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Updated: May 7, 2025
From that time on, this doctrine has been very generally recognized as the fundamental principle of correct singing. Practically every scientific writer on the voice since then states breath-control as one of the basic principles of Vocal Science.
The purpose of the second exercise is to give still more fully breath-control, and to lead the voice-user to realize how important is breathing for intonation. The student may ask: "Why not begin, as is often done, by the singing of scales?" Really useful scales are too complex; they imply the use of a series of tones formed according to the principles insisted upon above.
Through these movements, through correct position, we secure automatic adjustment, which means approximation of the breath bands, the principle of the double valve in the throat, which secures automatic breath-control. In other words, the singer whose position and action are correct need never give his breathing a thought.
Let go all parts of the face, mouth and throat, and you will be surprised at the power of the tone, of the breath, and of the breath-control on the upper tone. You will be surprised to find that you will have secured or developed three or four times as much sustaining breath power as you imagined you had.
Breath-control is a complete fallacy. The doctrines of registers and laryngeal action are utterly valueless. Chest resonance, nasal resonance, and forward emission, are scientifically erroneous. The traditional precepts are of no value, because nobody knows how to follow or apply them. Empirical teaching based on the singer's sensations is of no avail.
And however well this plan of breath-control might have succeeded, it could never have succeeded in really curing stuttering and stammering. Most of these ill-advised efforts and half-baked methods sprang up, not as a result of sound knowledge but rather as a result of the lack of it.
The teachers now being considered touch to some extent on these topics; but most of their instruction is based on the traditional precepts, the singer's sensations, and the special vowel and consonant drills. In the first few lessons of the course they usually give some special breathing exercises, but almost always ignore breath-control.
The devices we use to develop automatic breathing and automatic breath-control are the simplest possible exercises, studied and developed through the movements, as before described. In this way through right action we expand to breathe, or rather we breathe through flexible expansion, and we control by position, by the true level of the tone.
The power of the expiratory blast is just what it would be if one unit of strength were exerted in an "uncontrolled" expiration. The singer exerts just nine times as much strength as is necessary to effect the same result. This is why the practice of breath-control exercises is so extremely fatiguing.
If the position, the level of the tone, is maintained without contraction, absolute automatic breath-control will be the result so sure as the sun shines. The tendency with beginners and with those who have formed wrong habits of breathing, is to take a voluntary breath before coming into action. This of course defeats the whole thing.
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