How to Belt - Evynne Hollens

I work with a lot of voice students on belting and how to find a healthy belt so there is a myth about belting and that is that it's bad for you that it's unhealthy I'm here to tell you that's not true and that there's a way to find a healthy belt so the definition of belting essentially is to sing high and loud and a lot of singers believe that we have to take our chest voice our lower register and just pull it up or push it up as far as it can go well that's not necessarily true you can belt in different registers so we have our chest voice our lower register our head voice our upper register which I've already done a lesson about so check that out there and then you have your mix voice well you can create a belt sound in your mix and even in your head voice which will be a really supported sound and really take off the strain there's a specific technique that's really helpful to create that loud sound that you want to sound like you're belting really high in your upper register and that's called twang twang I will talk about as a followup to this lesson and I'll definitely be doing more lessons about belting there's a lot to it so today I'll give you some great exercises to work on on your own so you can work on your belt and how to find it in a healthy way but first there are some rules when you're practicing do it often but not for a long time so 20-minute increments every day would be great 2 hours at a time no way that's going to be really tiring belting is really vocally demanding it's a thicker fold mask it can be straining on your voice so make sure to drink lots of water and just practice often but not for long periods of time and what goes along with practicing often having patience understand your voice as a muscle and you need to work it out it's like lifting weights you can't just go to the gym and lift a ton of weights and expect your body to be fine with it and be able to lift those same weights every day from then on you know you have to work up to it so have patience with yourself and if you practice often I promise you will see results when you're practicing your belt don't sing too loud essentially belting is glorified yelling but I'd like you to try these exercises not at your ultimate volume or as loud as you can go try to maintain a relaxed body get rid of tension any tension that you can that's something that I often say in my voice lessons if you're doing any of these exercises and you feel discomfort you feel tension you feel tightness if you're you know really engaged here especially in our throat that's not where we want to be if you want to be engaged and feel any kind of oomph you want it down in your abs in your belly using your diaphragm kind of right at the bottom of your rib cage here this is where we can feel the engagement because that's where you're going to be supporting and that's where your sound should be supported really grounded is what I would say so belting singing high and Loud essentially full Voice singing doesn't necessarily have to be in your chest voice a cool way to start getting your head wrapped around belting especially if you're a classical singer or if you've never tried belting at all it feels very similar to talking so before we even start singing we'll do a few exercises that kind of get you into that place into that mindset of okay I'm making a bigger Bolder sound you need to be willing to explore kind of push the boundaries a little bit be okay with with making a bigger sound you're only going to get there if you're able to be free and let it go and explore your voice we all have different voices and I can tell you how things feel or how things sound for me and when I work with students we do a lot of experimenting so let's get started you're going to start with just the word hey hey and then you'll say it a little bit louder hey I want you to feel the engagement here go ahead and put your hands on your belly and when you say the word hey hey a little bit louder hey I want you to feel it engaged down in your abs I want you to support your hey instead of hey hey from here I want you to feel it from your belly hey hey now a little bit higher hey hey this is annoying I know so now we'll try it on a note hey hey hey hey hey hey hey again I want you to feel it from your belly hey hey now we'll start with a simple exercise this was in my warm-up video but I really like to use this exercise when I'm warming up to a [Music] belt really emphasize that slide Don't Be Afraid don't hold back from that the idea is that you'll kind of feel a little bit of that pull but I want you to think instead of pulling it up from your chest you're feeling the resonation here in our chest voice but I want you to feel that kind of that engagement that support down here and if there was any kind of a pull you'd be pulling from your tummy so the same kind of Engagement we had when we were saying [Music] [Music] hey when you're doing this specific exercise I want you to try to squat on the top note now that's going to sound weird if you're a dancer I want you to play okay I'm in my low squat position this is super awkward when you get to that top note now the purpose of this good job Ash now the purpose of the squat is to feel kind of that grounding that grounding that I keep talking about it's the feeling of you know the notes going up but your body is going down and rooting you into the floor so you feel supported so you're not reaching for your note reaching from our throat you want to feel like you've got that grounding to shoot the note up let's try that [Music] again good now when you're mounting you can play with all kinds of sounds you can have a deeper longer sound that's still keeping kind of that long relaxed vowel but sometimes we need to lift a little bit so feel a little bit of that lift like when you're working in your your head voice feel it down here so you can resonate kind of more in this [Music] area that gives a different maybe brighter sound you know that's what it's about it's about exploring what sound do you like what feels good what feels comfortable certain vowels really make a difference maybe that's too spread so then how can we darken a a vowel so it's all about playing around with your vow sounds and your shapes but all the while maintaining that low nice support if you feel like you're yelling get there and then relax into it for me and what I try to teach my students is you know really engaging your core and feeling like that's where you can carry that like oof that oomph from your belly and use that you know use the air breathing is the key to everything so if you can really feel like your breaths are grounded that will really help you get to those next notes so our next exercise we will do on a NW this one's a little tricky Tri here but this is a great kind of weightlifting exercise for your belt now you'll notice I kind of have a brighter spread face you're not singing classical music you're going for a belt this is a more contemporary sound so most likely you'll be a little more spread and that kind of will help still maintaining a lot of space in our mouth and support but I want you not to be afraid to be a little bit wider than usual something to keep in mind the top notes should not be any louder so if you can try to keep them all at the same level at the same volume I have to remind myself of that sometimes sometimes when you're like ready and you're raring to go and you want to hit that high note it's like you're pushing too hard and you're letting too much out belting does not require a ton of air being let out if you can just support from your belly from your gut and O engage use your air but don't let a lot of air Escape it's a smaller space I'd [Music] [Applause] say and we're getting a little high for a belt here what I'm doing is continuing to kind of push up into that space But doing it from my belly not from my chest not from my throat and then it was going into this nasal place now we're going to keep going and this is going to go into kind of that twangy space now I'm kind of going through my break here so you might be able to tell that was tricky coming down so that's a high F and it might have sounded like a belt but that was in my twang or in my head voice twang is a brighter more nasal sound and it really is what gets your voice to cut through in that high space if I was singing this in a more classical space y y I didn't add any more volume there but I kind of let the nasal space come in I think about it as kind of pushing my voice more forward so I'm resonating in my mask but then moving it as far forward as I can so I really feel like you're resonating in your nose with twang you can't be afraid to sound like a whining cat so that's all for today I hope that was a good introduction to belting and I hope you have some tools to start belting in a healthy way just to overview remember support from a low grounded place Place use your breath but not too much air don't let too much air Escape practice often but not for too long don't sing too loud patience have patience with yourself this is a muscle you need to develop it's going to take time but if you work on it every day you will see results I promise you that and if it hurts if it's tense if it's tight stop and maybe watch this video again thanks for watching everyone I hope you enjoyed this lesson on belting I will follow up with a lesson on Twang and we can really get our belt sound to carry all the way up into that whiny space that's going to be a fun one thanks for watching I will see you all next week

Channel: Evynne Hollens

Views: 1,930,806

Keywords: how to belt, belting, voice lessons, belting lessons, vocal coaching, evynne hollens, evynnehollens, how to belt high notes, how to belt high notes for women, how to sing high notes, how to belt without strain, belting songs, belt, belting technique, how to belt sing, belting exercise, belting singing, belting voice

Id: -olLjURMEwE

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 05 2015