Do opera singers have unusual lung capacity?
brassplyer
karaoke site. I was surprised at how challenging I'm finding it to be.
I'm having a hard time just getting to the end of phrases in one
breath.
I listened to some pro's do it on YouTube - Pavarotti, Domingo, Renee
Fleming, and they seem to do it effortlessly with plenty of breath to
spare and they do it with a *huge* voice which would seem to take a
lot of air.
I'm 6'4", two hundred and none of your business pounds, a longtime
trumpet player, I lift weights and do lots of cardio. Not a smoker.
I.e. I'm in decent physical condition. Yet I'm struggling with this
issue, despite taking very large breaths. I sing but I've never done
this kind of singing. How do these pro opera singers do it? Are they
born with a larger than typical lung capacity?
General Schvantzkoph
How fast can you throw a baseball? I ask this question because it's a
precise way of measuring the difference between the best athletes and
ordinary individuals. Major league pitchers regularly throw 100mph fast
balls, the best I can do is 25mph (admittedly that's at the absolute low
end of what a middle aged guy who's not in an iron lung can do). The
difference in kinetic energy is a factor of 16 to 1, i.e. the square of
the difference in speed (16 = 4 * 4). Opera singers have to fill giant
halls with their unamplified voice, that's not something an ordinary
person can do anymore than an ordinary person could throw a 100mph
baseball. Even other professional singers don't do that, all Broadway
shows use electronic amplification.
EvelynVogtGamble(Divamanque)
Aside from the fact that exercising any set of muscles increases
strength and capacity, I don't think innate capacity differs that much.
(Although trained singers do seem to have somewhat larger rib cages
than the average.) FYI, the Schubert "Ave Maria" does not even involve
particularly long phrases. If you are a wind-player, you certainly
should have as much capacity as most singers, but you may not use the
same diaphragmatic control - I've never played a wind instrument, so I'm
not sure how breath control for one differs from the other. (Both
"instruments" involve phrasing - might you be defeating the purpose by
taking TOO LARGE breaths?)
El Klauso
formative years, building diaphramatic strength to spuport the column
of air upon which the tone rides and finding a way to place the voice
both within the throat and the "mask" of the face, and concentrating
on the quality of tone produced what effects it and how it can be
altered, I guess you've done about all you can.
BTW, there is a way to increase lung capacity, and that is to gain a
good deal of weight. In order to pump the blood around your system and
to get the needed oxygen in that blood, your lung capacity will expand
as your weight goes up. This does not necessarily mean that you'll be
able to sing better, or to control the added breath resources without
more practice, focus and training, but the physical capacity will in
all likelihood grow.
Downside - you heart may"grow" (read 'enlarge') in ways you do not
wish or intend, and your blood chemistry will probably go south, as
might the health of many of your other internal organs.
Colin Reed
Your diaphragm needs to be more active in singing than it does playing
the trumpet. During the outbreath, when playing the trumpet your lips
hold back the pressure and regulate air-flow. In singing, either your
throat does the same thing (bad) or your diaphragm does it (good). Teh
diaphragm is a non-volitional muscle (runs directly from the autonomic
nervous system) so trying to control it consciously is a bad thing.
Ironically, the best thing to do is relax more and feel you are letting
your breath release and flow from you quickly. This actually gives your
diaphragm the release and relaxation it needs to do its job better. It
also gives you a slight feeling of being out of control. This is why
many singers over the years have said that singing well gives them a
feeling of "being sung", rather than trying harder. Many also say that
it gives the feeling of riding something - Pavarotti says in one of his
autobiographies that when it is going well he doesn't know how to stop
singing.
The more effort you make, the tenser you will get around the lower rib
cage (diaphragm area) and make it more difficult to move - so you will
feel that you have run out of breath. In the end, total lung capacity
isn't important - rather how much of your lung capacity you can use by
allowing free movement of the diaphragm. My late singing teacher was a
severe asthmatic and was physically very small, and yet had no problem
singing long phrases, and worked as a principal at ENO, ROH,
Glyndebourne, etc.
Colin
Lourdes T. Fernandez
have larger than average lung capacities, but this has more to do with
the breathing techniques involved in the training end over a period of
time than genetics.
This I know from performing pulmonary function tests on patients for
over 30 years
bourbones
bronx, ny
claudia4ever
one word: TECHNIQUE. it's what makes this possible regardless of
physical size; it's also what makes the difference in singers having
careers vs burning out/struggling. the training exercises and
practicing building proper technique is not "just singing more,
often". the exercises are different; the sounds emanating are
different. :-)