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It is not only the vocal cords that should set for the tone at the moment the air-column strikes them, the entire vocal tract takes part in the adjustment that prepares for the attack. It is indeed, as Mills says, a case of complex and beautiful adaptation. Therefore, the term coup de glotte imperfectly expresses what the modern physiologist of voice means by attack.
For, as the effectiveness of vocal attack depends upon the way in which the air-column strikes the vocal cords, it follows that the advice constantly given and in accordance with which the entire vocal tract of the singer should adjust itself as if by second nature to the tone that is to be produced, each time places the cords in the correct position to receive the stroke of the outgoing air.
A relaxed throat, a voice that lay on the breath, that had never been forced off the breath; it rose and fell in the air-column like the little balls which are put to shine in the jet of a fountain. The voice did not thin as it went up; the upper tones were as full and rich as the lower, produced in the same way and as unconsciously, only with deeper breath.
To begin with, while, whenever possible, air should be taken into the lungs through the nostrils, in singing it should always be expelled through the mouth. If part of the air-column is allowed to go out through the nose, there is danger of a nasal quality of tone-production.
As soon as the air-column becomes thin the singer's control over it becomes insecure, and, from that point on, the air that remains should be regarded simply as a reserve supply and aid to the next inspiration. To sum up: Breathing consists of two separate actions, inspiration and expiration, the intake of air and its emission.
He made a detailed drawing of a runner. This was an air-sled, such as Zani had pictured in more elaborate form. Fran sketched the air-column generator, and it was utterly simple and a boy of fourteen could make it. After painful scrutiny Soames realized that it was a ram-jet engine which would start itself and operate in still air.
One fault begets another. The faulty use of the respiratory muscles directs the vibrating air-column to the soft palate, where the tone is so smothered that the singer has to over-exert himself to be heard, instead of directing it against the hard palate, where it would gain vibrance and carrying quality."
Now, I was constantly asking myself how it happened that in entering a house one never seemed to get rid of this almost fabulous weight, since the roof of the house must naturally interpose itself between the air-column of forty miles high and the man who would then only have some few feet of air above his head. The roof would support the rest, that was clear.
The windpipe, requiring the support of a firm chest-wall, becomes unsteady, the singer loses his control of the air-column, and the vibrations of the vocal ligaments are uncertain, instead of tense and sure. To maintain the expanded chest during expiration, which also means during singing, is not difficult. There is nothing forced about it.
The shape assumed by the lips, which are capable of many exquisite variations in shape, conditions the form of the air-column as it enters the cup of the trumpet or horn. This I believe to be one important function performed for the larynx by the vocal cords, which Mackenzie, with an aptness he could not have appreciated, called the lips of the glottis.
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