Is "singing from your stomach" the same as the diaphragm? I really don’t get it? I’m so confused about where correct singing technique comes from in my body. Thanks for the help!
You do not sing from your stomach. When you hear that, your are hearing "use your diaphragm." The reason for the description of using your stomach is because you can relate to that better than, sing from your diaphragm. Your diaphragm sit on top of you stomach, and when you use it, your stomach will move.
Your diaphragm is a support mechanism that should be the foundation of your singing. The correct technique is to expand your lungs fully and fill with air. Once your lungs have the air, your back muscles, rib cage and diaphragm come into play to expel the air in a sustained and consistent column of air. It is this consistent column of air moving over your vocal chords that will give your voice the power and finesse of a good singer.
What you should look for, if breathing correctly, is your back muscles and rib cage expanding, which also causes the top half of your stomach to expand also. Many people, wrongly, suggest that breathing with your stomach shows you are breathing with your diaphragm, and that is just plain wrong. (If you use your stomach to breath, it will actually move up in your rib cage and push against your lungs, robbing them of space for more air.) Once your back and ribs are expanded, your lungs will fill with air automatically. You do not have to force a breath. Consider this like an empty bottle that you place under water. When you squeeze all the air out, then release, when it expands back to it’s original shape, it is filled with water without doing anything else to it. Breathing is exactly the same, when you open your lungs, it will fill with air.
Your diaphragm, now comes into play in order to support the muscles to push the air out in a controlled manner. When you are supporting this breath, your diaphragm needs to tighten, and push out against and support your back muscles and rib cage in developing the column of air as you exhale. You should feel like you are lifting the heavy end of a piano. Your diaphragm holding everything together in support.
You do not need "six pack" abs in order to use your diaphragm. You just need to exercise it so you know what the support feels like. This can be as simple as doing breathing exercises. Use your hands, placed around your mid section (top of your belly) and when you breath, feel your back and ribs and top of your belly expand with the breath.
Here is a good breathing exercise to increase your breathing capacity. When you take a breath, breath everything out, then take a breath as described above., and hold it a couple of seconds, then in a controlled hiss, let it out on a count of 8. By the count of 8, you should have expelled all your air. breath it out evenly so it is all gone at the end of 8. Do this 4 times. Next, repeat the exercise, only hiss out on a count of 12, four times. Work on this for a week, and slowly increase the count by 4 until you can hiss out your note to a count of 16 without dying.
A new exercises my vocal coach recently gave me is to bend my knees while practicing. The deeper the knee bend the better. This exercises causes you to use more of your back and rib muscles to give you support while bending your knees, and these are the same muscles you need to develop for your diaphragm support. It sounds funny, but just try it. Bend you knees as much as you can while singing, and make yourself aware of the muscles being used and how they feel, and build that feeling into your singing.