Breathiness: The “Airy” Voice Part III

Insufficient breath energy accounts for the rest of the breathiness that I hear in my students’ voices. Often new students assume an overly relaxed posture and fail to use good support of their breath. They need to learn how to manage their airflow by balancing the resistance provided by the expansion of the intercostals muscles and the controlled rise of the diaphragm (see Appoggio in Correct Breathing For Singing). When trying to eliminate a breathy tone, many singers will attempt to force the sound out in order to get more volume, pushing instead of supporting the voice, which only masks the problem and creates tension in the neck and shoulder muscles and an unsteady flow of air. Thinking in terms of “allowing” or “letting” more air out, rather than “pushing” more air out sometimes makes a significant difference both psychologically and physically. The notion of letting more air out often helps a student to relax and control the breathing mechanism better. There is an optimal balance of muscular involvement that needs to be achieved for singing. A singer must remain neither too relaxed, nor too tense. Once support improves, breathiness generally lessens.

Some students produce breathy tones only when descending in pitch. They tend to relax their breath energy because the pitch demands are not as high going downward on a scale. The laryngeal muscles may also become lax.

Some singers find that physical fatigue from inadequate rest makes it impossible for them to find the energy needed to support their voices and coordinate their bodies well enough to produce a clear tone. Better sleeping habits tend to immediately improve this kind of breathy tone production.

Insufficient hydration (dryness) can also temporarily create a breathy tone in a singer’s voice, as the vocal folds do not function optimally when they lack sufficient moisture for lubrication.

Some singers use a breathy tone in an effort to imitate the vocal stylings of their favourite singers. If the students’ vocal role models are singers like Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, who employ breathy, raspy, scratchy sounds for artistic effect, they may, either consciously or unconsciously, adopt the same tonal quality as their own, viewing it as both desirable and marketable. Emulating or learning to sing in the same fashion as their idols encourages the development of poor technique, and is potentially detrimental to the vocal apparatus. It may take months or years to help students understand why this tone is undesirable and to unlearn these bad vocal habits.

Of course, there is a place within contemporary music where breathiness may be acceptable. This effect, when intentionally but sparingly used, can add some thoughtfulness, sweetness, drama, sexiness and intimacy to a song, and can be an intentional effect to increase artistry.

However, many of these famous singers are unable to produce a clean, focused tone due to poor singing technique. They sing each song on their CDs with the same unfocused tone. If this is the only way in which a singer is able to sing, then he or she lacks good technique and should not be considered an ideal vocal model. He or she may make a good living with this style of sound production, but success and popularity are not necessarily synonymous with vocal talent, correctness and healthiness, and students of voice should be cautioned to avoid imitating these tones. Just because a singer may have a pleasing, albeit breathy, tone, does not mean that he or she is singing well or correctly, and it doesn’t mean that he or she isn’t being limited by this tone production choice, if indeed it is a choice. Again, this should not be the only way in which a singer is able to sing.

Prepubescent girls and those who are in their early teens may not be able to fully eliminate breathiness from their voices, as there may be a physiological (medical) explanation for this tone – the mutational chink – that will require maturation to make disappear completely. Although I tread lightly with the voices of younger students, it is possible to safely and gently help to improve the singing tone of these maturing voices, in spite of the mutational chink phenomenon, since some of the breathiness is also attributable to improper singing technique, including inadequate breath support and energy and poor attacks or onsets of sound.

Using gentle glottal onsets, achieved by singing notes in staccato, twang and energized whining (like a baby) in the upper middle and upper range may be effective. Some teachers find that lip and tongue-tip trills help to even out breathy (as well as pressed) phonation. Also, forward consonants, like “b” and “v”, may help to focus resonance or tone during onset/staccato exercises. Eventually, once tone clears up, these consonants can be removed from the exercises. Using front vowels, particularly the [i] and [e] is generally not recommended for young female voices because they force a firmer adduction (closure) of the vocal folds and thus a higher air pressure on the young instrument. However, in order to produce a balanced training of the voice, these vowels, which occur regularly in both speaking and singing, should not be altogether neglected, even by the young singing voice.

I have had success with removing much of the breathiness in the middle registers of some of my young female students by having them make excited statements like “Whoo hoo!” and “Oh no!” in a range of pitches that would fall within their upper middle register. From these exercises, I will often move onto having the young singer say a variety of English words, formed with different vowel sounds, at specific pitches. (They always seem surprised that this “pitched talking” sounds a lot like singing, but doesn’t feel as difficult!) Once these students begin to become aware of the mechanism that maintains clarity of tone during speech at these higher speech-inflection pitches - they can invariably produce a clear “calling” voice, which suggests to me that the problem of breathiness is often more a matter of psychology than biology - they almost immediately find it easier to produce the same clear tone during the extended vowels of singing. Sometimes just seeing how the vowels that they train with during their lessons are applicable to the singing of songs (i.e., with consonants added to create meaningful words) helps them to make the body-mind connection.

Breathy tones in young singers may also be caused in part by their growing bodies. There tends to be a fair bit of inconsistency in their placement – where they focus their tone – because growth, including that of the vocal apparatus, may occur rapidly. One week, placement works, and the following week, it doesn’t. A mere millimetre of growth in the larynx can significantly affect the voice. Often the simplest methods of achieving good tone and placing resonance in the mask or masque (the bony structure of the face), such as humming and the use of more resonant consonants, are the most successful ones with this age group. Once these pre-adolescents are beyond puberty, the problem with inconsistency generally disappears.

Additionally, young singers often lack coordination between their body alignment, theactuator (the lungs and breathing system), the vibrator (the vocal folds) and theresonator (the vocal tract). As they gain better awareness of their postural balance, their breathing becomes more efficient, which in turn helps them to phonate and resonate more efficiently.

Breathiness: The “Airy” Voice Part II

Poor approximation (closure) of the vocal folds explains much of the breathiness that I encounter in my teaching, especially in my young female students. Students often need help developing a good onset of sound or attack at the start of a sung phrase.

Many untrained and self-conscious singers produce this tone in order to soften the edges of their voices so that they don’t sound as loud. Oftentimes, new students who have never taken lessons before are extremely nervous when they first meet me – a trained, professional singer - assuming that I will critique them harshly or make fun of them for their less-than-perfect singing voices. They then produce a very quiet, conservative, airy sound while singing in front of me. In some cases, the issue of self-consciousness becomes most pronounced during puberty, a time during which young students must contend with an inconsistency in their changing and maturing voices and must come to accept and embrace a newly emerging adult voice that sounds different than what they have grown accustomed to hearing themselves produce. The voice is a significant part of who we are as individuals, and if we don’t feel as though what we have to share is worthy of being heard by others, we may produce a non-projective, quiet singing or speaking voice. Sometimes improvements happen immediately, once the student becomes more comfortable singing in front of me, but most of the time, it takes some work to help them get past their psychological hang-ups so that we can clean up their tone.

Often there may be certain sections of a singer’s range, or certain notes, that seem to come out particularly breathy or unclear. Sometimes this faulty tone emerges around pivotal registration points or only within certain registers. Most often, breathiness in untrained males occurs in head voice, as these students either are afraid of hurting themselves by singing above speech-inflection range and hold back on breath energy to reduce volume and strain or are simply unaccustomed to hearing themselves sing in higher pitches and substitute a breathy falsetto-type voice for legitimate full voice. In young untrained females, breathiness often emerges in the middle register because they tend to relax their breath support and reduce their breath energy in this range where they are more comfortable singing the notes or because of underdevelopment of this range. In untrained females who have passed puberty, breathiness often occurs in head voice because they fail to make appropriate vowel modifications and then produce a “spread” vowel sound rather than experiencing the necessary “narrowing” of the vowels that would otherwise enable them to maintain a clear, free tone in the upper register. In lighter- or higher-voiced females, I sometimes notice a lack of focus in the tone when they are singing at the bottom of their chest or natural voice ranges. (The bottom extreme of a singer’s range is impaired by breathiness because the marked shortening of the vocal folds tends to set the folds apart and create a bulging mass within the vocal folds.) These women tend to produce a vocal fry-type mode of phonation, which can be damaging to the voice if used excessively. In all of these cases, improvement in vocal technique corrects the problem of breathiness in the voice.

Many singers struggle to maintain clarity in their tone only while singing certain vowels. More closed vowels – ones in which the tongue is positioned close to the roof of the mouth - such as the [e] and [i], tend to give many students problems because, while attempting to add openness to the vowel to prevent it from sounding tight or squeezed, singers often end up spreading the vowel. For others, more open vowels – ones in which the tongue is in a low position - such as [a], seem to invite breathiness. Front orback vowels, as well as vowels that are either rounded or unrounded, may also be more or less problematic for certain singers. Most singers seem to have difficulties with at least one vowel when they first walk into my studio, and the reasons for these problems are often easy to pinpoint but painstaking to correct. In most cases,articulation of vowels and vocal tract shaping are what need to be addressed and corrected, and old habits are often hard to break.

Breathiness: The “Airy” Voice

Breathiness is by far the most common tonal weakness that I encounter with singers, and most predominantly among females of all ages. There are numerous explanations for why breathiness occurs in a singing or speaking voice, and I will explain them in the paragraphs below. Many singers are not aware of the breathiness that is present in their voices, nor of its undesirability and inefficiency, until it is pointed out to them and until they become aware of what good tone and resonance should sound and feel like.

A “breathy” quality or an “airy” tone can be heard as an audible passing or “leaking” of air through the mouth while singing, almost like the faint sound of air leaking out of a tire or balloon. It is often described as an “unfocused sound or tone”, and tends to create a diffuse and wispy sound, or a raspy, scratchy vocal quality (e.g., as in the case of ex-president Bill Clinton’s speaking voice). This mode of phonation, when habitually used, is also termed hypofunctional.

During inhalation, the vocal folds come apart to allow air to enter the lungs. Directly after inhalation and immediately prior to Phonation (or singing, for our purposes here), however, the vocal folds need to come together gently and firmly with the aid of the laryngeal muscles. This closure cuts off the escaping air. When the air pressure in the trachea rises as a result of this closure, the folds above it are blown apart, while the vocal processes of the arytenoid cartilages - a pair of small, pyramid-shaped (three-sided) cartilages that form part of the larynx, to which the vocal folds are attached - remain in apposition (side by side). This creates an oval shaped gap between the folds and some air escapes, lowering the pressure inside the trachea. Rhythmic repetition of this movement, a certain number of times a second, creates a pitched note. Ideally, the vocal folds should contact each other completely during each vibration, fully closing the gap between them.

In order to oscillate, or vibrate, the vocal folds need to be brought near enough together - this is known as vocal fold closure or approximation - so that air pressure builds up beneath the larynx . This increased subglottal – the area below the glottis, or larynx - pressure causes the folds to vibrate and make sound. The vibration of the vocal folds modulates (regulates) the flow of air being expelled from the lungs during phonation.

When the vocal folds fail to close completely before singing, however, breathiness results. In other words, a breathy style of singing is achieved by holding the vocal folds apart. In breathy phonation, there is insufficient resistance by the vocal folds to the air that sets them into vibration. As a result, airflow escapes the glottis during the quasi-closed phase, which generates noise and produces a strong fundamental.

Common Tone Production Errors

Although there are numerous undesirable colours  and “shades” of tone, (such as “pinched”, “sharp-“ or “shrill-sounding”, “flat-sounding”, “shaky”, “thin”, etc.), I tend to divide the most common tone production errors into three general categories: breathy, nasally and throaty. In this article, I have also included a fourth tone production error, pressed phonation, because it is also relatively common amongst untrained or incorrectly trained singers. Each of these errors in sound or tone production is a product of poor singing technique and results in a failure to create optimal resonance, which is an important part of good singing. These faulty tones all tend to hamper loudness ability and limit range, control, stamina and volume. Furthermore, since improper tone production is created through improper use of the vocal apparatus, it can also lead to vocal fatigue, strain or injury.

In some cases these tone production weaknesses may indicate the presence of a medical condition (e.g., vocal fold dysfunction or other glottal incompetence, etc.) that is preventing the vocal apparatus from functioning optimally. It is always in the singer’s best interest to have a doctor examine his or her vocal tract in cases where the singer finds that he or she is unable to make improvements in singing tone after a reasonable length of time working with a qualified vocal instructor, or where persistent pain or discomfort is present during either singing or speech. A correct diagnosis and proper treatment of such medical concerns can save the voice from (further) injury, and save the singer from years of frustration and discouragement when he or she remains unable to produce desirable tone.

It is important to understand that many singers may demonstrate these tone production errors only at certain times, in certain places within their range, on certain vowels or at certain pitches. Also, the voices of some singers may be described in more than one way. For example, some singers are both nasally at points and throaty at other times during a song.