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Updated: May 7, 2025
There is no reason for considering this experiment a test of correct tone-production. It is impossible to produce a powerful tone of any kind, good, bad, or indifferent, and at the same time to create an appreciable current of air at the lips. Needless to say, the breath-control theorists have entirely failed to grasp the significance of the candle-flame experiment.
Toneless mechanical exercises are generally given, by which the student is expected to master the muscular movements before applying in singing the system advocated by the teacher. These exercises are usually combined with those for breath-control, and they are described under that head. Breath-Control
The sympathetic sensation of nasal contraction or pinching is at any rate very pronounced. Curiously, this sympathetic sensation is cited as an argument in favor of their respective theories, by both the advocates and the opponents of nasal resonance. Sympathetic Sensations and Breath-Control Certain forms of exaggerated throat stiffness are frequently held to indicate the need of breath-control.
In this sense breath-control is an inseparable feature of tone-production. All that need be known of the mechanics of the voice is therefore perfectly plain. The vocal cords are set in motion by the pressure against them of the expired breath. This operation is in accordance with Pascal's law and the law of the conservation of energy.
Still these teachers have nothing to offer beyond the well-known doctrines of breathing, breath-control, forward tone, etc. How these doctrines might have been applied in practical instruction nobody is able to tell. Little attention need be paid to the claim of any modern teacher to possess the old Italian method of training voices.
Nature has placed within the organ of sound the principle of a double valve, one of the strongest forces known in mechanics, for the control of the breath during the act of singing. This is what we mean by automatic breath-control using the forces which Nature has given us for that purpose, using them in the proper manner.
The patient, having gained proper breath-control and having had impressed upon him the importance of forward placement and of the normal position of the tongue to correct articulation of consonants, is ready for correction of the faulty action of the vocal cords.
The last exponent of the old traditions was Francesco Lamperti, who retired from active teaching in 1876. Yet even Lamperti finally yielded, in theory at least, to the mechanical idea. When this work was about ready for the press, Lamperti read Dr. Mandl's Gesundheitslehre der Stimme, containing the first definite statement of the opposed-muscular-action theory of breath-control.
It means head-resonance only; and head-resonance is but one side, and that the smallest side, of this great question. Tone must be placed spontaneously, with reaction and reflection. This shows at once the importance of the first two great principles of voice-production, freedom and automatic breath-control; for without these true placing is impossible.
This extreme condition of throat stiffness is unfortunately by no means rare. So far as concerns the sympathetic sensations awakened by this kind of singing the condition is graphically described by the breath-control advocates. But the conclusion is entirely unjustified that this condition indicates the lack of breath-control.
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