Luciano Pavarotti Quotes

I feel like the kindest thing that I do to my voice is sing.

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

I don't sing anything that hurts my voice.

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

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.

I feel like a lot of pop singers hurt themselves if they don't have the proper training.

Some artists just ruin their voices because they don't know any better.

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.

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.

I remember Pavarotti telling me, 'Oh, Neil, after seventy, the voice is going to go.' But I've been lucky. You almost have to learn how to sing all over again. You use your diaphragm more. You have to choose the notes and pace yourself.

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.

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

I also have to support my speaking voice by sitting in a way that engages the diaphragm in the way I would for singing.

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.

And my voice now is a struggle, it's a daily struggle to keep it up. Gravity has begun to fight the vocal cords the way it does with everybody. So I have a vocal therapist, and we record the sessions and I use them on tour every day.

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.

I don't really strain my voice.

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.

Something like Deckard Cain is great; it doesn't ruin your voice. But games that involve violence or battle or mutating and stuff like that really does take a toll on your voice. And I've even had to start to go to a voice guru kind of guy to do exercises to try to save and get back some of what I lost.

Seventy per cent humidity is ideal for vocal cords.

As a singer, you can't hear what's coming out of your throat; you're only hearing it from the inside, so you need a trusted person who knows how your voice works. It's like a car. You take it to the same mechanic because they know it inside out, and every time you get it back, it works fantastic.

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

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.

For me, bel canto is medicine for the voice.

I always want to pick songs that are really crazy rangy, and sometimes those low notes aren't there. But I started taking it way more seriously after a certain point, and I started doing vocal warm-ups every day, even when I wasn't singing, sometimes twice a day.