How to find your singing belt - belting techniques for singers

hi guys Madeline har over here thank you so much for joining me on my channel today hey if you like today's video be sure to give it a thumbs up or click the subscribe button below I would love to see you here more often in today's video we're going to talk about the belt what is it what does it do how do we get it we're going to cover all of that today we're going to get in there we're going to activate it so by the time you're done watching today's video you're going to have everything that you need to get you started with your belt tank there are four major components with a really cool belt number one is support underneath number two is bouncing the sound effectively inside of the mouth number three is adding the cry we'll talk more about that in a second and number four is engaging the cord treat all four of these elements is four very different aspects be very curious about each one make lots of really crazy sounds get in there explore explore roll around and then move on to the next by the time you've engaged and explored all four of these elements you'll be able to belt with the best of them okay I just want to say let's start with a nice definition for what belting is a lot of people tend to feel that belting is just extending your chest voice as high as you possibly can and I don't want to say that's wrong but it's not true the voice needs to be able to shift and change accordingly so that it can maintain your balance for me I define belting as really energetic really intentional you know a really full voice singing and that's where a lot of people tend to think that it has to come from the chest voice because the chest voice is that grounded feeling in the voice and as we tend to leave that chest voice it feels really unstable so that's why a lot of people tend to just focus primarily on the chest voice when they start but we're not going to do that we're going to get in those resonators and find a full voice expression everywhere okay awesome so I do I also want to say that if you're new to belting you may feel that okay it feels very similar to just talking on pitch and you would be right it is really close to that in our natural speech our primary focus is not on how we sound is it no we're not like hello how are you know we don't really care how we sound when we talk we just simply express our minds so belting feels a lot a lot like that but don't be tentative don't be scared if it also feels like okay I'm getting into that screaming and yelling zone register that feeling and then immediately relax into it right we're expanding our horizons with our voice which means we have to explore those kind of uncharted territories so don't be afraid to scream or hoot or a holler as my grandma would say but register when it happens and immediately relax into it because belting is not screaming or yelling but we have to kind of feel that full voice Ness sometimes with ourselves okay all that being said let's go ahead and get started the first element is awesome support underneath so what we're going to do is close the mouth put the hands right under the ribcage and we're going to whimper on a count of four a total of five times like so now that was the demonstration now let's do it together medium-range note here we go and rest whoo now did you feel like it was like you were doing a little crunches nice and slow if it felt like you were going you weren't really supporting underneath so let it feel like a little bit of a whimper if you need to take it up like another to another note go ahead and do that but it should feel like you're whimpering underneath the sound this is going to get your diaphragm your support engaged constantly under the sound okay oftentimes what happens when we begin to belt is the pressure inside of the body changes rapidly there's too much pressure between diaphragm and vocal cord which kind of causes this high larynx placement and that kind of results in shouting so if we feel like we're going ah we've kind of lost the support underneath where the breath is moving too fast so as you're playing with that whimper just register how slow that breath feels that it's moving if we go we might go okay that feels a little slower and more consistent and control rather than just ah moving the air too fast okay practicing that over and over again will make sure that you have really great support when you're ready to start to include the mouth okay number two is bouncing the sound now what do I mean when I say bounce well singing is acoustic meaning that vibrations are echoing and vibrating and resonating all throughout our entire body a kind of mistake that a lot of people make when they start belting is again they shove all that energy all that sound out of the mouth and that kind of results in yelling as well so if I go hey doesn't really sound very good because I'm just shouting so we want to make sure that it kind of feels like we're bouncing the sound out of the mouth but particularly out of the middle of the mouth right where that hard palate is so with one hand on the app we're gonna kind of you know talk for a second and we're just gonna say the word hey but it's gonna be like you know we see somebody that's like really cute and we're trying to you know hey like that but with a little bit more voice so we're gonna go hey hey hey hey we're just going to keep bouncing that hey off the center of the mouth so let's try that together here we go hey hey hey hey hey hey hey good now make sure it's not Jimmy can and we're not like a okay we don't want to squeeze the cords there and we also don't want to hear too much of that H and go hey hey hey it should feel like a bounce off the center of the mouth hey hey hey hey okay you can play with quick little taps which is what I suggest to do when you're first getting started and then extend it longer like hey my voice wobbled there hey hey hey let's do that a couple times together so it's like quick long and just kind of feel how the sound kind of swells inside but keep that breath consistent here we go hey hey hey hey good do you feel what that feels like on the center of the mouth good that's going to be a lot of where you're belting resonance is going to gather is inside the the center of the mouth but as we ascend in pitch as we climb in pitch we're going to need some of that number three which is adding that cry to the mix so going back to the beginning of the video I said that it was important not to think of the belt as just a chest voice which is chest voice primarily resonates in the mouth and it's like lower notes but the voice itself needs to shift and change resonance is always changing okay especially as we ascend or descend in pitch so as we ascend we know that we are going to start feeling the voice kind of climbing up the back of the throat and into the nose well we know that we do not want it to suddenly go from full voice to breath enos like ah we don't want that so we're going to add what's called pharyngeal to allow the head voice the nose resonances and the chest voice the mouth resonances to kind of overlap okay and this feels like a baby cry it feels like a baby crying so we're gonna go just to be silly we're gonna go ah and just register where you feel that vibration happening go ahead let's try it together do you feel that yeah it's kind of up and back right right where your nose meets the throat we have this really cool little concave area of the throat in the nose called the nasal pharynx so what we're doing is we're bouncing a lot of vibration off of that corner there which is allowing the sound to kind of amplify right so if we go ah it kind of feels like the sounds going right out of our ears right let's try that ah it's kind of coming from the side right this will allow you to keep your sound focused and speech like as you ascend in pitch a good way to practice that is simply to cry like a baby you also feel that support from underneath so awesome job there when you're ready to start to overlap you want to go from high to low okay before you go from low to high like this ah okay feeling that it stays kind of consistent in tone and then you can switch it from low to high hey hey but the idea there is that we're not putting pressure on the cord okay we're not feeling like hey hey this is all happening inside of the resonator okay all happening inside of your head space so number one support underneath number two bounced the sound really play with hay in a bouncing motion and number three add the cry and now number four we have engaged the chord I hope all this is making sense to you it's like a little recipe for building but what I mean by engaging the cord is remember in the first part of the video where I said like you know belting is very forward it's like no holding back right it's speaking your mind and your heart and your emotions and telling a story well we need our cord to be able to do that so I'm going to give you kind of like two different sounds that you can play with to keep the cord engaged and the first one is the most simple and since belting is very similar to speaking let us speak together now and the only word that we have in our vocabulary the only word that we know is mum mum mum mum okay so that's our only word so instead we're going to use pitch and inflection and dynamics to say our piece so if I'm frustrated I might go my mum my mum right do you see how playing with it but I'm keeping my intent forward I'm not going ma ma ma ma not that there's anything wrong with that I just use it to show contrast of this way and that way okay we want to get our sound forward so let's play together like we are well like we're angry okay but make sure it's happening all in the resonator and not down here we're just adding the core to it here we go ready mama mama-mama ma-ma-ma-ma-ma again you can there's infinite varieties of what you can do to play with it but do you feel how the chord stays engaged without but not not not without getting tight cool very very very cool so that's our first sound our second sound is to engage the chord but on the inner edges belting should never be heavy okay it should never be heavy it should be grounded but not heavy I don't need to go hey hey you see how I'm like using the musculature of my neck to kind of squeeze and make it deeper sounding listen again hey hey oh but yeah a lot of people will try to give body with a belt and end up squeezing using their muscles around here so we can add the inner edges of the cords which without squeezing on them with our muscles so we're going to just do a little crazy little sound called the vocal fry' and it sounds like a creaky door sound like it's really great you can talk on the vocal fry' it's a lot of fun I really enjoy it but we want to just kind of get that vocal fry' going which connects the inner edges of the vocal cords and then we're just going to kind of moan through it until we have cord connection okay it's like this I hear that one more time ah ah this is going to give you that full voice cord connection without weight okay because again everything needs to shift and change but there you have it guys the four elements that when put together create an amazing belt just to review we've got support from underneath bounce the sound add the cry engage the chord there's lots of different sounds that you can play with for each one of these to really get you started but remember don't be scared say your mind speak your mind get the sound out in front of you and if you do notice ok I'm shouting I'm yelling that's fine as long as you don't turn it into a habit register that feeling and immediately relax into it balance is key thank you so much for joining me today I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did give it a thumbs up or click the subscribe button below I'd love to see you here more often thank you again for joining me and I will see you next time

Channel: Madeleine Harvey

Views: 670,725

Rating: 4.950623 out of 5

Keywords: singing belt, singers belt, belting when you sing, belting techniques, how to belt, how to sing with a belt, how to belt while singing, how to sing with a belt without hurting yourself, how to sing with a belt without strain, how to sing with a belt without tension, how to belt correctly, how to belt when singing, belting methods, belting techniques for singers, madeleine harvey, voice lesson

Id: XxxncCUBLwY

Length: 16min 56sec (1016 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2015