Vocalist.org archive


From:  Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Margaret Harrison <peggyh@i...>
Date:  Mon Feb 12, 2001  3:46 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Re: Belt Voice and voice pedagogy


Mezzoid@a... wrote:
Mezzoid@a... wrote:

> BUT
> Mary Martin was a belter
> Ethel Merman was a belter
>
> These women did NOT use mikes in their performances. The use of mikes on
> Bway came much much later. So what is the difference between the belters of
> yesterday, who could sing w/o amplification and be heard in the back row, and
> the belters of today, who can't be heard in the third row w/o mikes?????
> There seems to be a radical difference in overtones, IMHO!!

and

> And that's the sound I like and that I THINK I can reproduce reasonably well
> - although when I tried at last year's NATS workshop, I got thru 6 measures
> before the clinician stopped me and said, "You're not belting!"

And that's why nobody on Broadway can sing well anymore. Of course, I don't
mean that
literally. It's the pernicious influence of the microphone and
electronically-enhanced
loud orchestsra accompaniments. Even the good singers nowadays have a
manufactured and
artificial sound to me that I do not like to listen to. Which is why I only go
to opera
except in small, unmiked theaters (like Signature Theater in Arlington, VA), or
when
somebody drags me along.

So now we know - the term "belting" now seems to mean a type of singing that
works on
microphones over electronic orchestras in big theaters. And they won't get me
to spend my
money to see them. Is that how old fogey-dom creeps in? ("In my day, we
walked to school
ten miles in a blizzard!")

Peggy


--
Margaret Harrison, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
"Music for a While Shall All Your Cares Beguile"
mailto:peggyh@i...

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