Belting and Voice Lessons

Belting is a vocal technique that women use for musical theater. Anatomically, it involves women using primarily the thyroarteynoid muscle to create higher pitches, as opposed to the cricothyroid (in voice lesson speak - TA dominance). In layman’s terms, belting extends women’s chest voice higher than traditional vocal technique.

I always joke with my choir students that belting throws out all the rules they learned in choir. In singing lessons, we traditionally teach women to extend their head voices (cricothyroid dominant) throughout their range. Voice teachers ask for taller vowels to create more resonance. And we encourage a rich, deep tone quality in singing lessons. All those rules go out the window when you belt. 

Instead of primarily using the head voice, belting asks women to stay in their chest voice as long as possible. Belting also encourages “spread” vowels and a brighter, more forward vocal placement than in normal voice lesson instruction. 

For past generations of voice teachers, belting was typically discouraged. Older voice teachers tend to believe that belting  was somehow harmful or dangerous, when the facts are that belting is only harmful if you are using bad vocal technique. The reality is any singing can be harmful if you don’t sing with proper technique!  

As a singing instructor, I don’t have those biases and enjoy working with women on their belting technique. It’s a fun and exciting way to sing and gives singers a more versatile palette to create a character. Belting, in the end, becomes as much as an acting choice as it is a vocal choice. It works for some characters and not for others in musical theater. The job of the voice teacher is to understand when belting is appropriate and when it is not. 

DWS