Article Assignment #1 Sarah McMahon Voice science 2/20/13 Johan Sundberg and Monica Thomassons article Consistency of Inhalatory

Breathing Patterns in Professional Operatic Singers talks about inhalatory patterns of professional operatic singers. Sundberg was born in 1936 and attained a Ph. D. in musicology at Uppsala University in 1966. He has a chair in the Music Acoustics at the University of York, UK from 1979 until 2001. Soundberg started his doctoral dissertation on organ pipes, and then moved onto the voice and voice performance. Soundberg did not only study the voice, he also performs. He was a member of the Stockholm Bach Choir for twenty-four years, and nine years he was the president of the choir. He studied voice with Dagmar Gustafson, and he is now a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of music, the Swedish Acoustical Society, and the Acoustical Society of America. These two authors write about an experiment that they conduct to look at the consistency of the inhalatory patterns of professional operatic singers. Monica Thomasson and Joan Sundberg start by asking five professional operatic singers, two sopranos, one who was seven months pregnant and three baritones between twenty-seven and forty-three years of age to perform three pieces from their repertoire that were well rehearsed. The subjects performed each song three times by the performer in a concert like setting. None of the subjects were told what the researchers were testing before performing. Before the performers sang their pieces Two elastic transducers (respibands), which record changes in the cross-sectional area, were used. One was placed around the rib cage, with the upper edge at the

level of the axilla, and the other around the abdominal wall with the upper edge at the level of the umbilicus.1 These bands measured the movement of the subjects ribcage (RC) and abdominal wall (AW) and the lung volume (LV) when the subjects inhaled. After all five subjects had sung their three pieces multiple times the researchers created graphs using frequency and the calculations from the two bands around the subjects. When checking the consistency, the researchers used a line graph and a number scale from -1 to +1 to represent the consistency of the intake of air. The closer to a straight line and the closer to the number +1 the charts were, the more consistent the breathing was. When the data was graphed it showed that the data for LV (lung volume) change and RC (rib cage) movements fell close to a straight line, thus revealing a high consistency for all subjects.2 This means that the professional singers have a certain consistency in each breath that they take. This was also proven to be true between long and short catch breaths. When the performers sang their song selections the researchers looked at their longer breaths where they had more time to think about their breath as well as shorter, more automatic breaths. All subjects also showed that even though both the rib cage and abdominal wall did expand the ribcage expansion was much more prevalent in the rib cage. This shows that singers should be just as concerned if not more concerned about ribcage expansion then abdominal expansion.

Thomasson, Monica and Soundberg, Johan. Consistency of Inhalatory Breathing Patterns in Professional Operatic Singers (Journal of Voice, vol. 15, No. 3, 2001) 374 2 Ibid. 375
1

This article supports the idea that expansion of the ribcage and abdominal wall is consistent during the breathing cycle of all professional singers. I think that though this article did underline a well-excepted concept for professional singers it did have some interesting facts that I would not have thought about. I find it very interesting that the soprano who was pregnant ended up having an inverse relationship between lung volume and abdominal movement. Later in the article the researchers talk about endomorphic and ectomorphic people and their own breathing for singing: They found a high degree of AW participation in endomorphic subjects and a high degree of RC participation in ectomorphic subjects. 3 this means that subjects who had more weight to their bodies (endomorphic) had more abdominal wall concentration to their breathing and subjects with less weight (ectomorphic) had more rib cage concentration to their breathing. Though unlike when other singers in this study inhaled, whether is was quick or slow breathing, the seven month pregnant sopranos abdomen became smaller when her lung volume increased. This intrigued me because the endomorphic body type should have a concentration on the abdominal wall movement. Is having the abdominal wall move this way a common thing to happen to female singers when they become pregnant or does this particular soprano use a breathing technique that involves her abdominals moving in and up as she inhales? I think that another study should be done involving pregnant professional singers and breathing patterns and techniques, this way women singers can understand more about the breathing process and how it gets effected when your are pregnant.
3

Ibid. 382