“How can I sing better?” This is a question I get all the time as an online voice teacher. It’s totally understandable, but when students of my online vocal training program ask me this, I immediately turn it back around on them and ask the to be more specific.
 
Imagine that you’ve gone to the doctor and asked, “How can I feel better?” The doctor will obviously ask, “Well, what’s wrong? What are your symptoms?” Vocal problems are really no different. If you want to improve vocal for singing, you first have to figure out what the vocal problem is. It’s no good just asking “How can I sing better?” without specifics.
 
So, why are you asking, “How can I sing better?” What is it about your singing that you feel doesn’t sound great? Are you gasping for air? Do you sound whiny? Does singing feel uncomfortable? The more specific with you can be about your vocal problem, the easier it’s going to be to fix.
 
In this article, I’ve covered the six top vocal problems that come up in my online vocal training program students. I’ll also share with you the general idea of how to improve vocals for singing my addressing these problems. 

Vocal Problem #1: Pain, Discomfort, or Fatigue
​​
Cause: Vocal Tract Tension or Vocal Injury
Solution: Move the Effort of Singing Down
 
Pain, discomfort, or quick fatigue due to singing are three major red flags of destructive vocal technique. Almost always, these problems occur when a singer puts the effort of singing into the vocal tract rather than the muscles of breathing and breath support. Imagine, for a second, that you’re watching a bodybuilder preparing to pick up a heavy weight. She squeezes her neck and facial muscles, and maybe her face even starts to turn purple. That’s a very tense vocal tract right there. If she tried to sing, how do you think it would feel? How long could she sing without getting tired?
 
The vocal tract includes the neck, throat, jaw, and tongue. Putting a lot of pressure on these areas strains the vocal folds themselves, and the vocal folds are pretty delicate little things. Singers who put the effort of singing into the vocal tract tend to feel a lot of pressure, itchiness, or even pain when singing. Over time, or due to one particularly bombastic event, this type of singing can lead to vocal injuries like hemorrhages, nodules, and polyps.
 
The solution? The effort of singing should occur in the breathing and breath support muscles. My video on the big picture of singing explains this. Learning to relax the vocal tract and engage the breathing and breath support muscles is a long-term project, but if you work on it, your vocal health and sound can completely transform. This is a major part of how to improve vocals for singing.

 
​Disclaimer: The following article contains my thoughts and opinions. This is not to be construed as medical advice or the only way to think about these concepts. There are as many ways to teach voice as there are voice teachers, and all of them are valid. 

 If you’ve ever been in a choir, signed up for an online singing course, or watched virtual singing lessons on YouTube, you might have heard the advice, “sing from your diaphragm.” While this phrase is often bandied around, a lot of folks actually have no idea what it means. While teaching my Fort Wayne voice lessons or online students, I’ve had people tell me the diaphragm is located near the pelvis, is positioned vertically through the torso, or even floats freely through the body. No wonder these people have trouble breathing for singing—they don’t know what equipment their body has or how to use it!
​
That’s why I decided to write this article. In it, you should learn exactly what the diaphragm is, where it’s located in your body, how it moves, and how you can breathe from your diaphragm and sing from your diaphragm. You need to engage your diaphragm to do everything from avoid cracking to singing in tune, so this is a hugely important concept. I hope this solves the case of the mysterious diaphragm for you once and for all and lets you breathe easily!
 
What the Heck Is a Diaphragm Anyway?
The secondary definition of diaphragm from the Oxford dictionary is simply “a thin sheet of material forming a partition.” This gives us a really good idea of what the anatomical diaphragm is. It’s a big, flattish muscle that separates your torso horizontally into two parts. On top, you’ve got your lungs and your heart; underneath are all your gooey digestive organs (viscera).

"Lynch - Drawing Anterior chest landmarks - no labels" by Patrick J. Lynch and C. Carl Jaffe, license: CC BY. Green and red lines added

The Function of the Diaphragm
Ask any first grader what organ is responsible for breathing, and they’ll likely say "the lungs." The problem is that the lungs are not made of muscle. They’re basically empty air sacks that have to be inflated by the muscles of inspiration (inhalation). That’s where the diaphragm comes in.
​
The diaphragm is our largest inhalation muscle, which is why if you’ve dabbled in an online singing course, this is the one you’ve probably heard of. When your diaphragm is at rest, it’s kind of lumpy, like a flattened “m.” When you activate your diaphragm by inhaling, it becomes flatter and wider, moving downwards to expand the lungs. In the image above, the red line shows the diaphragm at rest and the green line shows the diaphragm in action.
 
How to Sing from your Diaphragm: Engaging the Diaphragm When Breathing
This may all seem well and good in a picture, but you can’t exactly see your diaphragm when you breathe. How can you be sure this is happening? The answer is that when you breathe “from your diaphragm,” or fully engaging your diaphragm, you get some helpful external movement as well: your belly moves! This happens for a few reasons:

• Your diaphragm moves down, pressing on your viscera (gooey digestive organs), which then move out of the way to make space for the air. Gross, but true.
• Your abs relax to allow your torso to expand.

Because you have this helpful physical cue of belly movement during diaphragmatic breathing, some people actually call this type of breathing “low breathing” or “belly breathing.” Just remember that your belly is not filling with air—the belly movement is just sympathetic movement as your lungs inflate.
Now, how can you work on engaging the diaphragm when breathing? In my virtual singing lessons and Fort Wayne singing lessons, my students focus on using the senses of sight, sound, and kinesthetic awareness (body awareness/feeling) to improve their skills. Here’s how this applies to the diaphragm (although, since breathing is silent, sound doesn’t come into play here).

Sight: Work on breathing in front of a mirror. Is your belly moving?
​
Kinesthetic awareness:

1. Place a hand on your belly and make sure it moves when you breathe. Pay attention to how this feels, then try to recreate the movement without your hand on your belly.
2. Link your hands to form the shape of the lumpy diaphragm at rest in front of your torso. Move your hands as you breathe, forming a flatter, lower “diaphragm” when you inhale. Use this to give yourself a picture of what’s happening internally.

How to Sing from your Diaphragm while Relaxing Your Chest and Shoulders
Diaphragmatic breathing engages the lower torso, but you may notice that when you breathe, your chest and shoulders move too. This is an important part of the big picture of singing. In my Fort Wayne singing lessons and virtual singing lessons, including my online vocal training program, my students learn to breathe exclusively from the lower torso without engaging the upper torso. There are a few reasons for this:

1. Shallow, high breathing is associated with physical exertion, panic, and fight-or-flight response. It’s not particularly efficient and can even lead to dizziness and panic attacks. This gets worse if you have any issues with stage fright. If you’re properly engaging your diaphragm, there is no reason for your upper chest and shoulders to try to muscularly “help” with the work of breathing.
2. Any online singing course will tell you that it’s important to relax your neck and face when singing. If you’re squeezing your shoulders and chest to try to breathe, it’s basically impossible to relax your neck. This type of high breath won’t set you up for successful singing.

 
The moral of this story is simple: in addition to working on breathing from your diaphragm, work on relaxing your chest and shoulders when you breathe. Your voice will thank you!
 
How to Sing from Your Diaphragm
Now that we’ve covered inhaling, it’s time to talk about the diaphragm’s role in singing. When you sing, your muscles of inhalation don’t just zoom back to neutral. Students of my Fort Wayne singing lessons know that singing is a form of exhalation, but it’s a controlled form of exhalation. That’s why, when you sing, your diaphragm doesn’t get to relax—it has to stay engaged.

In both my in-person and virtual singing lessons, I call this concept “fighting the collapse.” A more common term for it is “breath support.” By preventing all your air from rushing out at once, you’re supporting your voice as you sing.

Physically, it’s pretty easy to tell if you sing from your diaphragm. After getting a good breath from your diaphragm, start singing. Does your belly immediately zoom in? If it does, can you try and keep it suspended as you sing instead?
 
Learn How to Sing From Your Diaphragm with one of The Best Online Singing Courses

Sometimes the concepts are easy enough to grasp, but putting them into practice is a little more challenging. If you need help to learn how to sing from your diaphragm, consider signing up for my online vocal training program. I designed it to be one of the best online singing courses out there for folks hoping to master anatomy, including diaphragmatic control.

If you're interested in traditional synchronous lessons, check out my online vocal training program with added hybrid options, or sign up for Fort Wayne voice lessons or online voice lessons. I’d be happy to help you figure out how to sing from your diaphragm and much more!