Lesley Garrett Quotes

At Julliard we had some voice classes. It was really just so you could carry a tune. It always just helps with your speaking voice also, when you connect your diaphragm and your breath.

To play the trumpet, you have to use that diaphragm, and it's the same if you want to sing correctly. You really need to push it out from there. And I think that's what has kept me going as a singer.

When I first started singing - before 'Treat Me Like Fire' when I was working with a vocal coach - I realized that I wasn't even breathing when I was singing.

If your body is not in shape to sing [from the diaphragm] you will push and push but keep falling back on your throat to make the sound. This will ruin your voice.

An athlete learns how to hold her breath, but that doesn't work in singing. You have to learn to relax.

Everybody sings from their diaphragm.

To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more.

Speech lessons probably did more for my singing voice - they teach you breathing, resonance.

When I was a kid, my aunt coached me a little bit for choir, and what she taught me actually stuck with me. She basically taught me to sing from my diaphragm and not from my throat.

Everything I'd taught myself about screaming is basically a big no-no for singing. Your posture, your airflow - you're just pushing all the air out. When you start out, you're fast, heavy and loud but you're hiding behind it in a way. When you stop screaming, that's when it gets hard.

You have to learn how to sing from your diaphragm, and you don't become a great performer overnight. It takes a while. The more you do it, the better you are.

Ninety percent of what's wrong with singers today is that they don't breathe right.

I'm not great with breathing, like holding notes. I usually don't. A lot of people wouldn't believe it, but I don't focus on technical stuff.

I try to frighten my very young colleagues into studying and understanding their voices before they attempt things that are beyond them. It's wise to take gymnastics and swimming to strengthen the body, because people don't realise what an athletic undertaking singing actually is.

Someone told me that you could learn to sing, and that there are muscles that if you build, you will sing.

When I sing full-on I use my whole body. I open my throat and let it fly out.

I have a huge rib cage, which is why I can hold a note out until I'm blue in the face... because I have such a big lung capacity.

I took some voice lessons here and there as a teenager but nothing too serious. I started taking it more seriously when I was in Miss Saigon. I needed to improve my technique in order to survive doing that show as many time a week as I was doing it. It's not an easy show to sing, so I needed all the help I could get.

I'm engaging my diaphragm as I'm speaking to you right now.

With classical singing you have to put out so much air - you project, you emit force.

I have learned how to breathe, to use my cords differently. I had been tilting my head in a way when I talked that wasn't good for my throat. I've been working on all of that, and it seems to be helping.

I had a teacher who stressed for me the importance of diction in terms of... I want to be very careful about how I say this... in terms of supporting one's voice when one is singing. In other words, if you hold on to your words, your voice will pull through for you when you're singing. So be true to your vowels.

I can support my sound from the diaphragm, I can project and I can enunciate and things like that. But I was definitely singing from a lot younger than that.

I don't have the slightest idea of how to do vocal exercises or scales or anything like that, but I did always know to breath properly from the stomach. I'm a pop singer and never really felt I needed more.

When I sing, the sound is a totally different range, color, all of it. It's all about the breath. You take in a breath and you make a sound.