This exercise should be studied and practiced in every way suggested for the study of the preceding exercises. Place yourself upon a level with the first tone, in the manner before described, and thus secure the automatic breath. Do not forget to use the hands to suggest the movement to the body. The hands should be used until the body is thoroughly trained to flexible action. It is always a question of "the thought before the action." Do not allow a conscious or local breath before the movement.
Place yourself upon a level with the first tone, and allow or let the voice start spontaneously and freely. Make no effort to hold the breath. Hold from position. Sing down, moving with the voice, but do not let the body or the tone droop or relax. Neither must there be stiffness or contraction. If you find it impossible to control the voice in this way, or to prevent depression of body and of tone, then try the following way.
Place yourself upon a level with the first tone in the proper manner, sing down, but lift and expand with an ascending movement of the hands and body. Open the mouth freely and naturally, and let the tone roll out. You will be surprised to find not only great breath power and control, but a power in the tone that most singers imagine can be got through physical force alone. This power is the result of expansion and inflation, the true reinforcing power. The increased vitalized energy of the tone is the result of the upward and outward movement. This movement of expansion and inflation through flexible action, is the true application of strength or of power. It is that which we call the reverse movement. We sing down and move up. It is the great movement for developing the low tones of all voices. This reverse movement may be applied at will to all the studies given; it will depend upon the effect we may desire to produce. If in descending, a quiet effect is desired, the movement is with the voice. If we want power we reverse the action. The body, when properly trained, becomes the servant of the will, and responds instantly to thought and desire. Hence the importance of correct thought.
In presenting these ideas to my readers, I realize how difficult it is to put them in words, and how much they lose when they appear in cold print. In working with a living, vitalized voice, the effect is so different. The reader who may desire to experiment with these ideas should place himself before a mirror, and make his image his pupil, his subject. In this way he can better study the movements, the action, the position, the level of the tone, and the breathing.
In private teaching, of course, we do not take up one subject or principle and finish that, and then take up the next one; but one idea is constantly built upon another to form the harmonious whole. The formula which we use here, as we have said, is the one adopted for the normal class at the Point Chautauqua summer school. This we do in order to have the system properly arranged for lecture, illustrations, and for a practical study of the devices, not only from the singer's, but from the teacher's standpoint as well.
The teacher or singer who studies and masters this course never questions or doubts the truth and power of automatic breathing and automatic breath-control; or the wonderful influence on the voice of these movements, which we call true position and action in singing.[2]
ARTICLE THREE.
THE THIRD PRINCIPLE OF ARTISTIC TONE-PRODUCTION.
The third principle of artistic tone-production is