Why "Use More Breath" Is Often the Wrong Advice
By Sam Marlow, City Vocal Coach
If you’ve ever been told your voice sounds breathy and the advice you got back was “support with more breath” or “push from the diaphragm,” you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common things I hear from students who’ve had lessons elsewhere, and in most cases, more breath is exactly the wrong thing to reach for.
Here’s why.
The real reason voices sound breathy
Breathiness in the singing voice happens when the vocal cords aren’t closing properly. Sound is created when air comes up from the lungs and causes the vocal cords to vibrate, but for that vibration to be efficient, the cords need to close fully on each cycle. When they don’t, air escapes through the gap, and you get that breathy, airy quality in the tone.
That’s a cord closure problem. Not a breath problem.
The vocal cords need surprisingly little air to open and close efficiently, even on big, high, belty notes. They’re roughly the size and thickness of a thumbnail, and they’re doing extraordinarily precise work. Throwing more air at them when they’re not closing properly doesn’t fix the closure. It just increases the airflow through the gap, which makes the breathiness worse.
Why teachers reach for breath advice anyway
It’s not that breath support doesn’t matter, it does. But breath and cord closure are two separate things, and when a student sounds breathy, the instinct to address the breath first is understandable but often misses what’s actually happening at the cord level.
The tricky part is that you can’t feel your vocal cords directly. You can’t sense whether they’re closing fully or not from the inside, which makes it hard to address the problem with an internal instruction. What you can do is monitor it externally.
“You can’t feel your vocal cords from the inside. So stop trying to fix them from the inside. Monitor the result instead.”
Two things I use in lessons constantly: put your hand in front of your mouth while you sing. You might feel a little warmth, but you shouldn’t feel breath on your hand. If you do, the air is escaping rather than being converted into tone. Alternatively, record yourself. If you can hear the breathiness on playback, it’s there. If you can’t, you’re doing the right thing internally. The more you practise singing without that breathiness, the more those muscles learn what you’re asking of them.
The other end of the dial: constriction
It’s worth being clear that the answer isn’t to clamp down and squeeze either. Too much closure, too much pressure holding the cords together, causes constriction, which brings its own problems: strain, tension, and potential vocal damage over time. The balance point is much closer to “less air” than most breath-heavy teaching would suggest, but it’s still a balance. The goal is cord closure that’s efficient and relaxed, not gripped.
Breathiness isn't always wrong
This is important, because I don’t want anyone reading this to think breathiness is simply a flaw to eliminate. It isn’t. Some of the most distinctive voices in contemporary music use breathiness deliberately and brilliantly. Billie Eilish has built a huge part of her vocal identity on it. A lot of jazz and soul singing relies on it for intimacy and emotional texture.
The difference is control. When breathiness is a conscious choice, dialled in because the lyrical moment calls for it or because it’s part of a deliberate stylistic identity, it’s a valid and powerful tool. When it’s a default you can’t switch off, two things happen: you lose the contrast that makes it interesting, and your voice tires out faster than it should. Inefficient cord closure means more air is being used to produce each note, and that adds up over the course of a set or a long rehearsal.
What to actually work on
The fix for most singers isn’t more breath. It’s training the cords to close more efficiently, and doing it through repetition and monitoring rather than internal sensation. Practise without the breathiness. Use your hand, use a recording, use whatever external feedback tells you what’s actually happening. Over time the muscles get the message.
And if you want to add a touch of breathy tone back in once the closure is sorted, go for it. That’s the point: having the control to choose.
If you’d like help working out where your voice actually sits on that dial, I run a free discovery call where we can have a listen together. Book one at cityvocalcoach.com.