Director's Note: Understanding Breathing

Director’s Note: Understanding breathing

For this week’s note, I wanted to deep dive into the breathing element often discussed in medals theory. We talk about breathing and breath support a lot in class. It’s crucial as you advance up the grades to understand how to breathe through your pieces, for pacing, for vocal strength  and to sustain the energy driving through your performance. 

Here are some tips and advice on how you can use and understand breathing techniques to enhance your performance (and help you answer that theory question!)

• Breath support - using good posture, an open torso, and strong diaphragmatic breathing to help give strength and power to your voice and ‘support’ the voice - throughout, but especially where you need more projection/power. 

• Careful awareness of punctuation -looking at where the pauses lie in each of your pieces and considering where to breathe. 

• Think also about the emotion of your characters and where to pick up pace/add pressure, and where to slow down and pause to allow for deeper breaths. Give examples of where perhaps your breathing may be shallow because the character is out of breath or where your breathing may be calmer and more controlled due to a change in the character’s emotional state. Give examples - be specific

• Use breathing exercises in class and at home when preparing for your exam to help you get a greater understanding of how breathing informs our vocal delivery when acting. (Find a list of breathing exercises you can do below). 

• It’s also a good idea to have an understanding of the science behind breathing and creating a voice in performance. You don’t need to go through all of the below in the theory section of your exam as it will result in too lengthy an answer - but do have a background understanding of how breathing works so you can quickly summarise the mechanics behind what you are doing when performing

THE SCIENCE behind breathing

Breathing IN:

1.     Intercostal muscles contract

2.     This pulls the rib cage up and out

3.     The diaphragm flattens as the rib cage moves

4.     Now there is more space in the lungs for air to flow into

5.     The abdominal muscles support this

Breathing OUT:

1.     Intercostal muscles relax

2.     The rib cage moves back down and in

3.     The diaphragm moves back to its original dome shape

4.     There is now less space in the lungs so air is pushed out

5.     The abdominal muscles support this.

Techniques involved in Voice Production:

Sound Production - Vowels

As the air moves out of the lungs it travels through the pharynx.

As it passes through the voice box the vocal flaps vibrate

The vibration with the air passing through creates pure, unobstructed sound.

Changing the shape of the lips will create different vowel sounds, using this unobstructed sound.

Sound Production- Consonants

To make consonants, we need the “Organs of Articulation”;

-       Tongue

-       Teeth

-       Tooth ridge

-       Hard palate

-       Soft palate

-       Lips

We block the air using our organs of articulation and then release the air, creating the consonant. This is known as the ‘Place of articulation’.

Examples: closing the lips and then releasing creates a ‘p’ sound, blocking air by putting tongue between teeth and then releasing the air creates a ‘th’ sound.

The combination of consonants and vowels means we now have basic Voice Production.

Techniques involved in Speech Production:

Now, we need to make the speech intelligible and clear.

Resonance

For good quality sound we need resonance. This is essentially to do with providing space in our resonators. There are three main resonators;

1.     Pharyngeal resonance – here we need to ensure there is suitable space in the pharynx. Yawning will result in too much air and poor quality speech. Clavicular breathing with tension in the throat will result in not enough air and a strained voice.

2.     Oral resonance – here we need enough space in the mouth for good oral resonance. If we have our mouth too closed or too open when we speak, the quality of the sound will be affected.

3.     Nasal resonance – here, resonance for ‘n’, ‘m’ and ‘ng’ sounds are affected. If we have a cold/blocked nose, our nasal resonance will be poor.

Good quality speech needs a balanced approach to all three resonators. We also have head and chest resonance to be aware of as secondary resonators.

Projection

We need to ensure everyone can hear our speech. We need to observe the following for suitable projection;

a.     Mental projection – assessing the space, the number of people, the acoustics – soft furnishings etc and understand how much resonance will be required.

b.     We need to have enough breath support to carry our voice – using the abdominal muscles to push the air so it bounces from our soft palate out to the room-  this is known as forward resonance.

c.     We need to ensure we have sufficient clarity so our speech is intelligible.

Clarity

Finally we need to make sure our speech has sufficient articulation, modulation and emphasis so the audience can listen and process our information.

a.     Articulation requires good use of the organs of articulation to create crisp diction. Tongue twisters are useful to enhance this.

b.     Modulation – this means varying our pitch, speech, volume – using our voice as an instrument to avoid a monotonous performance and adding instead colour and interest to our text.

c.     Emphasis – we need to select keywords to emphasise, and use appropriate word stress and sentence stress so our speech is intelligible and interesting. 

Diaphragmatic or deep breathing, also called abdominal breathing, consists of bringing air to the lower part of your lungs, using the muscles of the diaphragm. You will see your abdomen rise, hence its name.

• Advantages of diaphragmatic or abdominal breathing: This breathing technique allows a complete flow of oxygen to our body, allowing it to function properly. The heart rate goes down as does the blood pressure.

(Clavicular respiration – WHAT NOT TO DO!)

Because it is a type of shallow breathing, the ribcage does not allow the lungs to expand as much as they would in deeper breathing.

How do you know if you normally use this type of breathing? Place one hand on your chest and one hand on your abdomen and breathe normally. Which of the two hands rises? If the upper one rises, your breath is clavicular, if the lower one is abdominal. 

This type of breathing is inefficient because the greatest amount of blood to collect oxygen occurs in the lower areas of the lungs, which implies that you are getting little oxygen. This rapid and shallow breathing results in poor transmission of oxygen to the blood and therefore little nutrients to the tissues.

Advantages of clavicular breathing: This type of breathing provides us with oxygen quickly and can be useful when we have to run to catch the bus.

Disadvantages of clavicular breathing: Oxygen supply is insufficient, and maintained over time can increase stress and make our brain and our body not functioning properly.

Breathing Techniques and exercises to try out (and then discuss some you’ve used in your theory)

1. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart.  Stretch up, with your arms as high as possible and your fingers extended.  Slowly flop down from the waist, with your upper body hanging limply over your feet.  Let your arms swing loose.  Then, gradually grow back into and upright position with your neck and head coming up last and your shoulders relaxed.  Shake out.

2. Take a deep breath and blow an imaginary feather gently for as long as you can.

3. You’ve just turned 100.  Blow out all the candles on your imaginary birthday cake.

4. Imagine there is a balloon just above your face and you have to keep it balanced in the same position by blowing gently.  Not too hard, which would blow it away, but not so gently that it would touch your face.  This exercise helps you to extend your breaths, but also to control the amount you are using at any one time.

5. To use the muscles you use to control your breathing, you must identify and learn how to control them. Lie down with your head supported slightly with a small pillow or a book.  Because you are lying down you can concentrate completely on the chest area and your breathing without having to support your spine, legs or any other part of your body.

Place one hand on your ribs and one hand on the area just below the chest and above the waist or navel.  Breathe in, first of all being aware of the movement of the ribs being pulled outwards and upwards by the intercostal muscles, then immediately followed by the movement of the diaphragm downwards which will make the upper middle part of the abdomen swell.  You have created a cavity which is filled with air.

1. Imagine you have a piece of really chewy gum or toffee in your mouth.  Chew using all of your mouth and face muscles.  Make the movement really big to exercise and warm up these muscles. As you chew, massage your jaw and cheeks with the tips of your fingers, warming the muscles.

2. * Breathe in slowly to a count of 3 and out to a count of 3

*Breathe in slowly to a count of 3, hold for 3 and out to a count of 3

*Increase the count slowly to 7

1. Use a drinking straw and blow gently through it to keep a real balloon steady in the air above you. Use a drinking straw to pick up peas and carry them on the end of the straw to the other side of the room, held in position.

Finding your Resonators

• Nasal resonator – Say ‘mum’, ‘nose’ and ‘sing’.  Repeat the words but this time hold your nose.  You should hear ‘bub’, ‘dose’ and ‘sig’ because there isn’t any nasal resonance.

• Hold a yawn in your throat and count ‘one, two, three at the same time.  You will hear a sound with too much Pharyngeal (Pharynx) resonance.

• Say the word ‘ahhhhh’ with your lower jaw dropped at its most natural point.  Continue saying the sound and raise your lower jaw slowly.  As the lower jaw comes up, the lips will move closer together and the tongue might move towards the hard palate.  You will hear a sound without much oral resonance.

• Allow your lower jaw to drop at its most natural point and use a mirror to look through to the back of the mouth. If you breathe through your nose and out through your mouth, with your mouth still open, you will see the action of the soft palate.