The importance of the foundation for the high belt notes!

Sometimes we are eager to work on those high, more difficult parts of a song and we forget to start with the foundation. Do you recognize this? 😅 Well what can I tell you… In contemporary styles when you might want a belt quality, it’s definitely important to not forget about the steps leading you up to those high notes!

I know, it’s a bit boring and it might feel unnecessary to work on something that sounds just fine when you really want to hit those powerful belt notes already! :) In my course ”Breaking Down The Belt” I go on and on about what I call ”The Big Belt Foundation”. The first part of it is about finding your thickest thick folds without any sweetness, to first get used to actually using your vocal folds without unwanted tension and get use to ”feeling” your voice. It often seems like singers think they should never feel their throat or voice but it depends on what sound you are making. We should feel it, it’s a good thing. The vocal folds should be active! That is a subject for another time 😁

Why we first want to eliminate any sweetness is because we then will lose some closure. Higher up in the range, this will mean we are more tempted to flipp into a headier sound, and in belting that is not what we want. 

The second part of it is to find your cricoid tilt, which will help with the closure of the vocal folds and make them even thicker. This can give you a feeling of an ”open throat”, you will feel your voice less probably, since we are getting help to keep them together and the sensation is often a more warm, free and powerful sound. 

To really teach your muscles how to tilt the cricoid cartilage, it’s good to have a lot of space for it to happen in the vocal tract. There will be less space higher up in the range so that’s why it’s good to practice this lower at first. We can then really have this action happening to its full range of motion. Like, if you are lifting a dumbbell at the gym with your bicep, you want to stretch out your arm all the way and back for the best result. We can of course use cricoid tilt higher up and we need it, but it’s hard to start there. 

If we skip these steps and just jump on the high part, we might fall into to habits of pushing air ”driving chest voice” and then constricting or flipping into head voice. 

Did I convince you yet, that it’s sometimes good to lower the key, start with a lower part of your song and be patient with your voice? I hope so!!

I have a crash course in ”The Big Belt Foundation” where I give you a few tricks to find it. You can get it for FREE here!

If you want to level up those belt notes - my course ”Breaking Down The Belt” is the system that will lay the foundation, work from all angles, tell you what parts are going to have what impact on your belt and in what order you should practice. It’s going to be available for self study if you are experienced and can easily understand the tools without any extra coaching. If you need coaching, you can join our membership and get answers to your questions, get coaching and be a part of a beautiful community. Sign up for the waitlist here and get a bonus when enrolling!!