For every tone produced there is a special adjustment throughout the entire vocal tract. These adjustments should, by practice, become automatic, simple acts of swift and unconscious obedience to the will. Then the question of "forward," "backward," or "middle" production, according to the part of the roof of the mouth where the tone-vibrations appear to centre, will become a matter wholly of the quality of voice which it is desired to produce for any given emotional state. Forward production--vibration appearing to centre a little back of the upper front teeth--is, as a general thing, the best. Yet a voice brilliant to the point of hardness can be mellowed by middle or backward production. These are matters of judgment. But when I am told, as I was by a young girl, that she was being taught to centre the tone-vibrations "back of her eyes," all I can do is to throw up my hands and exclaim, "O voice-production, what crimes are committed in thy name!" Yes--there should be a Rescue League, or a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Singers. CHAPTER VII REGISTERS OF THE VOICE The subject of vocal registers is a difficult one--difficult to understand and, when understood, difficult to make intelligible to others. In fact, it is so difficult that some people get rid of it by calmly asserting that there are no registers. This is unfortunate, because the blending of the registers, the smoothing out of the voice where one register passes over into another, the elimination of the "break" between them, is one of the greatest problems which the teacher of voice-production is obliged to solve. Like so many other branches in the art of voice-production, the subject is complicated by initial misunderstandings. Numerous people suppose, for example, that the vocal registers are synonymous with the different kinds of voices, and speak of the alto, soprano, bass or tenor register as if register stood for quality, which it does not. Another complication results from the fact that certain phenomenal voices, chiefly tenor, literally rise superior to the law of vocal registers. Thus, a phenomenal tenor like Duprez sang with ease the whole tenor range, including the high C, in the powerful, vibrant "chest" register, whereas the average tenor, while producing a great portion of his voice in the chest register, is obliged at a certain point in the ascending scale to pass into the "middle" and beyond that into the "head" register. The breaks that occur in average voices at certain points of the scale have established the divisions of the voice into registers. These breaks can be accounted for on scientific grounds; and if the physiology of voice-production had done no more than explain the why and wherefore of vocal registers, it would have justified itself through this alone.