Altos should begin at A.
The student should neither feel nor hear the tone in the throat. Therefore he should begin with a soft oo. The throat should be free, lips relaxed but slightly forward. There should be no puckering of the lips for oo. The tone should seem to form itself around the lips, not in the throat. In the beginning the exercise must be practiced softly. No attempt must be made to increase the power, until the tone is well established in the light mechanism. When the oo can be sung softly and without resistance as high as E flat use the same exercise with o.
The next step is to blend this light mechanism with the heavier mechanism. It may be done in this way,
Sing this descending scale with a crescendo, always beginning it pp. It should be practiced very slowly at first, and with portamento. Carrying the head voice down over the middle and the middle down over the lower will in a short time blend all parts of the voice, and lay the foundation of an even scale. The exercise should be transposed upward by half steps as the voice becomes more free until it reaches F or F sharp.
The next step is the building process. Use the following:
Altos should begin at A. In practicing these swells great care must be taken. Tone quality is the first consideration, and the tone must be pressed no further than is possible while retaining the pure singing quality. Where voices have been forced and are accustomed to sing nothing but thick tones this building process is sometimes slow. The student finds an almost irresistible tendency to increase the resistance as he increases the power of the tone. Therefore the louder he sings the worse it sounds. This kind of practice will never solve the problem. When the student is able to swell the tone to full power without increasing the resistance the problem is solved.
The progress of the student in this, as in everything in voice training, depends upon the ear of the teacher. The untrained ear of the student is an unreliable guide. The sensitive ear of the teacher must at all times be his guide. The belief that every one knows a good tone when he hears it has no foundation in fact. If the student’s concept of tone were perfect he would not need a teacher. He would have the teacher within himself. Every one knows what he likes, and what he likes is of necessity his standard at that particular time, but it is only the measure of his taste and may be different the next day.
All things in voice training find their court of last resort in the ear of the teacher. All other knowledge is secondary to this. He may believe any number of things that are untrue about the voice, but if he have a thoroughly refined ear it will prevent him from doing anything wrong. His ear is his taste, his musical sense, and it is his musical sense, his musical judgment, that does the teaching.