Next we have something called our mix voice and our legit voice. A mixed voice is essentially a mixture of our head voice and our chest voice. A lot of times when we use our mixed voice it’s most often done in that bridge where we are trying to smooth out between that chest and head. Mix voice is utilized a lot in more contemporary or pop style singing because there is more of a forward sound. So a lot of singers like to utilize that mix voice. You’ll hear it a lot in musical theater as well. On the other hand, we have our legit voice. Our legit voice can also be a mixture, however, it’s definitely more in that upper register in our head voice. A legit type of singing is a lot more classical sounding. Both mix and legit, even though those are two separate styles, we’re still using that same breath support, we’re still trying to utilize our entire voice, and we’re still trying to have that even connection between our chest and head and bridge. So we have our mix style which is more contemporary and then we have our legit style which is a little bit more of a classical sound. Here is an example of mix voice. Twinkle twinkle little star. Here is an example of legit voice. Twinkle twinkle little star.
And finally we have our belt. You’ve probably heard someone say, “Yeah! Belt it out! Sing it out!” Belt has gotten a bad reputation sometimes for promoting singers to scream and that is definitely not what I want you to take from this. You can think of belt as a healthy projection of our chest voice going into our head voice. So it’s almost like we’re extending that chest voice over the bridge into our upper register and we’re using good breath support and a nice projection. All of these styles that we’re talking about, we will definitely go over in more detail in future episodes, but I did just want to touch on that. I know that a lot of us have heard that phrase of belting and if a singer can belt a really loud and powerful high note or whatever. So belting, like I said, does happen in the upper register, but is just an extension of our chest voice. It takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of vocal technique and breath support. I will, in the future, do another video a little bit about belt and how to do it healthily because it’s really, really important that our voice comes first. Our vocal health comes first and if we belt incorrectly we will run into a lot of issues. That is belt! Here is an example of belt. Twinkle twinkle little star.
Now I’m going to demonstrate singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, our song of the episode I guess, and I am going to sing it two different ways. One is going to be more of a contemporary style and one is going to be more classical. I want you to listen for these different techniques that I’ve talked about today and these styles that I’ve talked about today. Where do you hear me mixing my voice? Where do you hear a belt? Or maybe, where do you hear that nice classical sounding tone? Just keep that in mind while you’re listening to both of these examples.
Twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky. Twinkle twinkle little star. How I wonder what you are.
So the reason I wanted to touch on these styles is because when we can utilize all of these styles there’s so many things that we can do with different songs. We can utilize these different techniques to express certain phrases or to show certain emotion in our songs. And I think that when we practice really hard and we learn about these things we’re just adding more tools to our vocal tool belt to use when we are singing. I look forward to digging deeper into some of these styles in future episodes so stay tuned for that.
And that is all for our episode today. I hope you enjoyed it! I hope Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is not stuck in your head – it is in mine! I hope you all have a wonderful week and I hope that you definitely tune in for our next video. Be sure to like this one and have a great day!
I do these videos every other week, but if you still want more musical theatre, check out my newsletter! It’s called “Beyond The Score”, and it just takes a closer look at musical theatre history. You can find that at jskstories.com.