of lungs with a contraction of muscels in the region of lower abs. I think they are called transverse obliques and one other group of muscles that I just forget the name of at present. ********************************************************************** ************************************************ Sometimes I think there are as many schools of though about breathing for singing as there are voice teachers. It's hard to write about things that we do and teach others to do because doing something and writing about it are often two completely different things! There is so much that doesn't get on the page.
Opinion: I don't put much stock in obsessing over what muscles are doing. We can't control them directly anyway, so why bother? So, to my thinking, the best way to approach singing is to learn what to do to sing better in an organized way that makes sense to us. Control what we CAN perceive rather than speculate about things we couldn't possibly ever perceive. We need to know how things work, but in a practical, real-world way. AND more importantly, we need to know what works -* For Us *- and therein lies great peril. We can't merely go on feelings because feelings aren't consistent between one human being and another. We can't go on descriptions of organs and muscles that we can't see working and that we can't control directly. We can only "try something" and see what the results are. If we're really smart, we'll document and organize the results to see how consistently they work. We can verify the results using the senses available to us to percieve how things work -* For Us*- and make the necessary adjustments to do better. The teacher, if he or she is a good one, won't try to impose their pre-consceived biases on the student. Their job is to help them achieve their goals and to whow them what their options are. All the choices belong to the student.
I find that asking students to take "sips of breath" works well for most singers. If they take too much air in, they have to strain to keep it there and too much tension results.
As far as larynges are concerned, forget they're there. The larynx position is the result of what you do when you sing, not the thing you position to sing. Stand up straight and balanced with a balanced head and you're pretty much ready to go. Regards, Les
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