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Updated: June 5, 2025
It is realized that the building up of the mechanism which they are supposed to train in an intelligent manner rests upon well-established principles. It would be just as reasonable for an engineer to point to the fact that his engine works well, as evidence of his ability, as for the teacher of voice-production to make the same claim in regard to the vocal mechanism.
Especially when singing a high tone after a low one we can feel how considerably the position of the larynx changes, and it is clear that every obstruction in its movement hinders normal voice-production. When examining the patient the physician should observe the action of the larynx and feel if there are no spasmodic movements and if the flexibility is satisfactory.
There is little or nothing of psychology in Mackenzie's book, and yet, like other writers on voice-production, he appears now and then to be groping for it.
While such experiments indicate the essential principles of a possible voice-production, as the conditions in life were not and could not be fully met these results were rather suggestive than demonstrative of Nature's methods.
With every loosening, tightening, lengthening or shortening of the vocal cords or other effect of muscular action upon them, the space between them the glottis alters in size and shape. These subtle changes in the size and shape of the glottis are, as I shall expect to show, of great importance in voice-production. They form the first step in the actual creation of voice.
It must become second nature with the singer, a physiological adjustment in answer to a psychical concept a detail, in fact one of the most important details, in that true physiology of voice-production which also takes psychical conditions into consideration. The coup de glotte, translated as "stroke of the glottis," refers to the manner in which a note should be attacked.
It cannot be emphasized too often that the scientific method of voice-production based on the study of the physiology of the vocal tract is not a fad; as is proved by the fact that every violation of physical law affecting the vocal tract results in injury to it and in the same proportion affects the efficiency of the voice.
But one of the marvels of voice-production is the smallness of the organ in which voice is generated, the size of the average larynx being about two inches in height by an inch and a half in width.
Yet the apparatus concerned in voice-production is a most delicate one, and, being easily ruined when incorrectly used, haste in learning how to use it not only is absurd but criminal voice-murder, in fact. It has been said that one error of the old Italian method was that it concerned itself only with beautiful tone-production, whereas real singing is the vitalization of words by emotion.
This shows how absurd is the theory of conscious control of the machinery of voice-production. As I have frequently pointed out, the adjustments of the vocal tract to the tone to be produced are responses to the will, physical reflexes of the tones which the singer hears mentally; so that voice is mental audition converted by responsive physical adjustment into audible tone.
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