The power of the exhale
Carl Stough was an American choral conductor who in the 1940s became fascinated with how the mechanism of breathing, particularly a prolonged exhale, could impact the strength and resonance of voices.
His choirs in North Carolina and New York quickly became stellar, and by the late 1950s, he was coaching the stars of the Metropolitan Opera. He focused on strengthening their diaphragms—the dome-shaped muscle that moves up and down to facilitate breathing within the rib cage—by having the singers extend their exhales.