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
Without a resonator, which may be solid or hollow, the sound made by a
reed or tense string is feeble. That the mouth can act as a resonator
may be proved by holding a vibrating tuning-fork of suitable pitch
before this chamber when open.
The resonating chambers of importance are supra-glottic. Of these the
"mouth" including all as far back as the pharynx and the nasal
chambers are the principal. These two main cavities are separated from
each other by the hard palate, which is a bony floor, covered with
mucous membrane, as are all the parts of the resonance-chambers. The
hard palate extends horizontally from the gums backward, and
is continued as the soft palate. The latter is a muscular and
therefore movable curtain that divides, with varying degrees of
completeness, the mouth (in the narrower sense) from the pharynx and
naso-pharynx--_i.e._, the space back of the soft palate and the
posterior nares (back nostrils) respectively. By the elevation of the
back of the tongue and the lowering of the soft palate as when one
speaks nasally, the mouth proper is largely shut off from the nasal
chambers, so that the breath must be directed through the nose. "Cleft
palate" also connects undesirably the mouth and nasal chambers. The
tonsils lie between two folds, the pillars of the fauces, connected
with the soft palate. When normal in size the tonsils should scarcely
extend beyond these folds. The uvula is the central lower tip of the
soft palate. The nasal chambers are divided by a central bony and
cartilaginous partition, the septum nasi, but are further encroached
upon, on each side, by three scroll-like (turbinated) bones. The
tongue is composed of several muscles, which explains why its
movements may be so complicated and delicate. The mouth cavity is
bounded in front by the gums, teeth, and lips.
The form and, to some extent, possibly; the size of the
resonance-chambers determine the quality of the tone produced in
speaking and singing. The shape and size of the mouth can be made to
vary by the soft palate and lips, but chiefly by the tongue, so that
the movements of the latter, especially, cannot be too well studied.
It was formerly considered that pitch was determined solely by the
rate of vibration of the vocal bands; though the author opposed this
view as rigidly applied. Very recently Prof. Scripture, by the use of
new methods, has shown that the supra-glottic chambers cannot be
correctly likened to a resonator with rigid walls. It is held that the
vocal bands give a number of sudden shocks to the air in the
resonators, so that, in a sense, the resonance-chambers determine both
the pitch and the quality of the tone; and as the tension of the
resonators varies with both the physical and psychical condition of
the individual, variations in tone-production, more especially as to
quality, can now be the better understood. According to this view
these chambers are not properly resonators but sounding cavities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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