About breathing.

Whitesnake

Hello, everyone! I have a question about breathing. Recently I listened to multitrack of Whole Lotta Love, and I heard how Robert Plant take a DEEP, massive breath through the mouth before singing his lines! It's not like small breath through the nose, when you fill you diaphragm with air by just a small breath through the nose. It's a MASSIVE breath through the mouth! And it's feels like by this breath he filled with air not only his diaphragm, but his whole body

I actually tried this breathing in my daily exercises and it gets a lot easier to hit high notes for me. But I'm wondering: is this breathing actually right? Should I do exercises with that kind of breathing?

[Deleted User]

Can't really tell without seeing you execute the techniques. Everybody has a different description of how things feel when they sing so any attempt to answer would be purely a thoughtful guess, and I'm sure you would rather have more than just a guess.

Peace, Tony

Whitesnake

@videoace - here, I just made this record. I decided not to go to F#4 because don't want to crack or something, but E4 and F4 still pretty high to me.

Whitesnake

Actually, I'm just warmed up and I recorded my try on F#4. That's how I do it everyday, basically.

[Deleted User]

Well I still can't see what your doing, so what I did was try to sing it the way you did, and discovered maybe a couple of things.
You need to tighten up your breath support, and the back of the tongue needs to lay flatter.
I'm not even sure if those are the problems not being able to actually see, but from trying to recreate the sound, that is what I had to do.

Peace, Tony

Whitesnake

@videoace by saying "tighten up" you mean push down on a diaphragm even more? I watched myself in a mirror, like Ken advised, and noticed, that my tongue is a little concave when I singing scales. It should be flat?

[Deleted User]

Your tongue will concave as you shape the vowels, etc...........but you still want it to lay on the bottom jaw whether it's concave or not.

Some people describe breath support as pushing. I prefer to describe it as squeezing vs pushing, even though they are the same. I'll explain:

To compress something, anything.... what needs to happen? You either push down on something, or you squeeze it.
When you compress by pushing down, it's with the premise that the bottom is already resting against something so when you push the top of it, (only one side) it compresses.
With squeezing, you are working with the premise that you have to push equally from both sides.

When I do my support, it feels like I'm pushing the insides out, and the outside in at the same time which to me would be squeezing.

It feels different to a lot of people so don't take what I say as an absolute. That is just my personal opinion.

Peace, Tony

KevinGrem

You can take just as big of a breath using your nose.

Breathing through the mouth can pick up toxins in the air and can make you cough.

Whitesnake

@videoace thank you! That's interesting point of vew. I always imagined like I am push on a diaphragm from the top, but never from the opposite side.

[Deleted User]

Like I said. Everybody feels it differently.

I like to throw out different descriptions so people can understand that there is more than one way to describe a cat, but you always have to be thinking, and be willing to try things on your own to get things working.
This is a 95% hands on course. Find ways to work it.

Peace, Tony

[Deleted User]

I understand that you obtained the course second hand?

I would contact KTVA, explain your situation, and see if you can pay a fee for the use of the forum. Having the course, and not having student access will slow your progress considerably. I would definitely try to work out some kind of a deal with them.

Peace

Whitesnake

@videoace I know, everybody feels it diferently. That's why I want to try all possible things, like you said. Maybe the way you feel it is someway crosses with my feeling of it

And yes, I definitely will try to contact with administration and try to do something with it.

Whitesnake

@KevinGrem actually yeah, it happens.