Soaring29 said: "In my opinion, no, not quite. The common, somewhat mistaken definition of belting being a sound that is created by singing with a substantial amount of chest voice in one's range lends itself much more to the female voice then to the male voice.
In the female voice, a woman creates a belt like sound by bringing up a substantial amount of TA activity(TA=Thyroidarytenoid/vocalis muscle, an intrinsic laryngeal muscle that is dominant in chest voice) past her primo passagio, a shift that normally occurs somewhere between an E-Flat 4 and a G4, depending on the voice type. In classical singing as well as in non belted singing, a woman would normally switch into a CT dominant( CT=Cricothyroid Muscle, an intrinsic laryngeal muscle that is dominant in head voice) mix at that point, retaining some amount of chest voice, but gradually increasing more and more head voice as the scale progresses through her extensive middle register, eventually passing through the upper middle range and passing through the second passaggio into full head voice, the latter shift occurring between an E-flat 5 and an A-Flat 5, depending on the voice type. In belted singing, a woman increases her chest voice above her first passaggio, violating the Melba Point rule of never allowing chest beyond an E-Flat 4. That said, a woman must be able to retain some CT activity while belting, because pushing an extreme amount of chest voice as far as it can go will prove injurious to the vocal instrument . Somewhere around a C-Sharp 5 to E-Flat 5, a woman must transition into a very strong CT dominant belt sound that still maintains TA activity, but not allowing that to be dominant and thus preventing the possibility of injury. This sound can be carried up as far as the female is capable of doing(Indeed, some women can belt the soprano High C!!).
The male voice, on the other hand, is a different animal: Men have a much smaller transition area in regards to registration then a woman does due to the fact that men speak largely in a TA dominant sound, while a woman's speech inflection range includes much more CT dominance along with TA dominance then the male. A man can indeed bring up chest voice into his upper middle range (Referred to as the Zona Di Passaggio) and into the upper range in order to produce a belt like sound, but must allow it to become a strong balance between both CT activity and TA activity. It is controversial in the vocal pedagogy world, but notes roughly above an E-Flat 4, E4, F4, F-Sharp 4, or G4(All second passagio points in the male voice , depending on the individual singer) are sung in a powerful CT dominant sound in operatic singing, even though one may feel/hear notes above their second passagio as chest voice when executing these notes correctly. In the musical theatre/contemporary singing world, this sound produced by the male vocalist is normally more CT dominant with a different vocal tract shape(i.e resonance) then it would be for classical singing, although there are many different variations on how one's registration/resonance models are in non classical styles.
So, in a nutshell, registration in female voices aligns more closely with the somewhat misnomer definition of belting then registration in male voices do, mostly because of how different registration in belting is for women then the type of registration that is used in classical singing/non belted singing. Men must ALWAYS allow, (even though there are variations depending on the style), some release of TA activity when transitioning into the head register. Women do not.
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HERE YOU ARE, LADIES AND GENTS!! Soaring, will you marry me?????
And dramamama, your "question" is basically the super short version of the above, so yes. It's all about vocal pedagogy and how men's and women's voices function, and obviously they function differently.
Updated On: 1/21/17 at 10:16 AM
