An extremist always lacks the sense of proportion. He allows a single
idea to fill his mental horizon. He is fanciful, and when an idea comes
to him he turns his high power imagination upon it, and it immediately
becomes overwhelming in magnitude and importance. Thereafter all things
in his universe revolve around it.
The field of voice teaching is well stocked with extremists. Everything
involved in voice production and many things that are not, have been
taken up one at a time and made the basis of a method.
One builds his reputation on a peculiar way of getting the tone into the
frontal sinuses by way of the infundibulum canal, and makes all other
things secondary.
Another has discovered a startling effect which a certain action of the
arytenoid cartilages has on registers, and sees a perfect voice as the
result.
Another has discovered that a particular movement of the thyroid
cartilage is the only proper way to tense the vocal cords and when every
one learns to do this all bad voices will disappear.
Another has discovered something in breath control so revolutionary in
its nature that it alone will solve all vocal problems.
Perhaps if all of these discoveries could be combined they might produce
something of value; but who will undertake it? Not the extremists
themselves, for they are barren of the synthetic idea, and their sense
of proportion is rudimentary. They would be scientists were it not for
their abnormal imaginations. The scientist takes the voice apart and
examines it in detail, but the voice teacher must put all parts of it
together and mold it into a perfect whole. The process is synthetic
rather than analytic, and undue emphasis on any one element destroys the
necessary balance.
The immediate danger of laying undue emphasis on any one idea in voice
training lies in its tendency toward the mechanical and away from the
spontaneous, automatic response so vitally necessary. Here the
extremists commit a fatal error. To make breath management the
all-in-all of singing invariably leads to direct control, and soon the
student has become so conscious of the mechanism of breathing that his
mind is never off of it while singing; he finds himself becoming rigid
trying to prevent his breath from escaping, and the more rigid he
becomes the less control he has. A large number of examples of this kind
of breath management have come under my observation. They all show the
evil results of over working an idea.
But the followers of "the-breath-is-the-whole-thing" idea say "You can't
sing without breath control." Solomon never said a truer thing, but the
plan just mentioned is the worst possible way to secure it.
Every one should know that not a single one of the processes of voice
production is right until it is working automatically, and automatic
action is the result of indirect, never of direct control.
The profession has become pretty thoroughly imbued with the idea that
deep breathing, known as abdominal, or diaphragmatic is the best for
purposes of singing. But how deep? The answer is, the deeper the better.
Here again it is easy to overstep the bounds. I have in mind numerous
instances where the singer, under the impression that he was practicing
deep breathing tried to control the breath with the lower abdominal
muscles, but no matter how great the effort made there was little tonal
response, for the reason that the pressure exerted was not against the
lungs but against the contents of the abdomen. The diaphragm is the
point of control. The lungs lie above it, not below it. To concentrate
the thought on the lower abdominal muscles means to lose control of the
diaphragm, the most important thing involved in breath management.
The process of breathing is simple. The lungs are enclosed in an air
tight box of which the diaphragm is the bottom. It rests under the lungs
like an inverted saucer. In the act of contracting it flattens toward a
plane and in so doing it moves downward and forward, away from the
lungs. The ribs move outward, forward and upward. The lungs which occupy
this box like a half compressed sponge follow the receding walls, and a
vacuum is created which air rushes in to fill. In exhalation the action
is reversed. The ribs press against the lungs and the diaphragm slowly
returns to its original position and the breath is forced out like
squeezing water out of a sponge.
The one important thing in breath management is the diaphragm. If the
student has the right action of the diaphragm he will have no further
trouble with breath control. In my Systematic Voice Training will be
found a list of exercises which thoroughly cover the subject of breath
control and if properly used will correct all errors. Let this be
understood, that there is nothing in correct breathing that should make
one tired. On the contrary the practice of breathing should leave one
refreshed. Above all, the student should never make himself rigid when
trying to control the flow of breath. This is not only of no advantage,
but will effectually defeat the end for which he is striving.