Voice production in singing and speaking, based on scientific principles

by Wesley Mills

Vowels, consonants, noise—Consonants and pauses—Voice-production and vowels—Certain vowel sounds common to most languages—Why German and English are relatively unmusical—The needs of the musical artist—The mechanism required for the production of a vowel sound—Reconsideration of the resonance-chambers—The larynx to be steadied but not held rigidly immovable—The principal modifiers of the shape of the mouth-cavity—Breath to be taken through the mouth—The lips—Tongue and lip practice before a mirror—Importance of the connection between the ear and the mouth parts, etc—"Open mouth"—The mouth in singing a descending scale—Undue opening of the mouth—Proper method of opening the mouth—Causes of compression and the consequences [195]

[CHAPTER XIV.]

SOME SPECIFIC APPLICATIONS OF PRINCIPLES IN TONE-PRODUCTION.

Principles and their expression in a few exercises—Analysis of the methods of tone-production—The sustained tone—Smoothly linked tones—The legato—The staccato and kindred effects—The mechanisms concerned—Perfection requires years of careful practice—The bel canto and the swell—The same exercises for singer and speaker—"Forward," "backward," etc., production—Escape of breath—The action of the soft palate—When to use "forward" and when "backward" production—Voice-placement—Nasal resonance, not nasal twang—Summary [207]

[CHAPTER XV.]

THE ELEMENTS OF SPEECH AND SONG.

The subject may be made dry or the reverse—Vowels, consonants, noise—The position of the lips and the shape of the mouth-cavity in sounding the various vowels—How to demonstrate that the mouth-cavity is a resonance-chamber—Practical considerations growing out of the above—Speaker, vocalist, and composer—Bearing of these facts on the learning of languages—Consonants as musical nuisances—Their great variation in pitch—Brücke's division of consonants—Tabulation of the same [218]

[CHAPTER XVI.]

FURTHER THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL CONSIDERATION OF VOWELS AND CONSONANTS.

The best vowel to use in practice—Necessary to practise all—The guttural r and the lingual r—Consonants that favor nasality of tone—Overtones and fundamental tones—Relation of intensity and quality—The carrying power of a tone—Unusual distinctness in practice as related to ease—The registers of the speaking voice according to Madame Seiler—The range in speaking—Summary [230]