Belting: An Overview of the Science, Pedagogy & Artistry of Belting

Working with Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method

Jeanie LoVetri, June 28, 2021

By now, those of you who watch these webinars understand that belting is a very
hot topic in Voice-teacher-land and has been for more than 50 years.
Since most formal university training has only been aimed at classical literature
for the better part of the 20th century, and since that same formal vocal training was all
that was available regardless of what one wanted to sing, the long-standing attitudes
about that type of training (“classical”) are still difficult to avoid. Everything is measured
against this form of singing training. What has this to do with belting? Almost nothing.
Because the responses within the throat are opposite to each other, singing classical
music while also being a healthy belter is difficult to combine. Unless you really know
what you are doing, belting can interfere with classical singing in its most traditional
sense. Are there any scientific studies to establish this? No. You find out through life
experience. Contrarily, some aspects of belting (very specific ones) can be helpful to
classical singers. It all depends on the training and the context in which it is delivered.
You can’t guess.
From a purely vocal place, there are very few singers who can do a good job with
a classical aria or song, follow it by doing something in jazz or folk music and then end
by doing a rock belt in one unaltered live performance. Why? Because doing so is very
difficult and takes a lot of work, knowledge, skill, practice and precise, useful vocal
training. Think about it, if it were easy, wouldn’t all the opera singers who would like to,
be able to sing rock? They aren’t. And the brave people who have tried to “cross-over”
the other way (coming from a pop/rock style into classical) have also been pretty
unsuccessful. Why? Because classical vocal production has to be learned. You don’t
just “wing it.” And, if classical training was a “one size fits all” approach, wouldn’t anyone
with any kind of classical training be able to sing any kind of music easily? We know
that doesn’t happen. But, if you know how things work, you can sing in many ways.
Please look at the entire video at www.somaticvoicework.com

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Copyright The Voice Workshop, NYC, 6-2021 Jeannette LoVetri. All rights reserved.
No reproduction of any segment of this article without written permission.

 Classical training is a non-entity. There is no such thing as “classical training.” No

university, no organization has established required guidelines for functional parameters
and therefore, no one really knows what is or isn’t required except musically. If you put
20 top singing teachers from America’s most important universities that award degrees
in vocal performance in classical literature together in one room, they would not agree
on anything about the singing beyond some kind of breath support and a specific kind of
“resonance.” Even though some of them could quote the voice science stats about
formants and harmonics (the resonating frequencies of the throat and mouth and the
harmonic structure of the pitches sung) how those stats would be applied in the voice
studio would be unknown and dependent on each individual teacher. They would not
agree on even the most basic ingredients of developing classical vocal production
beyond breath support and resonance. It’s time we tell the truth about that.
We also know that in dance and in sports, training must be specific. Being a
great ballerina does not help you be a fantastic tap dancer. Being a wonderful modern
dancer does not help you do a square dance. You might be comfortable in salsa but not
in waltz. Gymnastics and swimming are full body sports requiring coordination, flexibility
and strength. Neither sport will help you play golf or tennis. You can have a great natural
voice but not be able to sing Mimi in “La Boheme” or Mimi in “Rent” as both are very
demanding roles in two totally different works. In fact, being really good at one role
would more or less preclude being equally good at the other.
If you want to belt, you must want to learn how. You must understand the way the
sound operates in various musical styles. You need to know what others sound like as
belters. You need to have a sense of what you are seeking as without it you can get
totally lost. You can
make up all kinds of convoluted ideas about what belting is or isn’t but if you don’t find
the sound that goes with the music and also discover your own natural vocal fold
responses in that sound, your explanation about it really doesn’t matter. Belting is not
singing “in your nose” or squeezing structures inside your throat.
In Somatic Voicework™ the most basic premise is understanding register
function. You must understand what happens in the two primary vocal registers as
functions – chest and head. The terms chest register and head register are old and
have been around a long time. I didn’t make the terms up myself. There are other terms
like chest voice, chest resonance, chest tone, chest mechanism, heavy mechanism,
speech voice, modal voice and thyro-arytenoid dominant that all mean the same thing.
The full body of the vocal folds are vibrating, meaning from the bottom to the top of each
vocal fold along the complete edge (mucosal wave.) In an average person with no
training but with a vibrant, alive voice, this vocal quality is initially found at the lowest
pitch range and is most obvious at a moderately loud volume on open vowels (/a/ as is
mama and /o/ as in oh). Some voices have more of this response than others due to
habitual performance of a specific type of music, vocal muscular patterns, speech
patterns, anatomy and physiology. Anyone without this natural response, however, can
get a more vigorous one through proper training. In fact, that is the point of functional (or
technical) training – to help the throat learn to do things it does not, on its own, do. The
opposite vocal fold response is found in head register, also known as many other things
(head voice, head tone, cricothyroid dominant, loft, etc.) but is produced by the

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Copyright The Voice Workshop, NYC, 6-2021 Jeannette LoVetri. All rights reserved.
No reproduction of any segment of this article without written permission.

 lengthening and stretching of the vocal folds with vibration taking place mostly on their
upper edges. This sound is typically found in higher pitches. The rest of what we hear
as voiced sound is created inside the throat and mouth in the space above the vocal
folds passing out through the lips. The jaw and the tongue have an impact on the vowel
sound and that is typically what we sustain. This is true for everyone.
In “the old days” register quality was used as an expressive gesture particularly
in music theater. A drill sergeant would use a stereotypical low pitched chest register
barking out, “About face!” A Marilyn Monroe purring her sound in, “Happy Birthday, Mr.
President,” would represent a soft head dominant sound. A bright loud speaky quality
represented an “average Josephine or Joe” as would be found in “Ooh, My Feet” from
“Most Happy Fella” (sung by a waitress), or “I Believe In You” from “How To Succeed In
Business...” (sung by a rising business man.) A washer-woman would be a loud, rough-
sounding chest quality in a low pitch range. A stiff “upper-crust” school teacher would be
very heady and on the high side pitch wise. Those conditions are long gone. Now we
have loud for loud’s sake and intensity as an expression of anger, hate, fear, and
surprise. Low voices belt out songs written for high soprano and high sopranos sing low
songs meant for belters in a kind of soggy speech. And, yes, I have seen both of those
in major productions. Does this change the character’s basic expression? Of course. Is
this a marketing ploy? [Stars rule!] Every time. Is belting part of vocal expression in this
way? Not any more.
Belting arises naturally in various kinds of music throughout the world. It is part of
Mariachi, Flamenco, Balkan, many kinds of African, the many tribes of Native
Americans, and many kinds of Middle Eastern music. Belting in each of these kinds of
music arose on its own as cultural expression – no training required. Here in the USA
people who were enslaved coming from Africa and the Caribbean brought their music
with them. Where they were not stopped from singing, it became part of their everyday
lives and of their religious expression, eventually moving toward entertainment. The
music industry discovered belters first in vaudeville and then in jazz. The sound was
powerful and compelling and remains so today.
Singers of all stripes decided they wanted to replicate these sounds. The belted
sound became more well-known through films and radio in the early part of the 20th
century. And, primarily in the voices of Al Jolson and Ethel Merman, entered mainstream
Caucasian music and became a sensation with audiences throughout the USA.
When belting crossed into rock music in the 1950s, it became a phenomenon
on its own and when rock/pop music became the dominant form of most new musicals
on Broadway and in the West End in London, the demand for belters expanded
exponentially. Enter then a new crop of singing teachers capitalizing on this trend.
Creating their own ideas about belting from personal experience and limited early
research, they established methods of training that, for the first time, brought belting into
academia in the 1980s. In an academic arena that had been completely classical for
multiple decades and where a belt sound was to be avoided at all costs because it was
thought to be dangerous, suddenly belting became not just acceptable but required.
Confusion ensued and is still there. Of course, there was no one to vet any of these
training methods. Teachers accepted them because they were heavily and vigorously
promoted

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Copyright The Voice Workshop, NYC, 6-2021 Jeannette LoVetri. All rights reserved.
No reproduction of any segment of this article without written permission.

 by their creators. Please know, however, that no one has invented belting or any other
vocal production. Human beings make the sounds they make, and no singing teacher
can change that.
Voice science research has told us that most belting occurs with the larynx riding
high in the throat, and with the vocal folds closing tightly together for each pitch
(pressed phonation – long closed quotient) which means that the amount of air that
crosses the vocal folds (glottis – the space between the folds) while making sound
(phonating) is reduced. This is called high subglottic pressure (air in the lungs
underneath the closed vocal folds as phonation begins) and a low trans-glottic flow. The
high vertical laryngeal position changes the available acoustic set-up. Because the
larynx rides high, the vocal tract is shorter and therefore smaller. A smaller space
produces a brighter sound. It amplifies the higher frequencies more than the lower ones.
Think of a pipe organ. The highest pitches are the smallest pipes. Remember, however,
there are many ways to make the space inside the throat and mouth smaller. You can
conclude then that there are multiple ways to belt. Just as in classical literature, where
the vocal instrument itself matters, with belters, there are many kinds of voices, many
kinds of music and many kinds of vocalists using that belt sound. An explanation of
belting grounded in long-accepted and credible concepts that fits well with known voice
science principles was needed.
Belting is simply the speaking voice (chest register) carried above the area called
the “break” or the “passaggio” which is (approximately at F or G above middle C) at a
loud volume or with intensity. It is just that, nothing more. If, however, you do not have a
very active chest register – one that is sturdy and solid in the low pitch range –
recognizing that behavior is not the same as being able to make the sound. (In classical
singing a softer gentler voice is called “lyric” to distinguish it from one that is powerful or
“dramatic”.) Screaming, yelling, and squeezing can easily result in a throat and body
that is functionally weak or not naturally suited to strong sound.
The main ingredient in training the voice to go outside any of its natural
capacities is patience. Coaxing the voice works. Forcing the voice does not. Trying to
move the structures inside the throat on purpose is an exercise in futility. Using posture
and breathing, pitch and vowel coordination, increased mobility, and response in all the
external musculature of the face and jaw is enough to go a long way vocally and
musically. Volume comes from control over the inhalation and exhalation combining
coordinated use of the rib cage and abdominal muscles (intercostal/abdominal
breathing) within balanced posture. Most people seeking to belt don’t really want to
shout, they want to sing. Some music (frequently written by people who don’t
understand or respect the human voice for itself) asks vocalists to go beyond normal
functional parameters of pitch range, duration and intensity, for no particular reason
other than the composer likes that. In training, then, it is necessary to approach
developing extended vocal and breathing behaviors slowly and progressively.
We are not limited. Not as human beings and not as vocalists, but we must
respect both the voice and the body, and also respect the music and the artist. Rushing
or forcing doesn’t work.
Somatic Voicework™ is an approach grounded in traditional vocal pedagogy,
working with accepted concepts of vocal health and with strong connection to the body.

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Copyright The Voice Workshop, NYC, 6-2021 Jeannette LoVetri. All rights reserved.
No reproduction of any segment of this article without written permission.

It features enhanced awareness of both sound and sensation and is presented in three
Levels. Everyone starts in Level I and in both Level I and Level II there are breakout
sessions so every participant
gets one-to-one interaction with a few faculty members. Somatic Voicework™ marries
science and art, individuality with practical universal principles of functional vocal
response. It represents 21st Century concepts and old-world values. It exists in a
community of like-minded teachers and singers who are serious about the art of singing
and interested in voice science principles. It seeks to create marketable singers who are
authentic and unique or happy amateur vocalists who enjoy singing as part of their lives.
It is practical and accessible and gains depth through use. It cultivates vocal and
personal freedom, regardless of the styles someone wants to sing and is useful for kids,
teens, young adults, seniors and those who need gentle compassionate training.
Somatic Voicework™ is offered as one way, not the best way, not the only way and not
the right way, to approach training for singers, particularly those who perform
Contemporary Commercial Music. Well over 4,500 people have gone through Somatic
Voicework™ training worldwide. We offer it for your contemplation, should you be
i n t e r e s t e d . P l e a s e c o n s u l t w w w. b w. e d u / l o v e t r i f o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n .
www.somaticvoicework.com

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Copyright The Voice Workshop, NYC, 6-2021 Jeannette LoVetri. All rights reserved.
No reproduction of any segment of this article without written permission.