What is belting?
Belt is a bright, brassy, voice quality that has qualities of a natural human call or yell. The challenge is yelling higher without screaming or barking your head off, right?
When a singer is ready to go for a belt in a song, it is not a pitch changer, but rather a voice quality that acts as a highlight of a song. With that in mind, a belt is not about being loud. It is about intense emotions. Since we are basing the belt off of emotions, a natural way for humans to express emotions is through "yelling." Let's make sure we understand that we need to aim for healthy skillful yelling, not screaming.
A belt can be perceived to be loud singing, however, when you really listen to good belting, we hear the singer's technique in employing strong vocal control to express deep emotions. That is why when a singer belts, it makes you feel something inside of you that makes you go "wow."
How do you do know if you are belting? In order for you to know if you are actually belting, listen for The Belting Acoustics!
You know you are not belting when you end up singing in a hootier way, which isn’t bad or wrong, it’s just no longer considered a “belt”. It might be a good choice in a song to simply sing high notes in a hooty way rather than belting, but that is up to the singer’s artistic choice. Most of the time, the challenge is belting high notes without flipping into a breathy tone. The goal with belting as you ascend in pitch is to maintain that yell quality all the way up without "pulling the chest voice up." That is where vocal problems can occur. We will discuss more about yelling later in this blog.
Understanding Vocal Registers
Before we can practice belting, a singer is encouraged to understand what is happening anatomically so that we don't misunderstand how the belt really works.
To do a "Pure Chest Belt" a singer will need to sing in Mode 1 (chest voice, chest register, thick fold vibrations). Singing in Mode 1 means the Thyroarytenoid muscles are helping your vocal folds shorten, allowing the folds to become thicker, singing with both the Cover and the Body of the vocal folds, creating more muscle mass (surface area) so that when the folds come together after air passes through, the sound is richer and fuller. If a singer wants to belt, what they are looking for is more intensity not loudness, therefore singing in Mode 1 will provide more intensity versus singing in Mode 2.
Mode 2 (head voice, head voice register, thin fold vibrations) refers to using Cricothyroid dominant sound production. This muscle group is responsible for stretching the vocal folds to produce higher pitches. Due to the stretching, the vocal folds become thin causing less surface area to come in contact during phonation. This is why belting higher becomes challenging.
A singer will need to work on their mix technique to find that blend between Mode 1 and Mode 2 in order for a high belt to happen in a healthy way. The debate if there is a Mix register seems to be that there is no such register, but rather a blend of two muscle groups working together to find a nice balance.
Vocal Tract Shaping to achieve the brassy belt sound
Since belting is a voice quality, shifting and adjusting the vocal tract shape for singing allows a singer to change their voice quality after sound is produced at the vocal folds. For belting, it is not about changing the vocal folds to make this quality happen, but more about creating a shorter tube by raising the larynx to some degree and modifying other parts in the vocal tract such as the soft palate and tongue to create a resonance boost.
According to some research, CCM "belt" singers use more of a constricted pharynx in comparison to classical singers. From this research, a belt would be achieved through a megaphone-shape configuration rather than an inverted megaphone shape.
This megaphone shape allowed for amplification of the voice that was effortless!
In George Gershwin's Girl Crazy, Ethel Merman wowed the audience with her brassy trumpet-like voice belting a C note above the passaggio in “I Got Rhythm” and sustaining it for 16 bars. She proved that belting can be used to clearly project the voice in unamplified theaters. This was during a time when microphones weren't as advanced as they are today.
Belting, although was a useful technique for amplification of the voice, it is still more about heightened sound quality rather than trying to be as loud as you can. We will discuss why loudness doesn't work next.
Why loudness doesn't work for belting
Belting is not about loudness as mentioned above in this blog. Although most of the time it is perceived to be loud due to the resonance boost that comes from the brassy bright voice quality. We mistake the belt to be something that needs to be overtly loud, however with that perception, many untrained singers will push and overdo it with their voice.
Loudness for singing comes from increase in airflow through the vocal folds. For belting, according to the Estill Voice Model, minimal airflow or air pressure is needed due to longer closed phase of phonation during each vibratory cycle. Therefore, if we want to achieve a "belt" we cannot push a lot of air through, otherwise two things can happen: the vocal folds can't handle that much air and will create a breathy tone or the vocal folds will be pulled together too much causing "excess glottal resistance" which can lead to overly pressed phonation leading to vocal strain.
That "loudness" in belting is actually healthy YELLING
Belting SOUNDS like yelling because it is (similar acoustic properties). Yelling is the human way to express emotions, intense emotions! Remember, how we discussed that belting is a way to release emotions in a song? This is why yelling is related to belting. We all have the muscles to yell because it is a natural primal sound we all can make.
If a singer wants to belt higher, instead of muscling the chest voice all the way up into the upper register, maintaining this yell timbre as you ascend higher in pitch, will help the singer achieve the acoustics of "belting" and it will feel EFFORTLESS.
What is Yell Timbre? You need THIS to make the belt quality
Yell Timbre is “the ability to yell is apparently an inherited, universal, and strong survival instinct. The Yell coupling F1/H2 tracking is carried higher by tube shortening"
(Kenneth Bozeman p. 21-22)
Everyone is capable of yelling and now we just need to turn our telling into melody. However not everyone can yell due to many reasons. Some people were told to shut up often when they were younger. Ever since that moment, you might have become a quiet person. Some people were told that their voice was annoying, so they view their voice as bad ever since they heard that comment. So, you never know, your fear of yelling may have stemmed from long ago and you don’t even realize it. Start there. Work on that and the belt becomes more understandable in terms of how it’s supposed to sound. Understanding how it sounds, will help you figure out other parts of your vocal tract to make that sound happen.
Sources
Bozeman, K. W. (2014b) Practical Vocal Acoustics: Pedagogic applications for teachers and
Singers.
Tracy Bourne, Maeva Garnier. Physiological and acoustic characteristics of the female music theatre voice in belt and legit qualities. International Symposium on Music Acoustics, Aug 2010, Katoomba, Australia. pp.9-13, 2010.Lu, K. (2022, October 27). Hirano’s Cover-Body Model. Glossary of Terms in Otolaryngology. https://www.otoscape.com/eponyms/hirano-s-cover-body-model.html
Vocalist.org.uk. (2023b, September 22). Vocal Registers explained: How does your larynx change your voice? Vocalist.
Golda, L. (2010). Deciphering Vocal Technique with Estill Voice Training. In Classical Singer (pp. 27–28).
Belting Explained | What is Belt? | How to Belt (Singing) a Musical Theatre or Pop Song. Andy Follin (Estill EMT) - Professional Vocal Coach.
1. Esling JH, Moisik SR, Benner A, Crevier-Buchman L. Voice Quality. In: Voice Quality: The Laryngeal Articulator Model. Cambridge Studies in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press; 2019:i-i.
If you need personal guidance on your belting, book a lesson with Tina and she'll help you make adjustments that will make you wonder “why aren’t other coaches teaching me this!”
Book a lesson with Tina here:
Tina Golden is a voice teacher who studies holistic, science-based, and brain-based training to help singers achieve their vocal goals without losing their voice.
She is continually researching methods and techniques to help all singers in any style. This ranges from Bel Canto techniques to Contemporary techniques. Through her research she has found out that there is more to just knowing the basics. There is science that we can rely on, therefore anyone can learn to sing in any style without hurting themselves. Although every singer has different physiologies, 1:1 coaching is how Tina can quickly assess what is going on with the singer and come up with solutions to help.
Book today to sing better:
Do you want to have the competitive edge at auditions? Become a powerhouse BELTER with my course, a step-by-step guide to developing a strong voice that will get you noticed.
Comments