Voice production in singing and speaking, based on scientific principlesMills, Wesley
Philosophy
Voice production in singing and speaking, based on scientific principles
Mills, Wesley
Singing; Voice culture
An observer on the street, looking at a military band, notices certain
movements of one member of the organization which result in what he
termed the sound of the drum; but a deaf man by his side, though he
sees the movements, hears nothing. This, being analyzed, means that
the movements of the drummer's arm, conveyed through the drumstick to
the membrane of the drum, give rise to movements in it which set up
corresponding movements of the air within the drum, which again cause
movements of the body of the instrument, the whole causing movements
of the external air; and here the purely physical process ends. The
movements other than muscular ones are not readily observed, but
experiments not only prove that they exist, but demonstrate their
nature, even to their exact rate of occurrence, their size, etc. These
movements are termed _vibrations_, and, as has been indicated
previously, they are the sole physical cause of sound. But that the
latter is not due wholly to a physical origin is evident from the fact
that sound for the deaf does not exist. It must, therefore, be a
personal, a subjective experience, and as the sleeping, unconscious
person does not necessarily hear a sound, the process is not wholly a
corporeal or physiological process; it is finally an experience of the
mind, the consciousness, and so is psychological as well as
physiological.
The fact that sound has a physical basis in the vibrations of bodies,
either solid, liquid, or gaseous, may be brought home to one in
various ways. Concussion or shaking of some kind is essential to start
these vibrations. The air is made up of its particles, and one being
moved sets up, inevitably, movements in neighboring particles on all
sides, hence vibrations travel in all directions; which explains why a
sound in the street may be heard by those in every part of the street
not too distant, and also in the upper rooms of the houses and below
in the basements. This is an important fact for the singer or speaker
to bear in mind. His purpose must be to set up vibrations that will
travel with great perfection and rapidity in all directions.
The following experiments of a simple kind will serve to convince
those who may not have given much attention to the subject that sound
is due to movements of some object, which we term the sounding body,
strictly that which starts the vibrations by its own movements or
vibrations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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