If you’ve been singing any amount of time, you may have heard a bad vocal coach or someone who was parroting something they heard say, “sing from the diaphragm,” or, “support your voice from the diaphragm.”

This is the absolute worst technique to control your breath or support your voice. The action of the diaphragm is a reflex to a voice well placed in the mask.    Pushing with the diaphgram overpowers the voice, is unnatural, uneeded and over time will actually hurt your voice.

Here is how you should breath for singing:

1. stand straight, head up straight.

2. Relax the shoulders and the arms, let them hang and not bunch up.

3. Push your sternum forward, this will expand the ribs and make room for air.

4. Breath in to the upper chest and let the ribs expand. DO NOT expand the belly or diaphgram abnormally. The diaphgram will work on it’s own without you thinking about it, it does not need extra control or to be built up.

5. As you sing out concentrate on keeping your chest up and your ribs expanded. The diaphgram will move naturally.

6. As you sing out think of a sob.  This is called, “breath pop.” and the voice should be rooted in it.   When you perform the breath pop you will notice your voice resonantes like a hum, is felt both in the chest and head cavities and your diaphgram wavers/ compresses without you thinking about it.

This is a very basic explanation.  If you want to find very detailed instruction on how to breath for singing and how to greatly improve your voice I recommend www.vocalrelease.com    The instruction you find in this course is simply the best.