Sing From Your Diaphragm - What does this mean? | Easy Singing Lesson

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These days, I never tell my students to sing from their diaphragm, because it doesn’t make sense to me or them. But, this phrase seems to persist, so let’s understand what it probably means when people say it.

First, let’s recall what the diaphragm is! It’s a thin dome-like sheet of muscle, attached to your chest wall and abdominal cavity. It’s just below your lungs, separating your chest from your abdomen (all of your digestive organs). Without any intervention from you, it lowers (flattening) when you inhale and your lungs expand. It rises back into its dome shape when you exhale and your lungs deflate.

So if this happens involuntarily, how do we do anything with our diaphragm? You can’t feel it or control it directly, so what does it mean to sing from your diaphragm?

What I think people usually mean by this phrase is: sing with a mindful connection to your abdominal muscles, rather than thinking solely about your throat. Perhaps a better phrase, then, is sing from your belly! But that might lead people to squeeze their bellies really hard for a high note, and we don’t want that either.

In classical voice lessons, you often work extensively on keeping your ribcage expanded when you sing. This is related to the diaphragm in the following way: if your ribcage stays “open” for longer, your diaphragm stays in that lower flattened position, and your lungs don’t expel your air as quickly. So the diaphragm is related to breath control, but it’s not as simple as telling a singer to “sing from their diaphragm” and calling it a day.

Instead, here’s what I do. I encourage you to feel your abdominal & intercostal muscles engaging when you exhale on a hiss. Inhale, feeling your belly expand, and then exhale (hiss) with hands on your abdomen to feel that engagement.

Transfer that same feeling of gentle muscle engagement from a hiss to a hum. Pulse on a hiss, a hum, and a “hah” or “hoh”, feeling those muscles “turn on” every time you initiate sound.

Finally, see if you can feel & hear the difference between singing in this way - with a mindful connection to your lower body - and singing as if you’re just initiating the sound from your throat. Hear the difference and see if you can recreate it with your voice.

This requires repeated practice to make second-nature, which is why we practice regularly! And it’s also a bit of a mindset shift: instead of thinking that your voice comes from your throat alone, understand and feel that it’s actually initiated by your breath and your abdominal muscles.

So if “sing from your diaphragm” makes sense to you, keep on thinking that! And hopefully if it didn’t, now you have something clearer and more concrete.

0:00 - Intro
0:34 - What Is A Diaphragm?
1:39 - Ribcage
2:12 - Feel The Inhale/Exhale
4:13 - Mindful Connection vs Throat
5:37 - Outro

5 Easy Tips on How to Find Your Singing Voice - https://youtu.be/vE6Lns2f9oY
Daily Exercises for Great Singing - https://youtu.be/LbL-xmTAswg
Avoid These Singing MISTAKES - https://youtu.be/kugobqj9Gt0
5 Minute Vocal Warm Up Exercises - https://youtu.be/4Qkr0REH_Fk
Beginner ALTO Vocal Exercises - Easy 10 minute warmup - https://youtu.be/4Qkr0REH_Fk

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