Thursday, May 24, 2012

The Right Breathing Exercises for Singing

When you breathe normally while you’re just sitting down and minding your own business, your breathing tends to be shallow. You don't take deep breaths; you just breathe lightly, pause and breathe again. That's not how it goes when you need to sing.   When you first start your singing exercises, you'll find that you can no longer just let your breathing do its own thing. You need to actually think about getting your breathing going just the way it should to power your singing properly. There are all kinds of Breathing Exercises for Singing well that you need to take up to make sure that this goes well.

The thing is, the kind of control you need to sing powerfully needs timing and power. You need to start thinking about how you’re breathing. One way to do this would be to actually be aware of how you breathe. You want to be able to visualize it. That way, you'll be aware of what your respiratory system does, even when you're not thinking about it. You'll be able to control how it acts.

When you inhale to sing, you need to be able to do it quickly between song phrases so that there is no interruption. The music can't wait. You can’t do it at your leisure. To be able to breathe completely in a limited period of time, try the following exercises.

You need to breathe air in like it were heavy is water.  Know how really humid air - like in a steam bath - feels really heavy? Breathing air in, you need to visualize how heavy it feels. As you breathe in, you want to feel it settle into your body cavity. Make it feel like it's going so low in your body to settle in that it's reaching your abdomen. This will help you feel the air and control it.

As you do this, you will gain control over your breathing. While still feeling the weight of the air and feeling it settle into your body. You want to breathe in the air and feel your chest expand. Basically, you're trying to power up your lungs and every part of your chest cavity so that they can pull in a lot of air in a short period of time.

At first, if you're learning the right way, you'll find that you are beginning to yawn all the time. It doesn't mean you're getting bored or anything. It just means that your body is trying to cope with all the excess air coming in, trying to balance it out. It always happens to everyone.

So okay, you're learning to breathe in. How about breathing exercises for singing that help you exhale? Those happen to be very important, too. The thing is that singing only occurs when you exhale. Singing is a kind of controlled exhaling. Basically, you want to be able to hold your breath in and let it out in whatever slow and steady weight the music requires.

To do this, try this exercise. Get a feather and blow it up in the air as high as it will go. But when you do this, you don't want to let your chest collapse. Try to feel what part of your body you need to exert to exhale in a sustained way without moving your chest. And try to control that part. Breathing exercises for singing like these really work.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

My Mixed Feelings On Abstract Art Paintings

I have been a great lover of art since I was a child, and my likes are many and diverse. I do tend to struggle a bit more, however, with abstract art paintings, because I think sometimes the artists that create them are trying to be too clever. I will not say that I dislike abstract art paintings as a whole, but I would say that my feelings toward them are somewhat mixed.

I remember making a trip to our local museum of modern art, which houses numerous abstract art paintings. This was a few years ago, and I decided to go because I had always appreciated representational art work, but had struggled to understand abstract work. I think what bothered me the most is that I always felt one had to know about the artist himself in order to get the meaning behind the work when it came to abstract art paintings, and quite honestly, that was not always possible.

I hate the idea of art for art's sake, and I really don't like thinking that people are becoming wealthy by making art that they refuse to explain. How do we know they even meant anything at all, for instance, and aren't just laughing at us behind our backs. I also hate the idea of people getting rich off of their reputations, which it seems that artists that create abstract art paintings would be more likely to do. I am not accusing any artist of doing this, but because it is abstract and because many will not explain their work, one never really knows for certain.

On the other hand, I have encountered abstract art paintings that have really moved me to the point of tears. I remember one such painting that was meant to represent a family attending the burial of a young boy. I really can't explain why I got this painting immediately, but I did. I felt it, and I went home shortly after viewing it and researched it a bit. I was right on the money on my interpretation of the painting, and it meant so much to me that I could figure it out on my own that it will always hold a special place in my heart.

My feelings are definitely still mixed on abstract art paintings, and I am still not totally convinced that I like them. I have gotten better at interpreting them, I believe, and that does make them more palatable in my book. I don't go to our museum of modern art nearly as often as I go to the museum that houses classic art, but I do enjoy it more than I used to.