Advice to Singers Part 10

[Music: H.]

[Music: I.]

[Music: J.]

[Music: K.]

[Music: L.]

[Music: M.]

[Music: N.]

[Music: Ex. 2 NAVA.]

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Exercise 2 is a further one for the practice of joining notes with the aid of the breath, without the least resemblance to a jerk with either the sound or the breath. To sing the exercise with advantage requires a very careful management of the respiratory organs, and its continuous practice is one of the best means of managing the breath. Having inspired the breath after the manner already indicated herein, proceed to sound the note F in a thin but firm and steady tone, which you must gradually swell, by pressing down the breath, as it were, into the following note G, which you will continue to hold steadily by keeping down the breath as long as you can. Though you raise your tone of voice in pa.s.sing from F to G, you must dispel from your mind all notions of raising your breath or your _larynx_; it is just the reverse; you must lower these. Remember a golden rule--the higher your note the lower must it be generated in your chest, and your breath must be under the note supporting it, or there cannot possibly be any tone there. On reaching the highest limit of this exercise, the student will repeat the same operation down the scale, which I need scarcely say is less difficult.

[Music: Ex. 3. NAVA.]

[Music]

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Exercise 3 may be timed 76 on your metronome. It is a study to give freedom and flexibility to your voice. None of the notes should be forced, and the upper notes should be rendered with the mouth well open, and with a quality of tone as similar as possible to that of the lower notes. Breath should be taken (without losing time) at the rest-marks.

There should be no break or jump in the tone, but rather it should be one unbroken stream of melody, as marked in the first phrase. The voice, in this exercise, should be constantly moving: no sooner should you be sounding the first note of the phrase than you should be moving to the second, from the second to the next, and so on. Be careful to sing the intervals exactly in time, and in descending to notes satisfy yourself that you are singing the exact tone, and that with certainty. Indecision is a grave fault in singing.

[Music: Ex. 4. Intervals of thirds.

Do Re Mi Re Do Re Mi Fa Mi Re

Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi &c.]

[Music: Ex. 5. Intervals of Fourths.

* Here take breath.]

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[Music: Ex. 6. Intervals of Fifths.]

[Music: Ex. 7. Intervals of Sixths.]

[Music: Ex. 8. Intervals of Sevenths.]