Here's the second part in the history-making two-part post on proper breathing. We stopped with the story about the idiot radiologist. We now get to pick up the subject of proper breathing with the concept of settling the breath. This is a rather subtle concept. And just to give you something to listen to, here's Frankie's version of Fly me to the Moon. There's nothing interesting going on visually, so you can listen and keep reading.
Here's what often happens when a singer takes a breath at the beginning of Fly Me to the Moon. The introduction is playing. Just before his first note, the singer takes a carefully timed breath, mindful to expand the lower ribs in a barrel-like fashion. He is nervous, and the audience knows it. His pulse is racing. The first word is "Fly." On that first note, all the jealously hoarded air rushes out like kindergarteners kept inside for too long on a sunny day, and the singer wonders why he has no air for the rest of the phrase.
This poor breathless singer has fallen victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "settle the breath before singing."
A different singer comes to the front. She, too, is going to sing Fly Me to the Moon. The introduction is playing. At the beginning of the last measure, the singer takes a carefully timed breath, mindful to expand the ribs in a barrel-like fashion. Unlike the first singer, she has given enough time for the breath to settle. Her fears are put to rout. As they watch, the audience knows, even before she has sung her first note, that this singer will be good. She sings a long phrase; "Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars, let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars" before she takes another deep breath.
The main difference between our two hypothetical singers is that one has allowed the breath to settle and the other has not. Letting your breath settle is different from holding your breath. Holding the breath has tension, and keeps respiration from happening. Letting the breath settle is much gentler than that. It takes just a brief moment. But in that moment, many things have happened.
When you are nervous, your respiration speeds up and becomes shallow. That makes your heart race, feeding the nervousness, making the breath even more shallow. It becomes is never-ending cycle. When, however, you allow the breath to settle, it breaks that cycle, hopefully before it's really had time to start, and calms you down.
Letting the breath settle is also a way for you to tell your body that you are now in control of this automatic bodily function. Once again, you must trick your body into doing something that it might not want to do. You need to be firm with it, or it won't listen.
And, by taking that moment, it also tells the audience that you have something worth listening to. Combined with good posture, it gives you a commanding stage presence. Many people think that I'm much taller than I really am, simply based on how I stand and breathe on stage.
This brings me to the final sub-point in Proper Breathing: Breaths should not be great gasps for air, but controlled intake as well as controlled outflow. You should be a miser with your breath, making each molecule work for you. Herr Weinsinger used to tell us to imagine we'd just eaten a pastrami sandwich with extra garlic and onions, with an order of sauerkraut on the side. (I will admit, this sounds horrible to me, but that's part of the point) You don't want to breathe this stinky breath on anyone else, and so you keep as much breath inside as you possibly can. Suddenly, you are being a miser with your air.
This woman gets a little scary on the topic of breathing, but that doesn't mean that she isn't right. Who knew breathing was THIS important?
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