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Diaphragmatic Breathing and Vocal Distortion

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xTbs

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Hey everyone its been ages since I last posted here, but since then i picked up ken tamplins course (which in its own way has helped with a lot of things) But I do have a couple questions that I think are related but I may be completely wrong. :)

First question i have is what sort of sensation should i feel while singing with my diaphragm? I think ive been doing it right however I dont know quite how it should feel. Ive been doing the inhale and belly expands and then as i sing/ exhale my belly goes back to normal. but I dont know if thats all there is too it or if im supposed to be using certain muscles in my core. if so which ones? 

 

The other question ties in a bit as through said course i took they mentioned "leaning" into the sound to get a distorted tone. I had no clue what that meant so I went to good ol youtube to look up metal screaming tips (figured that would be for the extreme cases) so they talk about pushing with my abs (sort of) really hard and it will distort my voice through my chest not my throat. all that, that has done for me is make me louder and at points hurt my throat. So any input or suggestions for this would be greatly appreciated as I dont really care for messing my voice up lol. 

 

Thanks

 

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I have always found the whole "belly in" "belly out" stuff confusing. and I spent years in the gym doing heavy squats which is REALLY intense as far as internal body pressure etc

So I just go more by feelings and I let the body parts take care of themselves.

ANYONE can feel when they have more pressure inside of the gut. Boom, there is your support and 'singing from the diaphragm'

 

if you breath in, that air has to go somewhere. If you breath in and at the same time you just lift your chest up, then you arent really building much internal pressure or support. You are putting air volume in but you are also increasing the space inside so the pressure doesnt increase much

 

On the other hand if you breath more down into your belly and you RESIST the belly etc from swelling outward, then you are packing that air in tight and there is your support. The chest isnt really going to rise much unless you really fill up on air which u might do sometimes but not always

Also some people might like to get a bellyfull of air and maybe the ribs swell out a bit and maybe the chest rises but they arent really resisting that much so they dont have a lot of internal pressure....and they sing with that amount of pressure, but then when they want more support they might then squeeze the ribs in etc etc to increase the pressure

 

One thing about it is, its easy to overdo it lol. Its singing, not olympic weightlifting. I like to some basic breathing exercises like breathing in and REALLY resisting it while also closing the lips pretty tight so only a peep of air can get in at a time and I pull in against that hard resistance until I get pretty filled up. Then its reversed, I take all that pressure and blow it out while resisting it blowing out. Obviously I dont blow so hard that my ears pop or anything crazy like that. The way i see it is that I am developing the muscles and strength and then I dont have to worry about it much, because ill never use that much pressure while singing.

 

if you build up a ton of pressure coming up, then it has to go somewhere. If you try to distort and it hurts your throat, then you are doing it wrong.

1) You can squeeze and compress your vocal cords without really distorting or hurting them. Im pretty sure its one of those things that u need to build over time. Its just like lifting weights, you arent going to get to 500lbs in a week.

2) you can keep the vocal cords more open and learn how to compress and distort ABOVE the vocal cords. Some teachers like to put a pencil sideways in your mouth and tell you to keep the distortion above the pencil. You dont want the distortion being made right in the cords because its just going to hurt and irritate them

 

Use common sense too. You aint gonna sound like Sebastian Bach in a month. Give it time and let things naturally develop

 

 

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