How to Belt High
High guys! Madeleine Harvey here and thank you so much for joining me today. In today’s video we’re going to be talking about how to belt high. So if you like today’s video, please be sure to give it a thumbs up and click the subscribe button below, I’d love to see you here more often.
Belting is awesome! It gives the distinct emotional impression that you are in command of your voice and you are holding nothing back. Our objective of today’s video is to allow that awesome belt of yours to effortlessly coordinate higher notes. But at the same time, reducing force and excess pressure. This is going to give you that awesome combination of both strength and freedom.
The sound that we’re going to playing with in today’s video, is in no way a finished sound. But is meant to be used as a temporary coordination to get that ball rolling for you.
This sound is really going to allow us to engage the components that are necessary for a nice, healthy belt. The craziness of this sound is a direct result of some specific muscles that we are isolating. So don’t judge the quality of your sound. Not today. Go ahead and allow yourself to experience the access that this sound is giving your voice. Once you become familiar with that, then you know that you can always play with it’s quality until you have your most desired result. Until then, give into the power of the crazy sound. Go ahead and allow this sensation to turn into muscle memory, and allow that muscle memory to translate into your songs.
So in choosing the perfect exercise in order to coordinate a belt high, the very first thing we need to do is remove pressure from the throat. The best way to do this, is to over emphasize our mix. Whenever we are talking about belting, or singing for that matter, there is always this interplay between three resonators. The chest voice, the mix voice and the head voice. without getting into too much detail in today’s video, let’s simplify it by saying it all feels like funny speech. And we’re going to discover that by doing this exercise. we’re going to pretend to be the little aliens from Toy Story. (Funny speech, I did tell you.) Can you hear your mouth space influencing the sound? Can you hear your nose? How about your head space? Yes of course. That’s how we know that we’ve got a good coordination to bring the head and chest voice closer together. Think of this funny sound as being sort of like glue that will keep your chest and head resonances close. We know that when we sing belting, it’s very dramatic. But our objective here, is to allow the chest voice to lighten, and prepare to receive the lighter coordinations of head voice, but in a way where the sound is consistent. The more you play with this sound, the more coordinated and strong your overall belt will become.
Start with the alien Toy Story sound on “Whoa” get the sense of where we are starting. Then add an L sound to it by saying “LA.” This L sound, will bring the sound even more forward to the mask while rolling the tongue forward and allowing the vocal cords to coordinate more effectively. The exercise includes micro progressions that will allow you voice to get the sense of consistency.
When you are ready to work this sound into a more useable sound, simply decompress your Toy Story alien little by little until it feels more like your natural speech.
There you have it guys! I hope you have enjoyed today’s video as much as I have enjoyed making it for you. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave it in the comments portion of today’s video. Thank you so much for hanging out with me, and I will see you next time!!