It is important, however, that the mind should not think of this
locality as being in the nares, but outside, and think of it, too, as an
ever expanding and luminous globe which moves in a forward and downward
curve.
Beauty of voice is largely due to the fact that the vocal aperture is in
the form of a curve. Unpleasant qualities in the voice are caused by the
vocal column being made to move in angles instead of curves. That the
voice may be shaped to the vocal aperture, it is necessary to hold in
the mind a curve as an object of thought. Voice is in the mind before it
is expressed in sound. The mental form precedes, causes and accompanies
the physical form.
This curve should become a fixed mental object during all vocal
practice, whether in speaking or in singing. Holding this object must
become a habit so firmly established that the mind will ultimately act
above consciousness in forming it. The vocal organs always react upon
ideals held in the mind. Thus, if a flat object is held in the mind
while using the voice, the tone tends to flatness; if a round one, it
tends to roundness; if a narrow form, it tends to narrowness; if a
contracting figure, it tends to contraction; if a free, elastic,
expansive one, it tends to freedom, elasticity, and expansiveness. The
figure of an expanding globe gives the voice the qualities last
described. This figure, moving in the form of a curve, unites to the
above qualities that of beauty, for the curve always awakens in the
imagination the sense of the beautiful.
Tone is vocalized breath. It is observable that the higher order of
animals usually begin their tones in the form of the nares resonance.
When the cow lows for her young the tone is resounded in the nares
before the mouth opens. The same thing is to be noticed in the mother
horse calling to her young. She begins the tone with the nares
resonance, and as the impulse increases she opens her mouth to let forth
the whinnie so full of feeling. No animal excels the house cat in the
correct use of the voice. She begins her tone as a nares resonance, and
when her mouth opens, the tone which is moving in the right direction
indicates that her vital energies are fully aroused. She acts upon the
same principle that a man does in aiming a gun. He aims before he fires.
Nature aims the tone before she gives the explosion. The mightiest of
all voices is that of the lion. He distinctly guides his tone with the
nares resonance. If he did not so direct it, the blast of tone which
shakes the very earth would rend his throat.
Many people injure their throats by letting on a power of voice which is
not properly guided. The only reason a person’s throat ever suffers from
continued use of the voice is because the tone is not properly directed.
Some public speakers after using their voices for an hour, or even half
an hour, feel an irritation in their throats, but if their tones were
properly directed, they could use their voices without injury as long as
their general strength would permit. The moment the current of tone is
turned from its proper direction, the voice is being injured.
All the muscles of respiration work in a harmonious manner with each
other when the tone is properly directed; they work improperly together
in a way to produce friction when the tone is not centered.
_TONE QUALITY._
One prevailing difficulty with voices which are not perfectly educated
is that the wrong quality is given for the pitch. Each interval of the
scale requires a different resonant quality, and this necessitates a
difference in the sizes of the resounding chambers. This difference is
provided for in the graded sizes of the different portions of the nares,
and in the pharynx and trachea. However, notwithstanding the freedom of
the resonant chambers here mentioned, this proper quality of the voice
would be interfered with in the speaking and singing _words_, or even
_elements of words_, the freest of which are vowels, unless the
transient chambers of resonance were perfectly formed. If words seem to
interrupt and injure a singing tone, it is because the transient
resonant chambers in which they are formed are not properly constructed.
The only way to perfect the forms of the transient resonant chambers is
by holding the elements of speech in the mind as distinct objects of
thought while speaking or singing them. Such is the natural service of
the vocal organs to the mental concepts, that these mental objects will,
through the cranial nerves which control the organs of speech,
externalize themselves by producing exact molds of resonance. It takes
time and practice to develop the power of holding the elements as
distinct objects of thought; it takes still more time and practice to
develop the power of holding these sounds as mental objects while the
mind materializes them in the voice. This power, like all powers, grows
in the ratio of repetition guided by continued mental concentration.
One should never attempt to locate the tone in any particular resonant
chamber by saying, “Now I will practise for head resonance, or now I
will practise for chest resonance.” I have known such attempts to result
in much injury to the voice. If the direction of the tone is kept
steadily toward the globe of light in front of the nares, while at the
same time imagining this globe to move in a forward and downward curve,
and if, in addition, the transient molds of resonance are perfectly
formed, each interval of the scale will be resounded in its proper
resonant chamber. The high notes will be resounded in the front part of
the nares, then as the voice descends in pitch it will be resounded
farther back in the nares, until the note is so low that the posterior
part only can resound it; finally, as the pitch continues to grow lower,
the nares cannot resound it at all. At this point the pharynx takes it
up until the pitch becomes so low that the trachea, being larger than
the pharynx, produces the resonance which is heard in the chest only.
After the proper direction has been established, viz., toward the globe
of light in front of the anterior portion of the nares, it should never
be changed, for this direction keeps the nares, pharynx, and trachea
open and free, so that each pitch of the voice will be resounded in that
portion of the resonant chambers which by its size is suited to its
pitch. What I have thus far said of the resonant chambers in the nares,
pharynx, and trachea applies to the fundamental tone; but while the
fundamental tone is resounding in the trachea, pharynx, or nares
posteri, smaller portions of the nares and transient resonant chambers
may be resounding the overtones, so that many resonant chambers may be
resounding at the same time, thereby giving the richest possible quality
to the tones of voice.
=_EXERCISES FOR SECURING FREEDOM AND PROPER DIRECTION OF TONE
AND FOR ESTABLISHING RIGHT HABITS IN THE USE OF THE VOICE._=