I am a soprano, and my current voice teacher tells me that sopranos can sometimes have a hard time belting songs, or doing pop songs. What is a way to make this easier? I am doing a song competition in my school (MMS Idol) and I am worried I won’t make the cut! Please help me.
-Emma
Hey Emma,
The reason most sopranos struggle with singing pop/belty music is because most teachers, in my opinion, focus too much on developing only head voice for sopranos instead of balancing chest, head and a mix voice that allows you to transition between the two (once again, this is just my personal opinion).
Singing soprano in a choir is quite different than solo singing. If you’re looking to develop a more contemporary sound, then I’d definitely be focusing more of my lessons on developing that chest and mix sound.
It’s hard for me to give you a good piece of advice that’ll help you with this quickly, but I’ll say this… In order to have a mix voice (the safe way to belt), you MUST have chest voice. Chest voice is a very full sound that you should be using from the bottom part of your range all the way up to about a G above middle C.
Work on creating this sound both full and freely (check out my video on Using Resonance for more advice), then start working on your mix. Guidelines for how you can accomplish this can be found in this article – https://askavocalcoach.com/articles/how-to-sing-high-notes/.
Unfortunately, the process I outlined may not be the quickest solution, but it’ll definitely help you move in the right direction. Best of luck to ya in your competition!
~ Vocal Coach Ken Taylor