As a vocal coach something I often run into is singers or people just talking about voice production that mistakenly believe that you should, “sing from the diaphragm.”   That is that when you sing you should fill your abdomen with a lot of air and then burst it out with sudden, “ha, ha, ha,” types of movement with a lot of force. 

I’ve even come across the, “sing like you are shouting hey you at someone across the street,” technique. 

First and foremost let me say that this is not how singing is supported.  This is shouting.  Shouting is not the same as singing.  If you sing like this you will overpower your voice and it will sound very dull and well….shouty.

Recently I got into a rather heated debate with a new student on this.  This female singer was a blaster.  She was all about being as loud as possible.  Basically bellowing.  Blasting large amounts of air to attain pitch and volume.  When I asked her to sing the same pitches at a talking level she could not do it with any resonance and her voice even made a break.

I tried to explain to her that the voice should be attacked from the mask.  The attack being the onset of the start of the voice.   Because, when attacked from the mask the voice is naturally loud and resonant, has harmonic overtones and causes diaphragmatic breathing to happen by reflection or a reaction.

She for some reason would not accept this and insisted she knew how to sing and was good at singing.  Which made me wonder why she set up a vocal lesson.  I guess she didn’t want to learn how to sing better but instead wanted to go to a vocal coach and have the vocal coach tell her she was a good singer, when in fact she sounded more like she was shouting at her children.

But I digress, back to the part about diaphragmatic breathing.   Breathing for singing, that is, the action of the diaphragm is a reflection or a reaction to a voice properly attacked from and placed in the mask.  

The misunderstanding that you should purposely control the diaphragm comes from two different sources.  One source is simply people observing good singers and seeing how their diaphragm moves, assuming that they directly and with thought control that.  Such is not the case, it is a reflection.

The other source is comes from is a failed opera singer turned vocal coach by the name of Garcia.  This was quite a long time ago when operas were popular and considered the absolute height of singing skill.   Garcia’s father and sisters were successful singers.  He however was an abysmal failure.  So, he became obsessed with finding a way to sing. 

The singing instruction back then was largely based on the instructor making a sound and the student trying to copy it by ear.  No one really knew exactly how they did what they did, the singers just had to learn to produce good tone by mimicking good tone.  This consequently is a bad way to learn, and only works for  people who are very talented singers to begin with.

Garcia then developed a tool with which he could look down his throat and watch his vocal cords vibrate.  He came to the conclusion that the voice was all a result of air flow over the vocal folds, and thus should be controlled by the diaphragm.  He of course was very wrong and did not sing any better. 

However his ill conceived assumptions have ruined many singers voices since that time.

Forcing air from the diaphragm puts air behind the voice like a sudden blasting bellows. The air flow should come at the same time as the tone sung and come easily like a hum, this is what happens by reflection when you attack the voice from the mask.

The simple fact is that everything about the voice is controlled either directly or by reaction from the mask.   When you sing by attacking the mask there are no registers, high note are easily sung, the range is wide and can be extremely loud with little effort, in fact louder than shouting because of the resonance within the resonant cavities of the head.

So, if you happen to go to a vocal coach and they start talking about diaphragmatic support as the attack, politely leave.  They don’t know what they are doing and will hurt your voice.

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