| Sopranos | 12 | 17 | 25 | 37 | 50 |
| Altos | 4 | 5 | 7 | 11 | 14 |
| Tenors | 4 | 5 | 8 | 11 | 14 |
| Basses | 5 | 8 | 10 | 16 | 22 |
| 25 | 35 | 50 | 75 | 100 |
Mr. Stocks Hammond says that during voice exercise the boys should stand perfectly erect, with mouth well open, the shoulders being thrown back. After exercise in slowly inhaling and exhaling the breath, comes the uniting of the registers. This is accomplished by singing up and down the scales of C, D, and E to the syllable "ah." Each tone is taken with decision, and is followed by a slight pause. The same scales are afterwards sung to "oh" and "oo." This exercise should not last longer that ten or fifteen minutes. Staccato scales to "ah!" "oh!" and chromatic passages are introduced later.
Mr. G. Bernard Gilbert, F.C.O., of West Ham Parish Church, is an exceptionally skilled trainer of boys' voices. He meets his boys half-an-hour before each of the Sunday Services and "tunes them up," an admirable plan, which cannot be too widely imitated. The first thing he does in training boys is to teach them to attack and leave sounds with precision, neatness, and proper register or quality of voice. He gives chief attention to the sounds between
Mr. T. H. Collinson, Mus.B., organist of St. Mary's Cathedral, Edinburgh, has given me some interesting particulars of the training which his excellent boys undergo. The process of selection is as follows:—(1) Advertisement. (2) Trial of voice, and entry of particulars of school, school standard, father's occupation, &c. (3) Choice of most promising voices. (4) Inspection of homes, as to overcrowding, &c. (5) Appointment of probationers. (6) Full appointment, with religious service of admission by the Dean. The parents engage in writing to retain the child in the choir school until his voice changes, or to the average age of fourteen. The boys are taken at all ages from 9 to 12-½.
"Cultivation of tone, blending of registers, and accuracy of pitch are specially studied, the principal means being as follows:—(1) Mouth-opening (silently). (2) Breathing exercise. (3) Sustained notes piano, each to full length of breath. (4) Piano scales. (5) Simple flexibility exercises, e.g., Sir J. Stainer's card of exercises, published by Mowbray. (6) Crescendo and Diminuendo. (7) Behnke's resonance vowels, oo-o-ah. (8) Behnke's glottis-stroke exercises, oo-o-ah-ai-ee. (9) No accompaniment, except a single note on the pianoforte every three or four bars to test pitch. Where badly flat, a scolding, and going back to try over again. (10) At early morning practice no forte singing is allowed, as a rule.
"By the above means, especially sustained notes and piano scales, flatness is easily avoided, and the registers blend perfectly. A curious local peculiarity has to be specially treated in the junior boys. The Scottish 'u' as in 'gude' (good), 'puir' (poor), 'nü' (new), is identical with the French 'u' in 'tu' or 'Hugo,' and the little fellows sing an amusing exercise like the following:—
You should do two,
on every note of the scale, with special care to protrude the lips to a round whistling shape for the 'oo.' Very oddly they sing a good 'oo' in the falsetto register, and a certain solo boy used to sing Handel's 'How beautiful are the feet' in its first two phrases in alternate Scotch and English, the vinegary 'ü' in the first (low) phrase, and a fine round 'oo' in the higher phrase, where 'beautiful' begins on E flat.