my name is Jen Moorhatch and I'm the school choral editor at JW pepper
we have a special guest for a lesson on vocal belting her name is Aaron Guinup
and she is the founding executive and artistic director of the tacoma refugee
choir erin wrote a blog for cued in about this topic which is linked below
we're so glad that you're here can you tell us a little bit about your
backgrounds I've been teaching voice for over 20 years and I've conducted choirs
I'm currently directing the tacoma refugee choir which brings together
refugees immigrants and community members to build a more welcoming
community through song and I've done lots of other things like consult with
businesses on how to improve their tone of voice using musical concepts for good
leadership can you explain a little bit more to us what vocal belting really is
yeah belting is something that singers do all the time it's part of the popular
music culture but it's also part of a lot of ethnic cultures belting is a
really key part of a lot of styles and if you look at a child when they're
playing on a playground they're usually using a belting type sound it's
important for us as teachers to be able to help our students safely produce
these sounds and help them thrive in the what music they want to say can you
explain a little bit about what you're going to do I'm going to sing three
songs excerpts from three songs and these songs will demonstrate what it
sounds like in my voice to sing with a belt sound a legit and a mix
the people I know like tonight that bother my Boyer when I was an undergrad
I was taught that belting would hurt my voice but now we have a lot more
research that proves that belting is no more dangerous for singing than any
other style of singing however when we are belting without any training there
is more risk of injuries so we have to be careful about making sure that we're
balancing both sides of the voice when we're belting a song typically we don't
belt the whole song we're belting portions of the song for
those big thrilling moments but other points we're gonna be using our mix
voice and that mixed voice is going to have a lot of the characteristics of
that belting sound but it's going to also incorporate more of that head
function
when someone is belting they are using a TA dominant sound which means that the
thyroarytenoid muscle is dominant in that relationship but that doesn't mean
that the other muscle involved which is the cricothyroid muscle is also engaged
it's kind of like a bicep and tricep you need both muscles to be working so that
you have healthy function when we're in our head voice we're using a CT dominant
sound which means the other muscle is predominantly involved in that
relationship some of the biggest challenges I see from students is overly
relying on one side of their voice so a student who has a tendency to use too
much of that chest voice function when in fact they should be mixing along the
way if I have a student who's overthinking their technique oftentimes
I'll have them focus on their character because even though they may not know
how to sing that song their character does so if they have those fundamentals
in place oftentimes the character will help drive them to find those brighter
sounds that we're looking for in that
when I start a student I want to make sure that that student has good access
to their head voice so that when they are using their chest voice they're not
likely to over rely on that I just met Theresa and I'm excited to help walk you
through some of the things I would do with a first time student yes so usually
when I'm working with a new student I will make sure that their head voice is
working really well okay and I love straws because it really is a great way
of getting into that space so just go ahead and go good and usually I'll have
you do that five or ten times to make sure that we get up through there and
then now you do what I call motorcycles
good and then we might do a descending scale on this drop then what I might do
is I might do using that same idea
and you want to keep the airflow consistent from the straw to the you
know what different so from here we can play with our speaking voice and access
the other side of your voice so say for me
hey hey good and we want to make sure that it's not a grabbed sound but we're
just using a lot of an engagement from the abdominals what I want you to do is
go ahead and squat a little bit for it like so not knees forward knees back and
squat okay hey hey feel the muscles engage there a little bit yeah yeah so
those are the muscles you need to engage hey there you got it
hey hey and again you can think a little bit of a squat I think if you are
struggling to find those muscles the sillier the better right
hey I'm Yogi Bear that's perfect I love it
now we won the engagement but we don't necessarily need more air so what I want
you to do this time is blow out all your air and then do it one two so right when
I'm saying it that's when all the air is coming so no you're gonna say you're
gonna blow out all the air and use what residual air is left in to to do it okay
yeah it's that's a game-changer okay one two three four five you're not
interesting that is yeah because when when you've emptied the tank then you
have to create a different kind of pressure and that's what we need for the
sound you don't need more air going through the vocal folds when we're
building we need that and subglottic pressure Wow so from there we want to
just move into other phrases and the speaking voice naturally uses an
interval of a fifth time so how do you do how do we do yeah that's it
how do you do how do ya do how do ya do how do ya do how do you do how do you do
Wow very good and so now we've produced that sound and we just move into other
spaces when I'm working with a student who is belting sometimes tension will
creep in and in those cases I return back to fundamentals and get them
singing in their legit voice so that they get that that healthy balance
between the CT dominant and ta dominant sound Thank You Erin so much for coming
in today and talking a little bit more about vocal belting for our customers oh
I'm glad to I really hope it helps people whether they're singing Broadway
or contemporary music or world music these are principles that we all need as
singers and teachers we hope that answered your questions and gave you
some great ideas to use with your vocalists be sure to subscribe and hit
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