Why Voice #8 - Breath

One of my lovely teachers (wonderful and missed; Ian Adam), back when I was a fresh faced young singer just discovering what it was all about, would always start out the lesson by simply saying "Lets breathe". And so we would.
We would pant and breathe and do all these rather crazy looking exercises, and I never really payed much attention, I was young and foolish, nor did I really get what he was trying to teach me, but the pure practice of it was enough to somehow make me better.

One of the main things that suffered most when I went from being a classically inspired singer to a contemporary inspired singer over a decade ago, was my breath management. My whole idea of breath in singing somehow was changed - BIG mistake, but one that I have since corrected and thus feel extra vigilant about correcting the misconception of when I see/hear them in my studio.
If there is something that singing teachers can discuss to death it is; what perfect breath management is - and how to obtain it. I love when I have students that come to me saying they want to learn how to breathe the right way, it's like asking for the answer to an impossible ridle. The right way is....just not that simple, however once you got it and your body has adapted the habit it does seem like the simplest thing in the world to people looking at it. Nobody questions the amount of training that goes into a ballet dancers perfect triple pirouette, yet done well, it looks so easy and simple. Breath management in singing seems to me like the same thing (though I never mastered the triple pirouette:-) It requires strength, balance, momentum and focus and to get that you must practice it a billion times and fall on your ass a few times too...
In my breath training we train all these aspects separately and together, and though I know it is confusing to many of my students - they are very happy when they get it :-) and sometimes wonder why they ever found it so difficult in the first place....well, that is just the magic of it all.
So "lets breathe"...