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
The author has always been of opinion that those who have investigated
and written on this subject have devoted insufficient attention to one
point--viz., the manner of using the breath. The breathing in the use
of the high falsetto, for example, is as different as are the
laryngeal processes; and this is a point of practical importance, for
the voice-user must ever consider economy in breathing. It is
expenditure in this direction that most taxes all singers, even the
best trained and the most highly endowed.
But the student, deeply impressed with the importance of the subject
of registers, may ask: "How am I to distinguish between one register
and another? How am I to know when I am singing with chest, middle, or
head voice?" The answer is: "By sensations"--chiefly by hearing, but
also by certain sensations (less properly termed "feelings") in the
resonance-chambers and to a certain extent in the larynx. Of course,
before one can thus identify any register, he must have heard a singer
of fairly good voice form the tones of this particular register. One
who has never heard sounds of a particular color or quality cannot, of
course, learn to recognize them from mere description, though by this
means he is often _prepared_ to hear, and to associate clear ideas
with that hearing.
As the registers are of such great practical importance, especially
for the female voice, there is no period when it is of so much value
to have a lady teacher as just when the voice is being "placed"--which
should mean the recognition of its main quality, and the teaching of
registers by imitation as well as description. The student should be
made to understand, by practical examples, the subject of "covering,"
or modification. Certainly, the training of a vocalist cannot be
adequately undertaken by even the most learned musician, however good
an instrumentalist, if he has paid no attention to the voice
practically. Much of the teaching done by those ignorant of
voice-production, however well meant, may be a positive drawback, and
leave the would-be singer with faults that may never be wholly
eradicated.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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