Belting #2

Posted on | September 7, 2010 | No Comments

So, I have been rereading an article in the Nats Journal of Singing (May June 2007) where Scott McCoy writes about belting “A Classical Pedagogue Explores Belting”. In it he writes about some scientific testing done with students of Robert Edwin. He says:

“Almost all of my preconceptions of belting were false. In my naivety, I assumed that belting was noting more than “bottom-up” voice production that pushed the heavy mechanism (or the glottal configuration of chest voice) beyond it’s natural upper boundary. I expected the voices to be fat on the bottom, becoming progressively thinner, more pinched and shouted as pitch ascended in a registration model opposite the classical tonal ideal (slender bottom, opulent top). Instead I heard one singer after another produce a scale that was light and slender on the bottom, increasing in energy and becoming more speech like thorough the middle, and ending in a clear strong top. the voices displayed uniform timbre with no apparent vocal seams or register changes.”

Then, doing a search on belting from Jeanette LoVetri’s blog (http://lovetri-post.blogspot.com/)  I find :

“The question that comes up most often is “how do I belt correctly?” First of all you must understand that belting is using your chest register at a loud volume on pitches that are above what is traditionally called “the break”. If you do not agree with this you either don’t belt yourself, don’t understand what’s happening in the larynx when you do, or belt in some kind of sound that isn’t actually belting, but you think it is. Sorry. You don’t have to take my word for it, but that is what I do and teach.

The way to “carry chest up” is to carry chest up. If you can’t hear chest register as a quality, then you are going to use what you feel as a guide and if you try to carry the same feeling up, you will kill your poor voice in short order unless you have very sturdy vocal folds or keep your upper range very short. If you think that making a nasalized, squawk is “belting” you will end up sounding weak and ineffective rather than powerful and dynamic because you don’t have enough chest register in your mechanism to generate the quality or color that sounds appropriate. If you think that there are no registers, or five registers, or different registers for every pitch, and that resonance is enough to teach you to belt, good luck in your search. Of course, you can find all of these ideas and more on YouTube…….the world is full of folks who will sell you their DVDs. (I don’t have any).”

March 15 2009 “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Voice”

and this, which I love:

“True belting is chest voice, speaking voice, lower register, modal quality, or whatever else you want to call that sound carried up above the traditional “break” at about G above middle C, at a loud volume. [And let's add here that we mean carried easily and freely above the break, otherwise you are just shouting.] If you do not have such a register, and believe me, a lot of professional singers do not, and you have not worked to cultivate it deliberately, (and even more people have not done that), you cannot possibly understand what true belting is. If you take a light speaky sound across the break and make it brighter by driving the sound towards the nose you will get a poor imitation of a belt sound and you WILL be confused about what belting actually is. If you don’t do any of this at all, well, stay out of the discussion, please.”

February 12 2009 “Chest Register / Belting”

Just some food for thought.

Comments