What do you do when a person literally can't differentiate between the sound of a breathy tone, and that of a non-breathy tone, and you're trying to tell them to eliminate it? They can't hear or feel what they're doing wrong, and so don't know how to adjust.

Anyone have useful or different descriptions of the sensations?

I'm running into this especially when trying to work with young people.

Urgh. Glad I'm not alone on this. I'm teaching my mom, and she has no body-sense whatsoever for support, breathyness, or even when she's hurting her throat.

The best we can go on is, "was that easy, or hard to sing?"

What I've found that seems to be helping with the breathyness is that I tell her to pretend that her voice is a laser, and to focus all her attention on making the laser narrow into a powerful beam of sound.

Also when I mention the core resonance (thanks, Jaime!) that seems to help her a lot. She remembers to put the voice in the mask, and to feel the resonance being what moves up and down.

Slowly, we're getting the extra breath to go away, but it's taking quite some time.

Record their lessons so they can listen back.

JV

Great suggestion! I don't know why I didn't think of that...I'll have to figure out a workable (and portable) way of doing it...but I think I have an idea that'll work.

Thanks Jaime.

Marilyn Monroe is famous for her breathy voice. Remind them of what she sounds like with a quick listen to "Happy birthday, Mr. President"!

http://www.marilynmonroe.com/community/audio/wav/birthday.wav