Substyles of Belting: Phonatory and Resonatory Characteristics

Belting has been described as speechlike, yell-like, or shouting voice production commonly used in contemporary commercial music genres and substantially differing from the esthetic of the Western classical voice tradition. This investigation attempts to describe phonation and resonance characteristics of different substyles of belting (heavy, brassy, ringy, nasal, and speechlike) and the classical style. A professional singer and voice teacher, skilled in these genres, served as the single subject. The recorded material was found representative according to a classification test performed by an expert panel. Subglottal pressure was measured as the oral pressure during the occlusion for the consonant /p/. The voice source and formant frequencies were analyzed by inverse filtering the audio signal. The subglottal pressure and measured flow glottogram parameters differed clearly between the styles heavy and classical assuming opposite extremes in most parameters. The formant frequencies, by contrast, showed fewer less systematic differences between the substyles but were clearly separated from the classical style with regard to the first formant. Thus, the differences between the belting substyles mainly concerned the voice source.