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Hi everybody!
My name is Justin Stoney and I'm the founder of
New York Vocal Coaching here in New York City.
Welcome to episode 71 of Voice Lessons To The World.
And, part two of our How To Belt Trilogy.
♪ Yeah ♪
Yeah.
[hits piano]
So, uh, anyway, last time we talked about
dragging chest voice up.
Which is kind of the "bad" kind of belting
but still something you need to be able to do.
And today our question comes from
Fathur S. in Bogor, Indonesia.
And Fathur writes, "Dear Justin, how do I belt the high notes?"
And Fathur that is a great question for us today.
But before we get into that we should revisit the topic-
what is belting?
If you remember last time, belting we can define as a drag
of a lower gear past where it would natively go
to achieve a kind of belty sound.
Now last time what we looked at was a true chest drag.
It's really, basically a kind of shout.
Now this is not the voice that I would want you doing all the time.
In fact I would use it very sparingly.
That voice will fatigue your cords
and in some extreme cases if you do it too much,
or you abuse it, could even injure your voice.
The one we really want is the chest dominant mix.
We want to take our mix up higher
and it will still sound belty.
So that chest drag is basically a kind of controlled shout.
And the mix, this is the one that I'd have you use
probably 90, maybe even 95, percent of the time.
When we use the mix we're going to be
balancing the cricothyroids- woah [hits piano]-
with the thyroarytenoids- woah [hits piano].
Okay, fancy words that basically just mean
flexibility and strength to the vocal cords.
We're balancing them out.
And instead of pushing out
or getting louder, raising the larynx,
or one of those shouty qualities.
Instead we're using nasal resonance and
head resonance in the belting.
So what that's gonna achieve is
really high notes that sound strong like chest voice.
They sound like they're being belted
or maybe even yelled, but they're really not.
They're actually in that mix.
So what we're gonna do today is first look at this
chest dominant mix belting in a song.
Then I'm gonna give you some tips
and then we're gonna try it out together in an exercise.
So the song I'd like to look at is
"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen.
The song "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen
was made famous by Jeff Buckley
who's just a great, great singer.
And last time for a male we went up to only around G4.
Which is pretty high for a chest belt.
But not really very high for a mix.
This song I'm gonna take up past there.
The Ab all the way up actually to a Db5.
Which gets quite high for both a male
and even for a female in this kind of mixed belt.
But this is just a great song,
one of my very favorite songs.
And here's a bit of that extension
containing head resonance from the great song "Hallelujah".
♪
♪ Well there was a time you let me know ♪
♪ What's really going on below ♪
♪ But now you never show that to me, do ya ♪
♪
♪ Remember when I moved in you ♪
♪ The holy dove was moving too ♪
♪ And every breath we drew was hallelujah ♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
And so you see as I extend up there
into that upper mixed belt territory
it really moves into the head resonators.
It's not a push of chest anymore
like the first kind of belting.
It starts to become contained.
And it's still got that substance to it
but it's really effortless because of the
head resonance that's involved.
So what we're gonna do next is look at
some belting tips that can help
build the mix and the chest dominant mix
in your voice.
Tips for this kind of belting
are very different than what we did last time.
If you remember last time we kind of
threw technique out the window
and said let's see if we can actually really belt
because not everybody can.
Last time we did- whoa!
Where the sound is opening up,
larynx can rise, breath can come out,
the sound can get louder.
That's a real kind of shout.
This could not be more different,
which is what makes this one the safer belt
and the one that I would recommend you do
very, very often.
Here we're gonna keep more of a narrow embouchure, alright.
We're not going to be widening things in the front.
We're gonna keep the tongue more tall like our NG.
So, stuff blocking the mouth
so that it doesn't get out like a shout
but stays in like head voice
however it has that strong quality at the same time.
We are gonna have nasal resonance
and head resonance of course.
So if you feel that [hum] kind of nasal sensation
or the air "back and up",
those are positive qualities.
We also don't want to be pushing breath
or getting louder.
Don't take too much, don't use too much.
This kind of mixing and belting
is gonna rely on light compression to the cords.
And that can't happen if you're
slamming the air too much.
So really maintain good breath support.
Don't take too much, use a constant air flow.
And then if you're aware of your larynx also
this is not gonna be raising.
[Demonstrates raised larynx]
Just like we did last time where we let it happen
we didn't care about it,
here you're gonna be more sensitive.
Keep the larynx as stable, as neutral, as you possibly can.
So those are some tips for making that
chest dominant mix happen.
Now we're gonna look at an exercise.
This is going to be, hallelujah.
So we're gonna use this great word, hallelujah.
It's great to say it's great to sing.
And it's from our Leonard Cohen song.
And, hallelujah, why is this so great to sing?
Well, the "ah" vowel releases the jaw,
and the "eh" vowel is gonna give us that taller tongue.
The "oo" will be blocking the mouth,
all qualities that help you keep the air in the head
for your mixed belting.
Then if you remember "L in a Cell", episode 67,
that L becoming... [demonstrates]
using nasal resonance then we get our
nasal resonance present too.
So you got nose, embouchure, tongue, jaw,
everything contained in this belting.
So I'm gonna have the guys start
and then I'm gonna bring in the ladies after we start.
So it's gonna be this...
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Great job.
♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Narrow.
♪
Now ladies join on in!
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Good for you.
♪
Low breath...
♪
Great.
♪
Nice job!
♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Stay small.
♪
Good for you.
♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Awesome.
♪
Good for you.
♪
Narrow...
♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Nice work.
♪
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪
Now it might be low for the ladies, but guys keep going!
♪
A few more...
♪
Last one...
♪ Hallelujah ♪
♪ ♪
Hallelujah!
What a great job with that mix
finding the contained resonant space for your belting.
It's so, so important and I hope that you guys
belt like that almost all the time when you're belting.
But there is more to go because we have part three
of our How To Belt Trilogy.
♪ Yeah ♪
Ugh...
[hits piano]
Yeah.
So stay tuned for that.
Next time we'll have more good work.
But Fathur and all, I hope that this has been
helpful for you guys today as singers.
If you've got questions that you'd like
to see us answer on the show
you can send an email to Questions@VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com.
And I just encourage you don't lost that joy,
don't lost that passion, do not let people
tell you that you can't sing cause you can I both know
it's simply not true.
Get with a great voice teacher in your area
or if you guys are in the New York City area
or you'd like to Skype with one of our staff, [♪]
you can visit us at www.NewYorkVocalCoaching.com. [♪]
And if you like these videos you can download our free app. [♪]
It's for iPad, iPhone, and hopefully more in the future. [♪]
A lot of great resources, articles, tips, videos, [♪]
ways to help you guys take your game [♪]
to the next level as singers. [♪]
Or you can simply just visit [♪]
www.VoiceLessonsToTheWorld.com. [♪]
I'm Justin Stoney. [♪]
We'll see you next time. [♪]
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