By trying to encompass your waist with your fingers and thumbs, force all the air out of the lungs.Take a deep breath. Remember, all the activity is to be centered in the middle of the body; do not raise the shoulders. As the breath is taken your hands will be forced out.
Repeat the exercise, placing your hands on the small of the back and forcing them out as you inhale.
Many methods for deep breathing have been given by various authorities. Get the air into your lungs--that is the important thing. The body acts as a sounding board for the voice just as the body of the violin acts as a sounding board for its tones. You can in-
crease its vibrations by practise.
Place your finger on your lip and hum the musical scale, thinking and placing the voice forward on the lips. Do you feel the lips vibrate? After a little practise they will vibrate, giving a tickling sensation.
Repeat this exercise, throwing the humming sound into the nose. Hold the upper part of the nose between the thumb and forefin-
ger. Can you feel the nose vibrate?
Placing the palm of your hand on top of your head, repeat this humming exercise. Think the voice there as you hum in head tones. Can you feel the vibration there?
Now place the palm of your hand on the back of your head, repeating the foregoing process. Then try it on the chest. Always remember to think your tone where you desire to feel the vibrations. The mere act of thinking about any portion of your body will tend to make it vibrate.
Repeat the following, after a deep inhalation, endeavoring to feel all portions of your body vibrate at the same time. When you have attained this you will find that it is a pleasant sensation.
What ho, my jovial mates. Come on! We will frolic it like fairies, frisking in the merry moonshine.
Purity of Voice
This quality is sometimes destroyed by wasting the breath. Carefully control the breath, using only as much as is necessary for the production of tone. Utilize all that you give out. Failure to do this results in a breathy tone. Take in breath like a prodigal; in speaking, give it out like a miser.
Voice Suggestions
Never attempt to force your voice when hoarse.
Do not drink cold water when speaking. The sudden shock to the heated organs of speech will injure the voice.
Avoid pitching your voice too high--it will make it raspy. This is a common fault. When you find your voice in too high a range, lower it. Do not wait until you get to the platform to try this. Practise it in your daily conversation. Repeat the alphabet, beginning A on the lowest scale possible and going up a note on each succeeding letter, for the development of range. A wide range will give you facility in making numerous changes of pitch.
Do not form the habit of listening to your voice when speaking. You will need your brain to think of what you are saying--reserve your observation for private practise.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What are the prime requisites for good voice?
2. Tell why each one is necessary for good voice production.
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3. Give some exercises for development of these conditions.
4. Why is range of voice desirable?
5. Tell how range of voice may be cultivated.
6. How much daily practise do you consider necessary for the proper development of your voice?
7. How can resonance and carrying power be developed?
8. What are your voice faults?
9. How are you trying to correct them?
CHAPTER XIII VOICE CHARM
A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.
--Joseph Addison, The Tattler.
Poe said that "the tone of beauty is sadness," but he was evidently thinking from cause to effect, not contrariwise, for sadness is rarely a producer of beauty--that is peculiarly the province of joy.
The exquisite beauty of a sunset is not exhilarating but tends to a sort of melancholy that is not far from delight The haunting beau-
ty of deep, quiet music holds more than a tinge of sadness. The lovely minor cadences of bird song at twilight are almost depressing.
The reason we are affected to sadness by certain forms of placid beauty is twofold: movement is stimulating and joy-producing, while quietude leads to reflection, and reflection in turn often brings out the tone of regretful longing for that which is past; second-ly, quiet beauty produces a vague aspiration for the relatively unattainable, yet does not stimulate to the tremendous effort necessary to make the dimly desired state or object ours.
We must distinguish, for these reasons, between the sadness of beauty and the joy of beauty. True, joy is a deep, inner thing and takes in much more than the idea of bounding, sanguine spirits, for it includes a certain active contentedness of heart. In this chapter, however the word will have its optimistic, exuberant connotation--we are thinking now of vivid, bright-eyed, laughing joy.
Musical, joyous tones constitute voice charm, a subtle magnetism that is delightfully contagious. Now it might seem to the desultory reader that to take the lancet and cut into this alluring voice quality would be to dissect a butterfly wing and so destroy its charm. Yet how can we induce an effect if we are not certain as to the cause?
Nasal Resonance Produces the Bell-tones of the Voice
The tone passages of the nose must be kept entirely free for the bright tones of voice--and after our warning in the preceding chapter you will not confuse what is popularly and erroneously called a "nasal" tone with the true nasal quality, which is so well illustrated by the voice work of trained French singers and speakers.
To develop nasal resonance sing the following, dwelling as long as possible on the ng sounds. Pitch the voice in the nasal cavity. Practise both in high and low registers, and develop range--with brightness.
Sing-song. Ding-dong. Hong-kong. Long-thong.
Practise in the falsetto voice develops a bright quality in the normal speaking-voice. Try the following, and any other selections you choose, in a falsetto voice. A man's falsetto voice is extremely high and womanish, so men should not practise in falsetto after the exercise becomes tiresome.
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She perfectly scorned the best of his clan, and declared the ninth of any man, a perfectly vulgar fraction.
The actress Mary Anderson asked the poet Longfellow what she could do to improve her voice. He replied, "Read aloud daily, joy-ous, lyric poetry."
The joyous tones are the bright tones. Develop them by exercise. Practise your voice exercises in an attitude of joy. Under the influence of pleasure the body expands, the tone passages open, the action of heart and lungs is accelerated, and all the primary conditions for good tone are established.
More songs float out from the broken windows of the negro cabins in the South than from
