How to Belt - Part 2

How to Belt - Part 2 Hi there, it's Kerri Ho from http://thesongbirdtree.com where we get grounded, take flight and sing! Now today is part 2 of How to Belt. So hopefully you've already watched my video Part 1 of How to Belt. If you haven't, please do go and check out that video first. You just have to click on it above (pointing above the video), otherwise this video won't make a lot of sense. You just really need to have that foundational knowledge of what belt is, before you get on to try to apply and make it work in your voice. Last time, I covered what exactly is belt and explanation of the different registers in our vocal range. So originally I'd said that I was gonna do this in a two part series but as always, planning it, I really felt like it needed to be 3 parts. This is number 2 and in this one, I'm going to give you basically 2 exercises to help you to begin to access your belt but then there'll be a final video. Which will bring it all together. In this one, what I'd like to cover is the fact that when we want to have a healthy belt, we need to make sure that it is definitely a forward sound that is healthy. We are not pushing our voice, we're not pulling up chest voice. I know I keep harping on about this but it is so important cause otherwise it's just shouting, and you know what shouting is, it's not belting. Belting is a healthy mix of chest and head voice. So how do we do that? First of all we need to learn how to blend both our chest and head voice. In order to do that, it's really important to understand how to sing in the mask. What that means is that we never wanna be singing on our throat. Even in chest voice, I never wanna be singing, well I shouldn't say never because in some songs it will be appropriate. For example in rock music or some heavy stuff it probably would be appropriate, but mostly what we want to be able to do is always place our singing in the mask (pointing below the eyes). We always wanna make sure that there is good resonance in our singing. That there is always this beautiful buzz that makes our sound travel along well. A great way to develop that is, Exercise #1: "Ming Ming..." very forward and bright. What we're gonna do is we're gonna sing it on a 5 note scale coming down and you wanna use the easy part of your voice, but what you wanna do is place it right here (pointing below the eyes). That's like a complete falsetto voice. It was not in the head voice anymore cause it's very breathy. We don't want that, that's way too far back. Now we bring it a bit more forward and just sing in a pure head voice. That's okay to start with, but that's just again still a bit way too back. But what we wanna do is use that part of our voice and sing it really forward. You really hear it coming out of your nose. That exercise will help you to learn how to just make sure your sound is always forward. In order for it to be a healthy belt, it can't be from the throat. You can't be trying to push it from the throat. So that's quite as simple (why it's important). Alright so now that you've learned how to have a really forward sound. That is so easy on the throat. You're on your way to be able to make a good mix tone of belt voice. So the 2nd thing though is it's important to practice to take that to another level, start at a little bit of edge into it, is to make sure there's a bit of twang in it. Twang is that nasty school yard sound. Now in order for us to have that edge in it. This belt needs to have a little bit of twang. Otherwise, it won't have that edge that a belt should have. Extending on from the exercise ming ming ming ming ming. What we should now do is another exercise which gonna help us to develop some of that twang. Exercise 2: "Ngeah Ngeah..." using baby twang.We're gonna start now in a lower range ok, and we'll gonna move up to a bit higher(me singing) It shouldn't be too harsh on your vocal chords (me singing) That's probably a bit too much, just make it a bit of what I will call a baby twang. So you sort of act like you're a baby or you're a 5 year old kid or whatever and you're in school yard. Think of yourself as having a voice that is five years old. That you are five years old in school yard (me singing).There you go, 2 exercises for you to begin an understanding on how to access a healthy belt. I'm gonna leave the last exercise in the next video which will be, How to belt Part 3. Cause that's where I'm gonna put all together. You do need to practice this first, in order to build that great foundation, and after that I'm gonna show you how to put that edge where we do mix a lot of the chest voice with a lot of the head voice, and make a really healthy mix voice which is a great belted sound.