As a professional classical singer, I write about vocal technique a lot. Of course, I would, as I am also a voice teacher. I've come to where I am now through a very natural journey of my own - study, performance, more study, woven doggedly around my other life happenings.

Always a personal quest (no one was pushing me) - I have felt drawn along, pulled happily by my simple love of communicating through the physicality and marriage of words and music - and the need to do it better. It's an infectious love, that I have for many years sought to share with other like-minded souls, who have their own quest and who are curious too.

Where do you start? 

As a professional musician with a lifetime of technical vocal learning behind me and a trusty ongoing pursuit of future perfection in front of me, I regularly invest in telling my students to be at ease with where they are on their vocal journey. At ease, but not too comfy. To forgive their vocal imperfections BUT also be...

One of my teachers, Ilse Wolf, would always talk about ‘singing on the breath’. 

Back then, I really didn’t have a clue what she actually meant. I would quietly listen while she explained, while she showed me diagrams in books that had pretty much been worn out by her fingertips over the years, as she pointed out the movement of AIRFLOW in the body as we breathe in and sing OUT.

But that was more than 30 years ago - and now I so GET everything she was sharing with me.

She meant: focus on the out-breath.

I didn’t understand then, but I’ve pursued my learning journey to the point where I now teach the same principles, just as she did then, to all my own singing students.

This infographic is a favourite of mine because it provokes thought. It also gives a hint of what is truly involved in the rather paradoxical ‘breathing mindset’.

But, in truth? It’s the tip of the iceberg.

There’s the fear that since breath is always...