 My name is Erica Merritt, and I am a local singer and songwriter. Today, we're going to talk about proper breathing. As a singer, proper breathing is extremely important to carry out a full sound and to have the proper support you need to carry your notes, all right? Before we do that, we're going to begin with the sintering exercise I'd like to do before I sing. Anytime I sing, I like to relax my mind and my body just a little bit so that I can chase away any nervousness or anxiousness, OK? So I invite you to close your eyes, take a deep breath, let it out, good. Deep breath in, let it out. One more time, deep breath in, let it out. I would like for you to feel the bottom of your feet. Wiggle your toes just a little bit. Now, let's move to our ankles. Let's wiggle them just a little bit. Let's move to our knees. Let's continue to take breaths as we're moving the different parts of our body. Let's move to our hips, our shoulders, our necks. Let's go to our temples. If they're tight, I want you to just concentrate on relaxing them. What about the top of our heads? What does that feel like? If it tight, if it is, let's loosen it up. We're going to go to the back of our shoulders, our shoulder blades, going down to our lower back, behind our knees, and back down to our heels. Let's pretend that our feet are glued to the ground and that our head has puppet strings and they're being pulled straight up into the air. I want you to imagine, or excuse me, to feel the full length of your body and the full length of your offerings. Think about what you'd like to offer this world, your friends and your family, as far as love, as far as energy, as far as your great talent and ability. Let's breathe it in. Now, let's let it out. Good job. We are centered and ready to talk about proper breathing. It's very important to have proper breathing technique as a singer. It supports your beautiful voice and your notes and it affects your pitch and your tone. Also, when you have good breathing support, you don't have to breathe a thousand times as you're singing, right? We want to make sure that we have some good breath support. We put it in something called our diaphragm. It's a holding tank for our air, OK? So who knows where our diaphragm is? Our diaphragm is located. Can you go to your belly button area and right above your belly button area and below your ribs is your diaphragm, OK? When you take a deep breath and a proper deep breath, the air should go into your diaphragm, much like when you're putting air into a paper bag or a plastic bag. You put air into the bag and what happens? It gets bigger. The same thing as when you breathe when you're into your diaphragm. Your diaphragm and your waist, you should feel it here, should get bigger right above your waist, right? In order to do that, you have to have proper breathing technique. So you're going to stand up. You are going to make sure your legs are shoulder length apart. You're going to make sure that your shoulders are relaxed and your chest is up, OK? And in order to get to this position, sometimes I like to put my hands behind my back and grab my hands together like this, and we come together, and that kind of positions you in the perfect position to have great posture, OK? If you don't have great posture, then your diaphragm can't, let's see, you can't accept or you can't get the air in your diaphragm like you'd want to. It's like a straw, right? If you bend the straw, you can't get the air through the straw, right? So I want to make sure that we're standing up straight and our posture is great so that we can get all the air in our diaphragm that we need, OK? All right, I'd like you to try to take a deep breath through your nose, and we're going to really try to get that air into our diaphragm. Something I like to act like I'm doing is going swimming or going underneath the water. When you go underneath the water, you want to take a deep breath, right? And instinctually, when you do that, that air goes into your diaphragm because you know that you're going to need some oxygen to be under that water, correct? So you can take a deep breath, and then you go underneath the water. So you come out of the water, right? All right, what I'd like you to do is imagine that same energy and that same mindset when you're taking a deep breath into your diaphragm. Shoulders down, chest up, take a deep breath through your nose. And if you put your hands on your waist like this, you should feel it expand. Act like if there's a rubber band actually around your whole waist. If you're doing it correctly, the rubber band gets bigger. And as the air expels or lets out of your body, the rubber band gets smaller, OK? So let's make our rubber band bigger. Deep breath, let it out, rubber band gets smaller. Let's act like it's a paper bag. Fill up your paper bag, let it out. The bag deflates. Good. As we are talking about singing from our diaphragm, it's a great idea to practice breathing from your diaphragm. I say it like three times a day. It gets really easy to get dizzy when we're doing this, because that's what happens when you breathe from your diaphragm. But don't worry, that's pretty normal. So if you need to sit, that's fine. I would prefer you stand. I am sitting, but if you are sitting, you want to make sure that your posture is up, straight, and proper, so that you're getting that air. When you take a deep breath, this time, I want you to see how long, how many seconds, you can expel the air. So I have a taking deep breath, and you let it out. We want to actually take our time and let it out, so that we can, let's try five seconds, OK? Deep breath through your nose, and we're going to try to let it out for five seconds. Let's go. Pretty good. All right, let's try it again. This time, I want you to make a TS sound like this. Much like you are a balloon, and you're letting out air. I want you to make a TS sound as we're expelling our air, and we're going to see how many seconds we can expel that air, OK? Let's try expelling it for 10 seconds, all right? Deep breath through your nose, expel. That was 10 whole seconds. If you weren't able to do it for 10 seconds, that's quite all right. You can start at five, and work your way up to 10, and then to 15, then to 20. And before you know it, you'll be at 30 seconds, 40 seconds, and maybe all the way to a minute. But it takes practice, but I promise you, if you keep practicing, you can get better and better at this. And this will allow you to have lots of air to draw from when you're singing those beautiful notes, OK? We're going to do it again, I'm going to stand up. And this time, we're going to try to take a deep breath through our nose again. And when we let it out, we're going to go for 15 seconds, OK? All right, deep breath in, let it out. Very good, OK. How many people got to 15 seconds? If not, that's quite all right. The idea is to keep practicing so that you can get more and more time, or I would say that you can get more and more air into your diaphragm, and so that you can expel it for a longer amount of time, OK? All right, much like when you're holding a note, you take a deep breath, and you might go, uh, just like when we tried the TS exercise, I'd also like you to try the AWE, ah, exercise, OK? When you're doing, ah, you're doing the same thing, but this time, you're making a sound when you do it, OK? Let's try to take a deep breath into our diaphragm, making that rubber band expand. And as you're doing that, we're gonna see if we can hold our note for five seconds, OK? Deep breath in, let's do it. Ah, don't be scared or nervous if it seems harder to do it when you're singing a note. When you're singing a note, a lot more air comes out of your mouth than when you're going TS. So the goal is to try to control your diaphragm. Your diaphragm makes it easier to control, actually, how much air is coming out of your diaphragm, assuming out of your mouth, OK? It's like a pressure gauge, OK? So we'll take a deep breath, let it out. This time, we're gonna try to do it for 10 seconds, OK? Remember, your diaphragm is controlling the rate of the air that's coming out of your mouth and out of your body, OK? That if you take a deep breath into your diaphragm and you're gonna hold that, if you're expanding a rubber band, you're gonna hold that rubber band in place as long as you can. And you wanna make sure that you are, it's flattening, but it's flattening at the slowest rate possible, right? Because you wanna make sure that that air is lasting as long as possible in your diaphragm, OK? Take a deep breath, and we're gonna try to do this for a note for 10 seconds, OK? Deep breath, let it out. Ah, seconds, wow! How many people got to 10 seconds? A little game I like to play is called Breathing Olympics. I time myself. I get a little timer, or I count, have someone count, or I might count in my head, and I take a deep breath and I see how many seconds I can get, right? Sometimes I get five, sometimes I get 10, but if you keep practicing, you can probably get up to 30 seconds fairly easily and fairly quickly, OK? So let's try doing that three times a day, and I promise you that if you start at five seconds in a couple days, you'll be able to do 10 seconds, and then as you keep going, you'll be able to get 30 seconds to 40 seconds in no time, OK? Now that we've learned how to breathe into our diaphragm and to get lots of air stored in there, we're gonna try a singing exercise that incorporates using your diaphragm and holding air in that capacity, in that space, to support the notes that we're gonna sing. We're gonna use the call and response method. Every time that I sing something or call something, I'm gonna throw it to you, and then you're gonna throw it back to me, which means I'm gonna sing it and then you're gonna repeat it. Now, every time that I sing something for you, I'm gonna add a little bit more, so you're gonna make sure that you have lots of air support in your diaphragm to carry out the exercise of the note, OK? Or the pattern of notes, OK? I'm going to be singing no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, I'll never stop singing, OK? All right, deep breath, here we go. No way, no way, no way, no way, deep breath, no way, deep breath, no way, good, take a deep breath because it's gonna get a little bit harder or more challenging, OK? Are you ready? No way, now you sing it with me. No way, time we do it. We say, no way, I'll never stop, so no, you see how we keep building upon that? Let's try it again, deep breath. Let's do it, no way. Are you able to get that with one breath? Because if you're trying, you're winning, OK? Add a little bit more with that one breath to make sure that you take it right deep through your nose. Deep through your nose, all right? And I'm gonna add a little bit more. No way, I'm gonna say no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, no way, I'll never stop singing and hold it out, OK? Deep breath through your nose, here we go, no way. Starting with just a few no waves and then we got to four whole rounds of no waves and then we ended with no way, I'll never stop singing with one breath. That's how you do it, you practice every day and the better that you get at this, the more words you'll be able to say with one breath or more words you'll be able to sing with one breath, OK? But it's very important to put that air in your diaphragm so that you can hold it there and then it can support all these beautiful notes that you're singing, OK? All right, my name is Erica Merritt and again, I wanna thank you for joining me to talk about proper breathing technique, breathing from your diaphragm.