How to have Breath Control in Vocal Technique

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 25 Jul 2008, 19:31

I am not an expert in breath control but common sense suggests the following minimal musical requirements for breath control while singing:

1. One should have enough breath during every melodic phrase to sing it with control and strength.
2. One should have enough breath so as to avoid being forced to make inappropriate pauses or breaks in the text or lyrics being sung.

From what I have read I can summarize the following bits of universally accepted knowledge from bio-mechanics:
1. It is not just a simple matter of running out of breath in that having air in you helps beyond just creating sound. You need to maintain adequate pressure in your voice box to "support" your voice properly so that your vocal chords are not strained while singing. Hence you should never go completely out of breath while singing otherwise the chords collapse at the end, hastening their ruin.

2. Breathing hard and heavy is inefficient in terms of energy and also tires your voice. Just as runners and exercisers are urged to maintain vigorous but not panting breath, singers should also not wait until the end of a phrase and take in a long and hard gasp but rather spread it out in to smaller and more controlled breaths.

Hence the following questions:

1. Can people share their learning/techniques/experiments on how to manage breath well while singing?

2. Are there some schools that pay more attention to this than others? Who in your opinion are the vidwans who have good/bad control? I have also heard of vidwans who have learned breath control to get around physical limitations such as limited lung capacity or asthma. But exactly _what_ do they do, mechanically speaking?

3. Are there folks here who systematically "plan" the recitation of kritis so that they have proper breath control at all times?

4. Are there techniques from other systems such as hindustani, western classical, or even popular music (think Shankar Mahadevan's "Breathless" or some of the crooners in Western pop) that people know of or have tried in CM?

5. Can people post audio examples of good and bad breath control for illustrative purposes?

6. Are there examples of kritis that present an especially difficult problem for breath control? Some Dikshitar kritis have the intimidating combination of slow speed and extremely long words.

7. Are there humorous incidents of some singer losing the plot due to lack of breath?

Hoping for a vigorous discussion

-Then Paanan

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 25 Jul 2008, 21:07

Then Paanan,
A great topic and you have started it with a lot to go by too! Hope our experts bring in their nuggets...

prashant · Post by **prashant** » 25 Jul 2008, 21:14

thenpaanan wrote:6. Are there examples of kritis that present an especially difficult problem for breath control? Some Dikshitar kritis have the intimidating combination of slow speed and extremely long words.

Great topic and I'll try to chime in later. But a quick reply to your question above - I think one of the most difficult krithis breath controlwise is amba paradEvatE of krishNaswAmy ayyA. The madhyamakAlA passages are real tongue twisters and drawing breath at the appropriate time is a real challenge.

My Guru learnt this song from his Gurus the Alathoor Brothers. When he taught it to me, I immediately asked him whether I could sing it in an upcoming concert. Quite literally - he made me sing it a 100 times making me work on breath control on this krithi so that I could present it on stage to the best of my [severely limited] ability. I could only then marvel at the level of practice Ariyakudi must have put it - a musician who was known to practice EVERY new krithi 100 times before singing it on stage!

Thanks for starting an interesting topic.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 25 Jul 2008, 22:28

varnams themselves are a big problem (and thus lesson). The words are stretched so much and many of them are compound words. I have heard that viribONi offers one of the stiffest challenges.

My problem is always that every time I take a breath, I take in "lesser than last time" and so the duration I can hold a breath, starts slowly decreasing

- So I can take any section by itself and sing it better, but if I have sing all the sections, then it is more of a challenge.

BTW, this humorously parallels my experience with swimming freestyle - after a few strokes I am out of breath even though I am taking breath after every or everyother stroke. Like singing, i take-in lesser and lesser.

In the both cases, the answer is better technique, which I am yet to learn.

Arun

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 25 Jul 2008, 22:43

prashant wrote:I could only then marvel at the level of practice Ariyakudi must have put it - a musician who was known to practice EVERY new krithi 100 times before singing it on stage!

Thanks for starting an interesting topic.

I also believe we should learn to hear our own singing to make improvement. With present technology that is possible too.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 26 Jul 2008, 00:30

See if the techniques mentioned here are of any help: http://www.playmusicsing.com/page/1307333

The techniques there are around two principles: Fill up as much air as possible with the diaphragm and economise how much air you let out while singing.- learn to optimize the Cubic Centimeter of air/Aksharam measure.

srikant1987 · Post by **srikant1987** » 26 Jul 2008, 09:40

Hang on â€” but isn't this what co-singers and accompanists are for? To take over when one runs out of breath?

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 29 Jul 2008, 19:08

arunk wrote:varnams themselves are a big problem (and thus lesson). The words are stretched so much and many of them are compound words. I have heard that viribONi offers one of the stiffest challenges.

The only escape in the case of tana varnams is that the words are considered highly secondary to the melody and to my limited knowledge the words do not say anything profound (the canonical line being "this is the time for you to smile at me").

arunk wrote:My problem is always that every time I take a breath, I take in "lesser than last time" and so the duration I can hold a breath, starts slowly decreasing - So I can take any section by itself and sing it better, but if I have sing all the sections, then it is more of a challenge.

I believe, this is the hallmark of inefficient breathing, namely, you seem to take all the effort to breathe and yet feel short of breath. In most cases (i.e. barring medical or physiological problems), the advice is to even out the breathing so that you are not testing your windpipe capacity every time. One teacher gave me the analogy of a veteran yoga practitioner: the yogi has a steady breathing rhythm through the entire routine irrespective of whether it is an asana or pranayama -- even right after holding breath for what seems very long the rhythm is unbroken, so also a singer should have even breath no matter what is being sung or not sung. Some Hindustani musicians such as Mallikarjun Mansur seem to do it so naturally you wonder if they even breathe in!

arunk wrote:In the both cases, the answer is better technique, which I am yet to learn.

I am there with you. I console myself that at least I am aware of the problem which, as they say, is the first step. Can't easily get to the second step though.

-Then Paanan

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 29 Jul 2008, 19:21

How long each breathing should last and what is the max and min timing in seconds?

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 29 Jul 2008, 20:34

VK RAMAN wrote:How long each breathing should last and what is the max and min timing in seconds?

I don't think it would be easy to come up with useful absolute numbers because individual capacity varies so much. The key is even breathing not necessarily fast or slow breathing, though having breath like Voleti would certainly help.

I would suggest the following experiment based on my own experience: pick any sufficiently long line from some favorite well-learned composition and with a timer see how far you can stretch your breath without worrying too much about singing quality. Then repeat this line and cut off in progressively shorter time intervals until you come to a trivial length. This experiment should tell you roughly where your strength of breath is at this point, namely, that time interval where you could sing with uniform strength to the end and still felt that you had something left over (I am told this "left over" part is very important to protect your vocal chords -- even prominent singers like Voleti make this error occasionally).

The important caveat is that natural breathing is very variable and your natural breath can increase and decrease due to various factors such as how long you have been singing, your singing style (i.e. whether you belt it out or sing ultra-softly), whether you are tired or ill, whether your stomach is full (affects how low your diaphragm can go while breathing), posture (sitting straight and better yet, standing is conducive to longer breath), and most importantly practice (you will find veteran singers ranging from SSI to Sanjay can sing arbitrarily long stretches simply because they have been doing this for a long time). To get an accurate idea of your own capability you have to try this at different times and see how your breath changes.

I have found that my normal breath control allows me to sing at medium throttle (i.e. slightly louder than normal speaking) for about 20-30 seconds which is quite lousy in my opinion. I have been able to achieve longer durations only by cheating (i.e. singing softly or in altered voice). The good news is that it used to be worse. The bad news is that this is very much tied to your habits outside singing: if you are an uneven breather naturally it may be harder than otherwise. I have found that even simple breath control exercises (taking deep breath and retaining) has helped me tremendously in singing even though I am not singing while doing these exercises.

Hope this helps.

Then Paanan

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 29 Jul 2008, 21:03

How does the climatic condition affect, such as temperature? Does food intake including water affect the duration? Does singing ability increase/decrease based on food intake?

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 29 Jul 2008, 21:31

VK RAMAN wrote:How does the climatic condition affect, such as temperature? Does food intake including water affect the duration? Does singing ability increase/decrease based on food intake?

I guess all these questions are a matter of personal preference or disposition. I have personally never found ambient temperature to affect my singing. There was one time I sang on a stage while I was soaked from the rain coming in and there was an air conditioning vent blowing hard on the stage. It was only one kriti but it was unbearable until my body had warmed up. But I think the caution is that one does not learn from extreme cases or rigid prescriptions, there will always be exceptions to such rules.

Food intake probably affects singing profoundly in general but limiting myself to breathing while singing, the correlation is that too much in your stomach, whether food or water, can interfere with breathing if your stomach is distended as a result. Other than that, sipping (rather than drinking) lukewarm water while singing is considered a good thing.

You probably hear any number of stories on food and liquid intake ranging from BGAK's mutton curry eating to alcohol consumption by other artists just before major concerts. I don't think one can generalize from such one-off stories, so it is best to disregard them.

-Then Paanan

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 30 Jul 2008, 08:02

How about mukkupodi, vettalai, and smoking - do those affect your breath control? Do we have singers who have these addictions?

msakella · Post by **msakella** » 30 Jul 2008, 16:27

Dear brother-member, VK RAMAN, After seeing your post I remember a joke: Man: Is there any way for long life? Dr: Get Married. Man: Will it help? Dr. No, but the thought of long life will never come. amsharma.

cienu · Post by **cienu** » 30 Jul 2008, 16:56

msakella wrote:Dear brother-member, VK RAMAN, After seeing your post I remember a joke: Man: Is there any way for long life? Dr: Get Married. Man: Will it help? Dr. No, but the thought of long life will never come. amsharma.

:lol:

ragam-talam · Post by **ragam-talam** » 30 Jul 2008, 17:33

VK RAMAN wrote:How about mukkupodi, vettalai, and smoking - do those affect your breath control? Do we have singers who have these addictions?

Add to the list tobacco chewing and excessive coffee drinking.
My guesstimate would be about 50% of musicians have one or more of these habits.

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 30 Jul 2008, 22:00

Does your breath control affect when you are in higher elevation? I live in higher elevation 5000 ft above sea level

thanjavooran · Post by **thanjavooran** » 31 Jul 2008, 04:42

VK RAMAN wrote:How about mukkupodi, vettalai, and smoking - do those affect your breath control? Do we have singers who have these addictions?

I remember to have read a review long back about T.S. Valleesan [brother of TSB] that he has an anunasika saareeram like GNB [ both snuff users] Hence I presume, it adds little glamour for the tonal / voice control of the vocalist.
thanjavooran

knandago2001 · Post by **knandago2001** » 03 Aug 2008, 21:40

GNB and SSI make for very interesting case studies regarding breath control of the voice.. both were inspired by nagaswaram traditions..... yet they used the voice very differently... GNB's sancharas in raga alapanas and SSI's rounds of durita kala swaraprastara in sarvalaghu are illustrative examples

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 03 Aug 2008, 22:31

Does yogA and fitness activities help in prolonging?

worldkar · Post by **worldkar** » 18 Aug 2008, 20:39

the art of producing sound in our body is a technique to be practiced...just as there are many techniques to play a note in an instrument..there are a number of techniques to produce sound in our body....unfortunately none of the carnatic musicians use them diligently! the knowledge of production of sound in our body constitutes a majority of nada yoga! carnatic music is perhaps the nearest to the pure and knowing how to produce nada in our body is greater than any spiritual conquest of man.....please note the role of bhakthi as a catalyst to produce this nada naturally without considering the bodily aspect(there by proclaiming advaitha..that body is perishable)..when such deep aspects are hidden in our carnatic music...how can one neglect the production of the nada......
it is very true that Yoga helps to create the near perfect nada....
and as far as food stuffs are concerned....it is very much discussed in the previous sections....
there are a variety of books on the sound production and excersices i would like to share...
interested can mail me worldkar@gmail.com

Mahalakshmi · Post by **Mahalakshmi** » 16 Oct 2008, 18:24

VK RAMAN wrote:Does yogA and fitness activities help in prolonging?

I've started learning vocal after my 30th yr and until recently used to struggle for breath control. But recently, I started doing pranayama exercise which have improved my voice quality and breath control to a great extent.

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 31 Oct 2008, 23:24

Mahalakshmi wrote:
VK RAMAN wrote:Does yogA and fitness activities help in prolonging?
I've started learning vocal after my 30th yr and until recently used to struggle for breath control. But recently, I started doing pranayama exercise which have improved my voice quality and breath control to a great extent.

Mahalakshmi

Can you share with us exactly what pranayama exercises you have been doing and how it has improved your voice quality? Has it helped keep sruthi or sing more evenly etc?

Thanks
Then Paanan

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 31 Oct 2008, 23:59

(Mod note: Selected the option "never show smilies as icons for this post" since the "=D" were showing up as 'laugh' icons )

I have not seen as much response to this thread as I had hoped. So here is an attempt to inject some more life into a discussion topic that is very dear to me.

From a very practical point of view, the most important issue in breath control for a Carnatic vocalist is the one of deciding how to break the phrases that we sing in kritis. The phrasing used today seems ad hoc. Artists who can hold breath very long such as TNS hold it for very long periods, sometimes spanning entire lines or avarthanas. Other vidwans hold for shorter lengths but in all cases the method seems ad hoc. My quest is to find if there is such a thing as the "right" phrasing.

Ideally the breath breaks should make sense both breath-wise as well as lyrics-wise. To that end let me take some examples to illustrate what I am trying to do. Since this is not a multimedia forum I urge the reader to imagine how (s)he would sing it or how (s)he has heard people sing it as appropriate.

The easy example is the one of "BrOva bhaaramaa" in Bahudari. Let us assume for simplicity that the singer has lower than average breath capacity and wants to take a breath whenever he can and is looking for the right spots in the melodic line to do so. See below. I have introduced the character =D to notate a breath stop when the singer takes a breath. The reader has to imagine the kriti being sung to appreciate fully why and where these stops arise.

I have extracted the lyrics from our own wesbite http://rasikas.org/wiki/brova-bharama. (who do I thank?):

"brOva bhAramA"

Pallavi
brOva bhAramA =D raghurAmA =D bhuvanamella nIvai nannokani

The first two breath stops are ok but the third stop is a problem. The way this is sung typically is as below

brOva bhAramA =D raghurAmA =D bhuvanamella nI =D vai nannokani

which seems to break the rule that the lyrical integrity should be maintained. One might suggest that the entire second half be sung in one breath. However, don't forget that "brOva .." has to be sung immediately following. That is, the full problem is

brOva bhAramA =D raghurAmA =D bhuvanamella nIvai nannokani brOva bhAramA =D

The phrase from "bhuvanamella" to "bhAramA" is very long to go without breath even for an expert singer. The alternative

brOva bhAramA =D raghurAmA =D bhuvanamella nIvai =D nannokani brOva bhAramA =D

would be ideal from the breath control point of view but this breaks the melody at an awkward place and I have not heard _anyone_ sing it like this.

So what should one do? Any thoughts?

I continue with some phrasing for the rest of the kriti below. These are mere suggestions and I hope the literati here will help me out with improvements,

Anupallavi

shrI vAsudEva =D anDa kOTla =D kukSiNi-yuncukO lEdA =D nannu brOva bhAramA =D

Charanam

kalaSAmbudhilO dayatOn-amarulakai-yadigAka =D gOpi-
kalakai =D koNDal-etta lEdA =D karuNAkara =D tyAgarAjuni brOva bhAramA =D

Some additional comments:

1. The phrasing above leaves a LOT to be desired from the point of view of "singability". It is pretty much a given that no one sings this way. But the alternative is also not clear to me -- how should I break the words differently and achieve breath control and lyrical integrity? How would Thyagaraja himself have sung it?
2. Lest you think this is an exceptional case, I assure you this is an "easy" example. Some other kritis especially those of M. Dikshitar are much harder.
3. I would request our very learned members such as vgvindan to help out in whichever way they can. One possibility might be to introduce extra words into the lyrics (like MDR did on numerous occasions) to permit an easier phrasing that is still textually and grammatically correct.
4. Phrasing of text in western opera is a very serious and much-studied topic and yet I could not find a still treatment of this rather ancient subject in Carnatic Music. Why so?

Looking forward to some help and a vigorous discussion,
-Then Paanan

Mahalakshmi · Post by **Mahalakshmi** » 01 Nov 2008, 15:11

This is the paranayama, using ring finger and thumb. With the ring finger close left nostril. Breathe out thru the right nostril. Now inhale deeply thru right nostril and close it with thumb and hold for as long as you can. Then exhale thru left nostril emptying the lungs. Now inhale deeply thru left nostril and close it with ring finger and hold. Again repeat the same with the right one. This can be repeated as many times as wished.
This is called nADi SOdhana prANAyAmA.
This topic is dealt in detail in the book, The Illustrated Light on Yoga by Sri BKS Iyengar. Please refer.

Mahalakshmi · Post by **Mahalakshmi** » 01 Nov 2008, 15:19

This technique has improved the voice by making the throat clearer and yes I can sing more evenly. Holding the swaras while singing is also easier now. Otherwise keeping in tune (sruti) comes only with practice ie sustaining the notes s p S P ...

vijay · Post by **vijay** » 05 Nov 2008, 16:08

Sanjay briefly touches upon the subject in one of his podcasts (no. 7 I think). He mentions the role of physical fitness and of course is himself a great example of the importance of this aspect. His improved fitness over the last 3-4 years is as evident as his enhanced vocal power.

TVG, in one of his interviews, mentioned that while walking is good, running is not. I am not sure he explained why...

ragam-talam · Post by **ragam-talam** » 07 Nov 2008, 12:04

Good to hear that Sanjay has improved his physical fitness. Haven't seen him recently, but over the past few years had noticed he was becoming quite obese. Same applies to Vijay Shiva.