Sing Using Your Diaphragm

Your diaphragm is a sheet of muscle separating the thoracic cavity, where your heart and lungs are located, along with the internal organs in the rest of your body. It's perhaps most known for spasming and causing hiccups, but it's also an essential part of singing. Proper singing requires breath support from the diaphragm, using the muscle to force air from the lungs and through the voice. If you want to be a better singer, learn to strengthen this muscle and sing properly.

Steps

Strengthening Your Diaphragm

  1. Learn to locate your diaphragm muscles. Unlike your bicep, it's hard to feel your diaphragm muscles, so it's important to learn to learn to locate them, so you can go about strengthening them for singing.
    • The best way to think about singing from your diaphragm is to think of your diaphragm muscles as a platform or tabletop. They should be firm and stable and provide a foundation for your voice to rise through your air column.
    • If you're having trouble feeling your diaphragm, lie flat on the floor and place a moderate weight on your stomach area, something like a large book. Push that weight up using just the muscles in your stomach. Simultaneously draw air into your lungs to their full capacity. Now, sing. The muscles you're using are your diaphragm.
  2. Practice breathing into your diaphragm. To breathe into your diaphragm, breathe in as deeply as you can and push your stomach out as far as possible while doing so, keeping the rest of your body as still as possible. Now exhale, and pull your stomach back in. Make sure your shoulders don't move.
    • It's imperative that these muscles you're using while breathing remain firm but not clenched when singing. Your chest, shoulder, and face muscles need to remain loose.
    • Imagine you're a chimney, and that your singing rises through the chimney from the diaphragm out of the lungs, and through the roof.
  3. Do diaphragm-strenthening breathing exercises. Exercise your diaphragm muscles regularly. Once you've learned to breathe correctly, you need to get as much power into your diaphragm as possible. Take a deep breath from your diaphragm, and while exhaling, count as high as possible. Count slowly and evenly, then record how much you've improved every day.
    • Practice a "milkshake." Pretend you're sucking in through a straw. Remember to keep your shoulders and chest still. Hold your hand on your stomach to notice the movement.
    • Do "dog pants." Pant as if you're a tired dog, but again remember to keep your shoulders and chest still, and again hold your hand on your stomach.
    • Practice a "bathroom push" exercise. As ridiculous as it sounds, it really does help when learning to sing using your diaphragm. Keeping your shoulders and chest still, let out a hard breath as if you're struggling on the toilet. Hold your hand on your stomach.
  4. Practice breathing exercises along with your singing. If you want to strengthen your diaphragm for singing, you need to incorporate these breathing exercises into your regular singing routine, as well as practicing breathing several times throughout the day. You can do it anywhere, at any time, relatively easily, since you don't need any special equipment or other materials. You just need your voice.
    • Practice breathing exercises while you're driving to work or while you're watching television. There's little excuse to avoid practicing something so easy. And you'll start noticing results in your singing quickly with the right dedication to practice.

Singing Correctly

  1. Always warm up first. Breathing and vocal exercises are essential in warming up your voice before singing. Singing from your diaphragm is just one part of proper singing technique, and needs to be combined with other good practices. Anytime before you start singing for a long period of time, you should:
    • Take a long, deep breath and hold it for a few seconds then release it slowly. As you breathe in, raise your arms until your hands touch each other. Then put your arms down slowly while you breathe out. Do these three times to five times.
    • Start with the lowest note that you can sing and start getting higher until you reach the highest note you can sing, without straining. Don't rush. The slower, the better. This exercise helps to control your breathing and warm up your vocal chords for singing.
  2. Stand with excellent posture while singing. When singing with your diaphragm, you are taking larger, fuller breaths. Doing this requires perfect posture. Keep your back very straight, your shoulders rolled back, and focus on keeping them still as you breathe to give your voice and your breath the best space possible.
    • Because your diaphragm is right below your rib cage, which encompasses your lungs, slouching pushes your ribs into your lungs and doesn't allow for the downward expansion necessary to get a good breath.
  3. Sing with your throat open. Look in a mirror while you force a yawn, looking and feeling the openness in your throat. This needs to happen while you sing, but as relaxed and loose as possible. To allow the air to flow more freely and naturally from your diaphragm through your body, you need to practice singing with an open throat.
    • Pretend you've got a ball in your throat that's keeping it forced open. Practice singing runs of notes while your throat is open. It might take a while to get the notes as strong as you're used to, but it's an important part of retraining your voice to stay strong.
  4. Work on both "parts" of your voice. Think about your voice as if it is broken into two separate, but linked parts. Your high notes are in what is called your head voice and your low notes are in your chest voice. To make full, rounded sound in each of your voices requires singing from the diaphragm, but learning to distinguish these two voices and move between them will help with note placement.
    • Use your breathing exercises regularly to get used to the sensation of moving between your two voices. Try singing intervals to jump back and forth between the two different voices and strengthen your transitions.
  5. Work on pronouncing consonants. Hard consonants often become inaudible when singing. Try repeating a consonant phrase like "The tip of the tongue and the teeth and the lips." Sing the phrase over and over on a single note, until every word can be sung clearly with full breath support from your diaphragm.

Tips

  • Put your hand above your diaphragm and if you feel it going up and down, you're doing it right.
  • It is strongly suggested that you should get a professional voice teacher. Voice lessons can help you become a better singer.
  • Always warm up your vocal cords before singing. Stretch and do a few scales to get your voice awakened.
  • Record yourself singing and see if you notice a difference in your voice strength.
  • If you breathe with your throat, your chest rises. Let your stomach (with your diaphragm inside) rise instead.

Warnings

  • Don't force your voice. You can permanently damage your vocal cords.
  • Although it won't happen for a long time, you could eventually get nodes if you keep singing in your throat. Nodes can damage your vocal chords.

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