Voice Production in Singing and Speaking Part 12

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 a.s.sociate 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.

The author would recommend all students who have begun a serious practical study of the registers to hear, if possible, some singer of eminence who observes register formation strictly. In this way more can often be done in getting a clear notion of their characteristic qualities, in a single evening, than by listening to an ordinary amateur, or to such a voice as an otherwise excellent vocal teacher can bring to her work, on many occasions; better one hour listening to a Melba, with her observance of registers, covering, etc., as set forth by the author in this chapter, than a score of vocalists of indifferent, even if not incorrect production. One then has before her an individual who, after long and careful training, attains results not, indeed, within the reach of all, but such as may be approached if the same methods are pursued long enough; and in Madame Melba, and others that might be named, the student has examples of how those using correct methods, and not worshipping at the shrine of mere vocal power, may retain the vocal organs uninjured and the voice unimpaired after the lapse of well-nigh a score of years of exacting public singing. Teachers will do well to encourage their pupils to hear the best singers; for do not students need inspiration as well as discipline?

Granted that the ear can at once determine what register the pupil herself or another singer may be using, what other guide has she?

There are certain sensations, as already said, felt within the resonance-chambers and larynx, which are sure guides. In a person who had learned to recognize the correct register formation by the help of the ear and those sensations now referred to, the latter would suffice to be a partial guide, at least, even had he become deaf.

While these sensations are absolutely characteristic, it is difficult to describe them; they must be experienced to be understood. To attempt to describe the taste of a peach to one who knew that of an apple but had never eaten a peach would be, perhaps, not absolutely useless, but would certainly serve little purpose. The sensation must accompany the correct formation of the tone. The term "straining"

carries with it the idea of unpleasant sensations; all understand practically what this term means; yet the sensation of strain in a tenor carrying his chest register too high is no more marked than the sensation of relief when he changes to the falsetto.

When once the voice has been well placed, little attention need be, or is usually, paid _consciously_ to the sensations a.s.sociated of necessity with all changes in the vocal organs. When one becomes unduly conscious of any of the normal sensations of the body, he is no longer a perfectly healthy person. At the same time, as we have pointed out in Chapter II., and shall do more at length shortly, sensations are absolutely essential guides for all muscular and other processes of the body; but they should enter just so much into consciousness, and no more.

It is practically helpful to the voice-producer and the teacher to think of the resonance-chambers and the ear as bearing a close relationship to the movements essential to tone-production. The sensations from these parts are of importance above all others in voice-production. They are the chief guides, and the attention may to advantage be concentrated on them.

No doubt the question of registers for the speaker must be considered, but this can be done to greater advantage in a later chapter.

SUMMARY.

All good definitions of a register must recognize two things: change of quality in the voice, and change of mechanism in the vocal apparatus. A break is not a register, but occurs because of the existence of registers. The abrupt transition, or break, is to be avoided by covering, or modification of the upper tones of the lower (at least) register.

For an adequate scientific examination of the question of registers, many qualifications are required in the investigator; and the student, when not an investigator, should endeavor to weigh the evidence presented so as to choose with caution from among conflicting opinions. He should be suspicious of those who scout the value of scientific study of this or any other subject, and also of those who claim that experience is of no importance in settling such a question.

Though several well-qualified persons who have written on the subject differ in some respects, they are in agreement as to many of the more important points. They are practically all convinced that there is commonly a change of register for all voices, at or near one point in the scale (F), and that if this be practically disregarded, dangerous straining may result.

Conclusions drawn from trained singers, alone, may be misleading. All cla.s.ses of persons should be examined with the laryngoscope, if correct and far-reaching generalizations are to be safely made.

The precision and rigidity of physics and mathematics cannot be introduced with safety into a subject of this character; otherwise the division and limits of registers will be fixed with a narrowness of margin that does not comport with Nature's methods.

In all questions of register, the method of breathing--_i.e._, the nature of the application of the expiratory blast--must be duly considered.

With male voices, the subject is usually considered much simpler than in the case of female voices. Men sing mostly in the chest register; ba.s.ses and barytones wholly so, with the rarest exceptions. Tenors are taught to do so. Whether there might not be a subdivision of this register made to advantage in training, the author leaves as an open question; but about straining, in the case of tenors and all others, and as to the importance of recognizing three registers for female voices, there is in his mind no question. The fact that some may not be able to produce head tones does not justify carrying up the chest register to any appreciable extent, even by altos.

Now, as in past times, the high falsetto for males, if good, the result of proper training, has the warrant of both art and sound physiology.

In the use of registers, sensations are infallible guides. Of these, the most important are those a.s.sociated with the organs of hearing, but those arising in the vocal organs are also valuable.

Those only should expect to sing artistically, and to preserve their voices unimpaired for a long period, who wisely observe Nature's teachings in regard to registers.

CHAPTER XII.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING VOICE-PRODUCTION.

It is highly important for the speaker or singer to realize early in his career that all forms of artistic expression can be carried out only through movements--muscular movements; in other words, technique or execution implies the use of neuro-muscular mechanisms. However beautiful the conception in the mind of the painter, it can only become an artistic thing when it a.s.sumes material form--when it is put on canvas. The most beautiful melody is no possession of the world while it is in the mind of the composer alone; till it is _expressed_, it is as good as non-existent.

Even poetry can only affect us when it exists in the form of words produced by lip or pen. Between the glowing thought of the poet and the corresponding emotion produced in ourselves there must intervene some form of technique--_i.e._, some application of neuro-muscular action. This latter term is a convenient one, and has been already explained. It is a condensed expression for that use of the nervous and muscular systems that results in movements, simple or complex.

Without nerve-cells and muscles movements are impossible, speaking generally, and for a willed or voluntary movement there must be something more, an idea or concept. Before one can make a movement resulting in a simple line or even dot on a piece of paper, he must have the idea of that line or dot in mind. In like manner, before one plays or sings a single note, he must have the idea of that note in mind; in other words, the idea is the antecedent to the movement, and absolutely essential. To have such an idea, memory is necessary. It is impossible to sing a tone after another, as an imitative effort, unless one has the power to retain that tone in memory for at least a brief period of time; and before this same tone can be reproduced on sight of it as represented by a written note, the memory of the sound to which it answers must first be recalled; and not only so, but other memories--indeed, memories of all the sensations a.s.sociated with the bodily mechanism used in producing it.

This applies to all movements, of whatever kind, that we at any time execute. Without the past--_i.e._, without memories--no present. Some of the memories a.s.sociated with an act may be lost, and others, sufficient for its performance in some fashion, remain. A man may forget, after the lapse of months or years, how to tie his necktie in a certain way, as he stands before a mirror; yet on turning away he may succeed at once. In this case the visual memories, those that come through the eyes, were lost, but others, those a.s.sociated with muscular movements, remain. The muscular sense may prove an adequate guide when the visual is ineffective.

In the same way, one may call up a melody by moving the fingers over the piano keys, when it cannot otherwise be recovered, or one rescues an air from oblivion by humming a few of its tones; all of which is explained by the revival of muscular and similar memories.

All voluntary movements are at first accomplished relatively slowly and with difficulty. They soon weary us. A child learns to walk with the greatest difficulty, and only after numberless failures or errors.

The first tones of the would-be pianist or violinist are produced but slowly and with great difficulty, in spite of the most determined effort. If the attempts to vocalize are any more successful, it is because one has already learned to talk--a process that in the first instance (in infancy) was even more laborious than that of walking.

The degree to which any one succeeds in his earliest efforts to sing a scale will depend on the readiness with which he can use a variety of neuro-muscular mechanisms--indeed, all those a.s.sociated with the respiratory, laryngeal, and resonance apparatus. Fortunately for the voice-user, this apparatus has all been in use in ordinary speaking.

But when this latter process is a.n.a.lyzed, it is found that it is not essentially different from singing. In each the same mechanism is used, and in much the same way; but every one knows that not all who can talk are able to sing, and it is usual to say that those who cannot have no "ear" for music; and this expresses a part of the truth, though not in a scientific way. What is really the truth is found to be, on a.n.a.lysis, that certain guiding sensations, chiefly those from the hearing apparatus (ear, nerves, brain), are insufficient, owing either to natural defect or lack of training; but that this is not the only explanation is plain from the fact that many composers with the most vivid musical imagination, the most perfect auditory memory, and the most acute ear, cannot sing in any but the most imperfect manner. As we have said before, the speaker of great power to affect his fellows through tones, or the artistic singer, must be a sort of vocal athlete. In the athlete there is a very perfect a.s.sociation into one whole of certain sensations from eye, skin, muscles, etc., and certain movements. These exist in all men, but in very unequal degree. The singer is a tone specialist in whom the perception of the pitch and the quality of sounds may not be more acute than in the composer, possibly less so, but he can do what the composer of music often cannot--viz., a.s.sociate these sensations with muscular movements of a highly perfect character; in different words, he has the technique which others have not in an equal degree.

In the singer and speaker there is a very close a.s.sociation between the sensations of the resonance-chambers, the larynx, and other parts of the vocal mechanism, and those from the ear. So perfect does this become from training that the necessary technique at last becomes easy. But it is of the greatest importance that the exact nature of this process be realized by both students and teachers, for weighty considerations grow out of it.

We wish to impress the fact that the nature of all neuro-muscular processes is essentially the same. Learning to sing is like learning to talk, and the latter is not radically different from learning to walk. This last is at first slow, imperfect, laborious, and largely a voluntary or willed process, or, more strictly, a series of processes.

As progress is made, there is less of the voluntary and more that is involuntary, or what physiologists term reflex. When ideas, feelings, etc., enter into a process which is carried out reflexly, a _habit_ is formed.

One may say that talking implies a series of a.s.sociated reflexes, the parts a.s.sociated being the respiratory, the laryngeal, and the resonance apparatus. Singing only approaches this condition of reflex action and habit after practice, and yet no air is perfectly sung except when the result is the outcome of a sort of new habit. Every song involves, the learning of new vocal habits. One forms a new habit of an athletic character all the more readily because of previous ones. A man learns to play one game of ball the better, usually, if he have already played at another, the reason being that he has only to modify the action of neuro-muscular mechanisms, not a.s.sociate new mechanisms together to the same extent as in the formation of a habit of a widely different kind, as rowing a boat. At the same time, one must always unlearn something--break up old habits, to some extent. An opera singer often makes a failure of oratorio at first. The sets of reflexes or the habits, bodily and mental, which he has found valuable for the one form of art do not suit the other perfectly; nevertheless, the same materials are used, the reflexes are in the main the same. He must use preventions, or _inhibitions_, as the physiologists term them. Rather is it that he must avoid doing certain things--_i.e._, modify his neuro-muscular processes or reflexes, than form wholly new ones.

Were it not for reflexes and habits, learning would be so slow one lifetime would not suffice to make an artist. It must be apparent that habits and reflexes are Nature's ways of economizing energy. As the best have but a limited amount of energy, it should be the aim of every one who will not be a mere reckless spendthrift to economize, to make the most of what Nature has given him; hence the purpose of practice is not only to render success more certain and more perfect, but to make efforts tell to the fullest extent with as little expenditure of energy to the speaker or singer as possible. _He sings or speaks best who attains the end with the least expenditure of energy._

It may with scientific accuracy be said that the object of the student should be to attain to the formation of correct habits in singing and speaking, and of the teacher to guide in this process. It follows that all practice by the beginner should be carried out only in the presence of one who knows the correct methods and can teach the student how to form his habits wisely. Practice alone may not only do little good, but, by the formation of wrong habits of production, be positively mischievous; yet a trainer of athletes often lays more restrictions on his ward as to when and how he shall practise, and exercises more supervision over it, than do some teachers of singing, in spite of the fact that the apparatus the singer or speaker uses is much more delicate, and wrong habits much more injurious.

The admonition "Practise, practise," is greatly overdone. The best results cannot be obtained in either singing, speaking, or playing, with the lengthy and necessarily more or less imperfect if not careless practice in which many students of music indulge. Better ten minutes with the whole attention of a fresh and interested mind given intelligently to a subject than ten hours of mere mechanical movement.

It is a mistake to suppose that the acquirement of a sound technique is a purely mechanical process. We have shown that for all successful effort there must be the idea, and as soon as that fades, from weariness, etc., the practice should be discontinued. Students are not treated fairly when given exercises the meaning or purpose of which is not explained to them.

There is now more need than ever that the teacher of music or elocution should be intellectual and not mechanical in his methods.

Technique is mechanism, but it should be mechanism subordinated to ideas. Technique is essential to art, but it is not art. Art is the soul, technique the body. The soul will be unknown to the world without technique; hence the author strives in this book to teach the principles on which a sound vocal technique rests, but only that what is best in the soul be not hidden, that the one n.o.ble or poetic thought shall be multiplied a thousand times--indeed, that if it be sufficiently worthy, it shall, like Tennyson's Brook, "go on forever."

To believe, on the one hand, that the highest art can be attained with a very mediocre technique, and, on the other, that a perfect technique is the main object of musical training, are alike great and mischievous errors.

The author has been asked frequently such questions as the following: "When is the best time to practise? How long should a singer practise at one time, and for how long during a single day? Should one practise softly (_piano_) or vigorously (_forte_)?"--etc.

Often the student is puzzled by contradictory opinions on this subject. One celebrated prima donna states that she never practises more than one hour a day; another, equally distinguished, that she has often spent several hours in almost continuous strenuous practice.

What is the student to believe, and whom to follow? No one, for no two persons are alike. All the above questions can be safely and surely answered in the light of science and experience combined, but such questions cannot be settled by the dictum of any singer, teacher, or writer, nor does the experience, in itself, of any one person furnish an adequate guide for others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53. By this diagram the author has attempted to give the reader some idea of the nature of the chain of processes involved in singing a single tone, from the time the eye looks on the note till the muscles concerned have given it utterance as a tone. The various nervous centres concerned are all in the brain (though the spinal cord supplies some subordinate centres). There are sensory centres, or those for the eye and the ear, and motor centres, or those sending the commands to the muscles involved. Further, these must be _connected_ by paths not shown in detail, but represented by one centre spoken of as an "a.s.sociation" centre, which may also, possibly, have much to do with emotions, etc. But, at all events, the dependence of movements on ingoing messages or sensations is emphasized. The deaf cannot speak or sing, and the blind cannot read (ordinary) music. The defect may not be in either senses or muscles, but in the relating nervous mechanism between them. As explained in the body of the work, execution depends on at least two factors, sensations, or ingoing messages, and movements determined by these. Now the _connection_ between the ingoing and the outgoing impulses is the most important and the least understood part, but the above diagram will at least serve to emphasize the fact that such connections exist, and that in a general way the result, performance, can be explained. No attempt has been made to trace the path of other sensory impulses than those from eye and ear, as this would make the diagram too complicated.]

Investigation has shown that the use of muscles tends to the acc.u.mulation of the waste products of vital activity; that such acc.u.mulation is a.s.sociated with the experience in consciousness of what we term "fatigue," and which is preceded by "weariness." The latter is a warning that the more serious condition is approaching, but is to be distinguished from another feeling not necessary to name, often present in unwilling youthful students, and for which various forms of treatment are sometimes tried so unsuccessfully that it is as well to discontinue study altogether.

1. The time at which, as a rule, any work can best be carried out is during the early hours of the day, so that if it is possible, practice should be begun early, and after some preliminary exercise for the good of the body generally--_e.g._, a short walk, during which the lungs may be filled with pure air. As the muscles of the chest, etc., are to be used in voice-production, such a walk or other form of general exercise should not be lengthy. Energy should be reserved for the muscular activities involved in vocal practice.

2. The principle that guides in all use of the muscles, all exercise, is that it be taken under the most favorable circ.u.mstances and short of fatigue, even of weariness; hence the question whether the student should practise five minutes or one hour is one that he himself, and he alone, can determine, provided he is old enough and observant enough to know when he begins to feel weary in his vocal mechanism, whether it be in the respiratory organs, the larynx, or the resonance-chambers. With some there is a weak spot, and this settles the question for all other parts. As a rule, beginners will do well not to practice, at first, for longer at one time than five minutes, not only because of the possible weariness, but because at the outset it is difficult to keep the attention fixed. The ear and brain tire as well as the muscles.