Belt Voice Training E-Book

Christin Bonin

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Deutsch

Seitenzahl: 103

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Belt Voice Training is a method book to train your belt voice with exercises available on download tracks. The exercises are explained in detail and in a way that allows you to reproduce the sound. This approach makes it possible to achieve a professional belt voice. Concrete examples of how you can master the techniques of some pop songs will also be addressed, like Listen by Beyoncé or We are the Champions by Freddie Mercury, and Hurt by Christina Aguilera. You will also get advice about belting in rock, soul, jazz, and musical theatre. You can not only find sound excerpts from different belt voices but instrumental playbacks to practice on your own. This is a complete training program for your belt voice. Enjoy singing!

Leseprobe

Dr. CHRISTIN BONIN

BELT VOICE TRAINING

Empower Your Voice!

Vocal Technique

for

Pop, Rock, Soul, Jazz & Musical Theatre

Impressum

The German National Library lists that publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.”

© 2023 Christin Bonin

Cover created by Michel Bonin

ISBN: 978-3-757.82413-6

TABLE OF CONTENT

PREFACE10

SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATIONS14

WHAT IS “BELTING”?15

1VOICE PLACEMENT18

1.1Voice Placement and Necessary Requirements22

1.2Voice Placement Exercises25

2BREATHING32

2.1Deep Breathing and Breathing Support32

2.2Breathing Exercise 132

2.3Breathing Exercise 2 and Breathing Support35

2.4Breathing Exercise 338

3SUPPORT41

7HIGH-BELTING44

7.1 Sound Position in High-Belting44

7.2Exercises for Sound Position in High-Belting: Focus Tones46

8LOW-BELT-MIX50

8.1Register Connection: Middle Voice - Real Chest Voice50

9LOW-BELTING57

9.1Chest Voice to High Middle Voice57

9.2Low-Belt Exercise for Strong Dark Voices59

10CONTINUOUS MIX-BELT63

10.1Passage: Full Chest Voice - Middle Voice - High Belt Voice63

10.2Mix-Belt Exercise 1: Continuous Mix-Belt64

10.3Mix-Belt Exercise 2: Low-Belt-Mix with 5th Spring67

10.4Mix-Belt Exercise 3, 4 & 5: Low-Belt in Line with High-Belt in Springs71

11SOUND EFFECTS IN PERFORMANCES74

11.1The “Transition Tricks” with Song Examples in Pop Music74

11.2“Listen” by Beyoncé in Dreamgirls76

11.3“We are the Champions” by Freddie Mercury86

12Sound Effects and Listening Habits96

13CONCLUSIONS FOR THE MODERN VOCAL TRAINING99

14Belcanto and Belt Voice99

15Musical Belting110

16Belting and Soul113

17Jazz Singing: Scat and Belting115

18The Rock Voice and Belting117

19Classical Singing and Belting119

20BELT VOICE EXERCISES FOR DAILY TRAINING127

21Download Tracks134

22LIST OF SOURCES141

23ILLUSTRATION INDEX143

PREFACE

In more than 25 years of vocal training, I have often thought of writing a book about singing technique.

What is easy to demonstrate or show in a class training situation is somewhat different from applying such to paper, especially in a way that it is easily understood, eliminating the possible misunderstandings that could occur. That is a big challenge.

There are many essential aspects to singing:

There is musical talent and its development into musical ability. “Feelings” and “soul” regardless of the musical style or sound and the personal taste of the interpreter, the musicians, composers or songwriters, and especially the contemporary taste of the public, just to mention a few of the factors.

“There is no bad music, only music poorly made,” has been quoted by many leading artists.

What is music?

It is not easy to define music. Most music theorists assume that music is only music when it is intentional.

Mostly music is made for people unless, of course, you are singing in the shower or whistling alone.

That’s why music has a definite purpose, and with that, it also has social significance. Historical situations, role models, and traditions always have influenced the development of music.

On the other hand, we can say that music is only music because people are aware of it. Indeed, there are exceptions like birds singing, the sound of a locomotive, the tuning of an instrument, et cetera.

It is difficult to put music and non-music into different categories.

As mentioned already, there is no bad music, just music poorly made.

Consequently, there is also no bad singing and no bad or wrong singing technique?

When a song is “simply great,” does it really matter how the singer did it?

Theoretically, it does not.

For me as a passionate vocal coach, the following questions remain:

How often and for how long are singers able to sing before the voice suffers from almost irreparable damage?

Is that sound a result of a singer’s one-time performance - for example, after weeks of long hard work, trying on and on again to achieve in a perfectly equipped recording studio - like establishing a Guinness book record? Or is that a performance a singer can reproduce live?

The sales product, the CD, in today´s popular music and even in the classics has reached an increasing perfection that for the live performers themselves seems unreachable.

Otherwise, why would a singer allow the voice to go through a machine which pitches tones in real-time before the sounds reach the audience during a live performance?

Why are there increasingly fewer live vocal performances?

I admit that the commercial CD is really fantastic: the listener does not even hear or notice that the singer is even breathing. That’s great!

Is that what I want?

No, it is not. It does not fascinate me to know that recording techniques can produce wonders.

What interests me is the person and his actual performance abilities, and I am certainly not the only one with that point of view.

As a member of the audience at a concert by Michael Bublé, whose voice and repertoire I love very much, I repeatedly asked myself, what would his vocal sound be like without the sound equipment?

During the last 30 seconds of his performance, when he put the microphone to the side, he took a deep breath and sang with full strength, without technical equipment in that huge Olympic Hall, was the most enjoyable moment of the entire concert.

He really can sing, with resonance, on the correct pitch, powerful and beautiful!

For electronically supported music, we need an electronically supported voice. However, when we use sound technology to replace the authentic voice, the original sense of sound technology, meaning that music could reach an unlimited quantity of people, gets lost.

Whoever is looking for the quick and easy fix, the “tips and tricks” needed to “star” in the next TV casting show, should rather spend the money on a new hairstyle, a new dress, a diet, or cosmetic surgery.

In that book, with a few precise exercises, I would like to show you how you can work on your modern voice sound in a strenuous but healthy way.

To sing, we need air, so we work on our breathing and breathing support.

To sing, we need resonance; therefore, we work on learning how to use our natural given possibilities to the fullest.

We need good health, endurance, patience, passion, common sense, and unbelievable love of music to sing. That drives you like an addiction to continually improve, stabilize your sound possibilities, make that sound recallable, make discoveries that help your interpretation, and more.

To sing, we need exercises and explanations that help us to progress without damaging the voice.

Maybe, at the beginning of that book, the professional singers will not get much new information for a couple of pages. Still, the first points about voice placement, breathing, and support are necessary to prepare for the following belting exercises.

Enjoy your training!

Christin Bonin

SUPPLEMENTARY EXPLANATIONS

PASSAGGIO: Italian term to describe the passage from chest voice to middle voice and from middle voice to head voice

PITCH NOTATION

The scientific pitch notation (also called American standard pitch notation) specifies the range of an instrument or the voice. C1 is the lowest C on a grand piano.

WHAT IS “BELTING”?

The word belting is an English expression coming from the phrasal verb “to belt out.” You might know the expression “to belt out loud,” also in the English language, you will find the term “belt” (without “out”) in reference to squeezing a belt around the waist, tightening one’s belt, blowing below the belt and others, which has absolutely nothing to do with the use of your belt voice. In connection to the voice, the explanation of belting refers only to a strong voice or an intense form of song expression but without any details.

Belting is a singing technique used in musical, pop, soul, rock music, and other jazz-related genres. It creates “belting” or “smashing” sounds.

Originally, belting was a stage-singing technique of the classic Broadway musical used to create a loud tone in a way that the vocal sound is different from a classical tone production and the sound of an opera voice.

Ethel Merman was known for her voice power, even in her later years. The more the musical genre distanced itself from the operetta, the more the belting was demanded, and today, pop music or a modern musical without belting is hard to imagine.

I believe that when a singer belts out a song, it not only means that the singer is giving all he can to sound his voice as loud and strong as possible. More than that, he connects that unique sound to a specific feeling that the singer wishes to share with the audience.

For example, let´s take a “scream”? No, certainly not! A typical scream is something rather unpleasant. A pop-music “scream” from someone like Christina Aguilera is not.

Why? What makes the difference?

Screaming from the throat does generally not take profit from our resonating cavities. On the other hand, a belt sound takes advantage of these and creates a free and powerful sound with free vibrating intensive tones.

In belting, the chest voice is brought up as far and used by singing upwards as long and intensively as possible without forcing! (Don’t pull up your chest voice! Doing so is a dangerous and voice-damaging misinterpretation of that technique!). Whereas in classical singing, women use the chest voice function in a much lighter way.

With men, belting becomes interesting only in the higher range. Men sound an octave lower anyway, which means that the use of the chest register is more intense than it is for women’s chest register.

For my taste, a technically correct produced note of a classical tenor sounds nearly belted. For example, if you isolate a high note from Pavarotti away from the musical context, the sound will appear somewhat groovy!

Many people believe that it is not necessary to learn a classical voice placement for belting. You even can read that in some books and articles.

That statement is not precisely correct. To be honest, just the opposite would more likely be the case.

Without a perfect pitch, and a well-trained voice without passaggio problems with at least a two-octave range, you should not even attempt the belting technique.

That does not mean you need first classical training. However, for good results in modern vocal training, the right pitch, proper breathing, and support are essential and must have an absolute priority at the very beginning.

Those who do not wish to start a founded training should only choose some simple-to-reach songs, all notes placed in the easily reachable vocal range, and be satisfied.

But for those who are willing to learn, the work starts to get serious!

1 VOICE PLACEMENT

To learn how to belt, you need an excellent voice placement.

That means that I have to use the upper part of my resonating cavities, specifically, the paranasal sinuses, the maxillary air sinuses, and the frontal sinuses. Even all the small openings of the skull have to be involved.

Illustration 1

The paranasal sinuses represent the essential upper resonating cavities. Using them for tone production is crucial for perfect voice placement.

Without the correct voice placement, Belting would be responsible for missing overtones, and the sound would become a scream.

What exactly is a TONE?

Physically, a tone is only a sine wave; on the contrary, a musical tone is a sound that is composed of the superposition of partial tones, overtones, and secondary tones, giving the listener the impression of a single tone.

That means the physical tone is a single frequency. That single frequency is not a sound.

Illustration 2

A simple sine wave is only in a physical sense a “tone.” Without overtones, there is no musical sound.

Overtones are naturally arranged. How many or which ones are involved in a musical tone and how intensive determines the timbre or tone color of the voice and the unique sound of the instrument “voice.” The partial tones are seldom or never perceived. Usually, only the first chosen partial tone is.

Illustration 3

As a rule, the human ear only perceives the lowest partial tone of a chosen overtone line. The more the overtones are present and vibrating in a musical tone, the better the sound.

If the overtones are somewhat awkwardly composed and the fundamental partial tone cannot be perceived, then we speak of a “noise.” That is the case for some percussion instruments.When the overtones of a sung note are not correct, the tone will be unclear, either sounding too high or too low. Material, form, condition, age, and many other outside factors influence ourvocal instrument as well, not to mention our thoughts and emotions.

All these factors together give us our unique musical tone and will determine the sound of our voice.