[Someday]

Ok, I had a really good voice teacher for a couple years when I first started singing as a sophomore in high school. When I went to college I had to find a new voice teacher and found a grad student opera major. She worked my upper range a lot more than my lower. As a result, I got used to singing and projecting in my head voice. Now I can kinda "belt" in my head voice.. if that makes sense. This is great for me, because I can't even belt to a C in my chest voice.. now I can produce a pretty powerful note that is probably as good as my belt would ever have been singing that note =P My question is this: My voice teacher at college has never heard me sing like this, because we don't sing musical theatre or anything that would necessitate a belty sound. My old voice teacher sang MT stuff, but I haven't been to her since I've went to college and learned to do this, so I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong here. I'm going to my old voice teacher soon for the summer, so I'll ask her, but in the meantime-- is it possible to damage your voice doing this? I know you can damage your voice from belting.. but this isn't really the same. I am pushing my voice, and if I don't get enough breath or if it's a bad vowel for me it can crack, which makes me wonder if this is a bad thing to be doing? It doesn't usually bother my voice, if I do it a lot my voice might feel a little strained afterwards but NOTHING as bad as to how belting makes it feel (I hate belting. I think I'm done trying to belt for life lol.)

I hope this post makes some sense. Does what I'm doing have a name? It's not really belting.. is this what "mixing" is? Is it potentially damaging?

thanks for any info

[Beagle On Stage]

You can damage your voice doing anything if you're doing it wrong. But as long as you're working with reputable teachers, you probably don't have to worry about it too much. At any rate, your old voice teacher should be able to tell if anything is amiss with what you've been working on since the last time you saw her.