How to belt and sustain like Layne Staley

manish_kyadari127

Hello this is Manish
I wanted to ask some questions regarding Layne Staley's voice , like how does he belts so effortlessly and how does he able to sing like that throughout the show without losing his voice cause when I try to imitate him I lose my voice and I get that unintentional rasp and loose some resonance after 3 or 4 songs . Some of your insights would be very helpful . Hope you reply thank you 🙏🏻🙏🏻

Klaus_T

hi Manish. these kind of rock vocals are what a lot of people come to KTVA for. the "trick" is to learn proper belting technique, which, among other things, means you need to master breath management, open throat technique and the vowel modifications that help you achieve it, and get all this (and many other things) into your muscle memory so that they are second nature. also, you need to put in the hours to strengthen and stretch the chest voice, to be able to have a higher range of chest notes. i actually found KTVA by looking for a quick fix and realized there isn't one. depending on previous experience you might do it in 1-3 years to get to the point that you can safely do distortion and sound kind of pro. it sounds like a long time but if you think of the voice as an instrument, you will take a similar amount of time to get past the beginner stages on most instruments.

the thing is that if they are not trained, a lot of people strain their throat and use too much air, which gives you the unwanted "effects" you speak of. imagine the air being a blow dryer on your cords. the trick is to hold the air in and use as little as possible, relaxing into the raspy and "loud" sound. which in reality is not so loud at all

if you feel you want to give it a shot, you can check out a training i compiled before starting the real course. i used the free videos from YT. you find it by going to my profile page.

let me know if you want to give it a shot!

manish_kyadari127

Sure I would like to have your compiled videos before the course but I had still one doubt , I think I had figured out the placement, there is no discomfort at all but I can't belt for longer period of time , I completely lose my voice . I'll have to get 3 days of rest to recover . The thing is how do you sustain the belt like Layne and doesn't it affected his voice did he get vocal fatigue , did he also needed vocal rests ??

Klaus_T

i am not sure about his personal story, so i cannot say. but if you have proper technique, you can do this for long sets on day after day after day because it does not have the same damaging effect as bad technique has. look at his touring schedules and you can figure out how it works for him