The simple answer:
Allow the breath to happen, don't make it happen.
Methodology: At the ends of phrases, RELEASE - from the face on downwards, allow the relaxation of muscles that will result in a vacuum being created in your lungs, which will automatically be filled with an inhalation that you don't have to DO - it will simply happen because "nature abhors a vacuum". For this to work, you also need to maintain good singing posture.
A few other tips:
Don't breathe too early. Your breath should not be "all in" before you need to start phonating. Instead, the breath should be "all in" (regardless of how long and deep a breath it is) at the exact moment when you need to begin phonating. What you don't want to do is inhale - hold the breath - then phonate. This will create tensions that make it harder to start the sound correctly, and will also waste breath.
Don't try to "hold on" to the ends of phrases by tightening muscles, clenching jaw, etc. Allow the sound to spin away easily by allowing the release at the ends of the phrase that will set up the body to allow the inhalation at the start of the next phrase. The sound SHOULD taper off and fade at the end of a held note. You don't need to muscle the same intensity and volume all through the sustained note - indeed, this is bad musicianship. If you find you don't have enough breath to sustain a final note in a phrase as long as you should/want to, you need to strategise your breathing going into that phrase - NOT to try and desperately, through muscular effort, hold the note longer than your breath will easily allow.
Every breath doesn't have to be deep and filling. You don't need to feel the breath down to your larynx every time you breath. Most of the time, you need only to take a tiny bit of breath, just enough to get you through the next bit of music until you can allow breath in again. Don't feel that you have to breathe down to your toes every time. Of course, when there IS time for a long, deep breath (i.e., a long rest or a measure in which you don't sing), take advantage of it. But every other breath is merely a "topping up" of what's still in your lungs. If you avoid that desperate attempt to spin every phrase out full strength (described above), you will always have a little breath left in the lungs, even if it's not enough to get you through the next phrase without "topping up".
Use the consonants: Consonants are wonderful friends for helping RELEASE the muscles, and allow the breath in. Use ending consonants to "propel" the jaw free, which will cause that release. Also use beginning consonants to create little emphases that can obscure the fact that you've allowed a breath in during the split-second before the consonant. German and English are particularly good languages for this, because good diction usually requires little glottal stops and other consonant breaks at various points in the text, even when the musical line the composer wrote wouldn't indicate those breaks.
Finally, take Todd Duncan's advice: Breathe anywhere you need to as long as it doesn't offend the listener. This often means breathing at a point in the musical line where you wouldn't first expect to breathe. Really USE the language to help you here - if you need a breath somewhere, figure out where the text naturally allows for a tiny pause (tiny meaning microsecond) - for emphasis. It can help, in long "trouble" phrases NOT to speed up to try to fit all the notes in on one breath, but to SLOW DOWN, combined with finding the natural breaking points in the phrase. Even long runs in baroque music (Handel, Bach) that seem to have no natural breaking points really do: think about how a stringed instrument would play the phrase: the bowing of the phrase would involve frequent breaks and restatements (lifting and replacing of the bow): figure out the "arithmetic" of long runs, i.e., what are the component (repeating) patterns in the run? The beginning of each component is where one would lift and replace the bow - and that is the place where you should release and allow a tiny amount of breath to "come in", then immediately continue the run. And be consistent with this - if you re-bow after the first repeating pattern, re-bow after every subsequent instance of the repeating pattern; if you re-bow after the first two, re-bow again after the next two, and do a little vocal accent to draw attention to the fact that you're re-bowing: in short, don't try to mush everything together into one long, endless, monochromatic run, but instead give the run some shape and interest through "bowing" and accenting. This will have the great side benefit of also allowing breaths in.
All the other aspects of good technique - good onset, good focus of the sound, not spreading the mouth, etc. - will of course make your use of the breaths you do take (allow in) more efficient, and will enable you to sing longer with fewer inhalations.
Karen Mercedes http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html ________________________________ O music, that openest the abysses of the soul! Thou dost destroy the normal balance of the mind. - Romain Rolland, JEAN-CHRISTOPHE
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