13/02/2025 - Understanding Conscious Control

Using Conscious Control for a better voice.

Conscious control is the active awareness of the actions you are performing within a technique, and something I often remind my students of, when performing a technique of any kind.

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Understanding the role of Conscious Control when singing:

When we are activating Conscious Control in practice, it brings attention to the body in a way where we are creating an activation in muscle groups to perform a technique.

We will be passively doing some of these things already, but its when we draw our attention to them, that they become active. Hence the term Conscious Control.

As humans, I think it's within our nature to sometimes feel a lack of control over our bodies, weather it's because of illness or simply just a fear of being perceived, as so many of us have in a world dominated with social media where we can easily access so many people's voices and compare our own abilities. By inviting ourselves to take back that element of Conscious Control and understand not only our voices, but our bodies as an entire instrument, we give ourselves the autonomy and freedom we deserve.

Conscious Control can be difficult to understand, but here are some examples of ways we can slowly start to implement it into our own lives.

Breathing

We naturally breathe in and out on a passive level, but when we activate conscious control, we bring our focus to the breath, making the choice to breathe in for a certain time, hold that breath, exhale or even take in a larger/smaller amount of air.

Support

We don’t usually access the lower abdominal muscles, so when we are using them within the context of singing, it’s often easily missed. To correctly use our lower abdominals for the voice, we must use Conscious Control. Think about the muscles, actively to use them for supporting the voice, think about what muscle groups you’re using and why - especially for higher notes (use of Incremental Support - see Support Blog page for details).

Techniques to Activate Conscious Control

Developing your awareness and abilities with Conscious Control starts with techniques that target the awareness of the body. Here are simple steps to follow:

Cycle Breaths

The idea of cycle breaths or box breaths, as some call it, is to realign the breath and to help not only extend one’s ability to inhale/exhale or hold the breath, but to bring a sense of calm to the body if we are feeling anxious or overstimulated.

Exercise 1:

4 beat, 6 beat, 8 beat Breaths.

The idea of this exercise is fairly straight forward.

• To begin, stand HOSOKNOT and take one deep breath in & let it all out immediately - mind your shoulders don't rise with the breath and actively breathe into your belly. Then start the cycle.

• Start by breathing in for X beats. (Start with 4 and then once you've completed the first round of this cycle, move on to the next number in the set.)

• Hold for X beats

• Breathe out for X

• Finally hold again for X

• Repeat this cycle 4 times before returning to the natural breath cycle.

• Once you’ve done the first number, move on to the next, taking breaks between each set of 4.

Exercise 2:

Vv, Shh, Ss Breaths.

This exercise can be used 2 ways, depending on the intent or style given while performing it.

• To begin, stand HOSOKNOT and take one deep breath in & let it all out immediately - mind your shoulders don't rise with the breath and actively breathe into your belly. Then start the cycle.

For a calming version:

• Begin by breathing in for 4 beats, begin exhaling on a Vv, then a Shh & finally a Ss sound for 4 pumps of air per sound -

  “Vv, Vv, Vv, Vv - Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh, Shh - Ss, Ss, Ss, Ss.”

• Inhale again for 4

• Repeat this process as a cycle of 4.

For an energising version:

The above stays the same, however;

• Standing with your feet a touch wider than shoulder width apart, sit into your legs and clasp your hands - hold them gently and at the pelvic line.

• Begin a light bounce to the beat of every consonant, your hands should remain clasped but begin to bounce with you. Scoop them up and away, then back to the pelvis as you bounce.

Incremental Support

Incremental Support is an excellent use of Conscious Control. It requires active use of the lower abdominal cavity to execute a required level of support, to ensure that the voice doesn't sustain injury, while we traverse the range of our vocal folds.

For more information on this technique, check out my blog post on the use of Lower Abdominal Support.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

With Conscious Control, certain issues can occur, but only if we are not bringing attention to the right places. Try some of these suggestions to, hopefully, get around some of the common issues.

• Lack of bodily Awareness:

  With this, the best thing that will help, as uncomfortable as it can be for some of us, is to look at yourself in the mirror.

  This can assist with visualising where in the body you are activating Conscious Control.

• Tension in the Neck or Shoulders:

  If you feel tightness, it might be that you're holding some tension in your upper body. Try to relax your shoulders and upper body, either by having a wiggle about and trying again or actively drawing the shoulders down and let the head float above them, rather than craning the neck.
  

• Drifting sense of Focus

  When we first start to enter the realm of Conscious Control, it can be quite difficult to keep the focus on the parts of the body we might want to. To help with this, I suggest the following:
  

Visualisation.

Close your eyes and imagine a light shining on the part of the body you're trying to bring active awareness to. Spend a moment like this, with your body and begin to deepen your relationship with that section of the body and how you want to manipulate it. Once you've done this, then begin using Conscious Control in the way you intended.

Final Thoughts

To begin to call one's self a "Singer" and not just be a "Person who Singings", I believe that it's imperative to create a relationship with the body and remember that it is an instrument. We are the only living instrument. We breathe, we think, we have emotions that can impact the way we sound.

We can only develop when we start to deepen our understandings of our own bodies and by extension our voices. Once we start to think of it in this way, rather than vocal only, we start to understand the farther reaches of our capabilities as vocalists and performers.

I always tell my students that practice makes progress, and to give yourself the daily reminder that this is, in fact, the case.