<p>Hello all...although I have been a long time lurker, this is my first official thread post, as D is in need of some general vocal advice. Here is her background...she is a freshman in HS, with a great deal of performance experience in community theatre and vocal competitions...she has been taking voice since the age of nine. Here is her problem-we do not have a wealth of qualified voice teachers in our area, and due to family dynamics, are unable to travel a great distance to a larger city. D is a natural belter and she has always been cast in those kind of roles when she was younger. Her voice teacher that she had been with since the age of nine, in my opinion is really more of a vocal "coach"-when we started with her, we really did not know the difference, and there is not much of a choice in our area anyways. Now that she is in High School, she is starting to make her College Plans, and knows that she needs more training in her "legit" sound. We found an intructor who is a teacher at a local community college, he was a former professional opera singer. After just one lesson with him, her head voice did sound more controlled, less airy-actually quite lovely. However, now she has difficulty with her higher "belt" notes and is frustrated, and is afraid to work with the new teacher on anything other than her head voice. I am talking about her high belt notes (above c5). I realize without anyone on this forum actually knowing her or her voice it is difficult for you to advise, but generally speaking-given her age (15), and the fact that we still have several years left before college auditions should she just work on head voice with this new teacher, and continue to belt the way she is most comfortable? I have heard if you see 5 different voice teachers you will probably get 5 different techniques on belting/mixing. We don't have 5 different teachers in our area anyway (haha)!<br>
Just on a side note, she is fairly well known vocally in our area, and when she started High School this year the Drama teacher immediately put her in the advanced class an gave her the lead in the High School musical this year. The teacher is already planning next years musical (with a belty lead) around D. So D is panicked at the though of changing the way she naturally sings. As Mom, I want her to protect her voice if she is planning on using it as a potential career! We live in East Central Florida, so if anyone has reccomendations feel free to let us know! If you think that it is too early for us to be worrying about this, let us know that as well. We are planning on auditioning during her sophmore year for some summer programs if that makes any difference.</p>
<p>Without getting into all of the specifics regarding technique etc, I can tell you that my D too is a natural belter. Although she had a huge vocal range, as she began high school her head voice was not particularly strong and I worried about that. At our high school, and probably most, the music that our choir performs is very classical and formal. Since my D was considered to be a 1st soprano, she was in a position to focus mostly on her upper register, above her belt range. She grew tremendously stronger in using her head voice just from this, and also participating in district/regional choirs etc. She did have some trouble with her mix, but as she got older and her voice started maturing, this transition became much easier. She does work with a vocal coach who of course trains her in proper support, breathing, etc. But I really do think that simply her own physical maturation allowed her to really blend all of her sounds and feel very comfortable doing so. Hopefully you will find the same with your D. Why mess with a good thing? Just keep working the legit sound and it will get stronger. Based on our experience, as this happened, everything else just fell into place. Good luck!</p>
<p>A knowledgable coach won’t ruin her belt in any way - she’ll still be able to belt but will also have that mix and “legit” ability too. Good luck in your search, we live in an area with sparse resources also and were just lucky to find someone that although doesn’t have an MT background, did understand exactly what my daughter needed to accomplish and how to help her get there. It was interesting because she did not use exactly the same terminology as they do in MT, but it was exactly the same concepts, so she would be describing something and I would say “aha, that sounds like what they call “X” in MT” and we would investigate it and find out everyone was on the same page and trying to get my daughter to the same place. (by everyone I mean her MTCA coaches and her local voice teacher) </p>
<p>So that was how it played out for us. Hopefully you can find the resources you need to, you will just have to probably be sort of proactive about it more so than people who live where there is a lot of MT knowledge in their local community.</p>
<p>Thank you to both hgatork and Snapdragonfly…
Yes my D is in her High School choir singing either Soprano or Soprano 2 depending on the song’s need. So she will get some extra work there as well. The teacher seems very accomplished. You both have great points, I do think her voice will grow over the next few years, and good training should be helpful whether it be from a classical or MT perspective.
I think she is just a little overwhelmed at this point as she is being taught by a Vocal Coach, Voice teacher, choir teacher, Drama/MT teacher, and classes through a local community theatre. However I think if she stops to think, they are all telling her similiar things, just with terminology more specific to their genre. (at least I hope so 
)!
She does seem to have pretty good instincts…I will just trust it will all work out just fine!</p>
<p>Well, because there was nobody else using my D’s voice teacher (or any other voice teacher) in my town for the purpose of getting into MT programs, nobody could tell us if she was doing it the right way or not so I went with my daughter and had actually printed off a few of the discussions about the technical side of legit, belt, and right way/wrong way to sing MT, etc, from this board and showed it to her and we looked and came to the conclusion that it was the same knowledge but slightly different terminology. Apparently there are some older ways of teaching voice that wouldn’t have translated as well but our teacher gets training and updating all the time so yay, the way she teaches is very current. Then after we got the MT vocal coach, I would listen to the lessons and it was obvious that the MT coach and her voice teacher were on the same page as they would both be giving my daughter (independently of each other) the same critiques. (Though her voice teacher is all about her technique and the MT coach is about auditioning specifically, there is still a bit of overlap.) Our local voice teacher was extremely cooperative with us and supportive of her coaching in every way.</p>
<p>I wanted to verify this myself and not leave it up to my daughter to figure out - I figure she had enough to do with learning the material as well as the bazillion other things she had to do. It was my job to make sure the path led to the right place and then her job to run it every day! Your D might not need or want any assistance in this area but mine would not have had the time for this vetting process. You might want to at least discuss this with yours so she knows she’s on the right track and what she should be on the lookout for.</p>
<p>You are so right Snapdragonfly! It is probably best for me to stay on top of it. Sometimes that “I can do it all myself” instinct can cause her to become a little overwhelmed. Besides, at her age, she can’t possibly know everything…even if she may think she does :). I have directed her to these boards many times, but she just doesn’t have the time that I do to sit and obsessively read them…I am sure it will all work out.</p>