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time. When you have attained this you will find that it is a pleasant sensation.
What ho, my jovial mates. Come on! We will frolic it like fairies, frisking in the merry moonshine.
Purity of Voice
This quality is sometimes destroyed by wasting the breath. Carefully control the breath, using only as much as
is necessary for the production of tone. Utilize all that you give out. Failure to do this results in a breathy tone.
Take in breath like a prodigal; in speaking, give it out like a miser.
Voice Suggestions
Never attempt to force your voice when hoarse.
Do not drink cold water when speaking. The sudden shock to the heated organs of speech will injure the
voice.
Avoid pitching your voice too high--it will make it raspy. This is a common fault. When you find your voice
in too high a range, lower it. Do not wait until you get to the platform to try this. Practise it in your daily
conversation. Repeat the alphabet, beginning A on the lowest scale possible and going up a note on each
succeeding letter, for the development of range. A wide range will give you facility in making numerous
changes of pitch.
Do not form the habit of listening to your voice when speaking. You will need your brain to think of what you
are saying--reserve your observation for private practise.
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES
1. What are the prime requisites for good voice?
CHAPTER XII 70
2. Tell why each one is necessary for good voice production.
3. Give some exercises for development of these conditions.
4. Why is range of voice desirable?
5. Tell how range of voice may be cultivated.
6. How much daily practise do you consider necessary for the proper development of your voice?
7. How can resonance and carrying power be developed?
8. What are your voice faults?
9. How are you trying to correct them?
CHAPTER XIII 71
CHAPTER XIII
VOICE CHARM
A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit
good-natured.
--JOSEPH ADDISON, The Tattler.
Poe said that "the tone of beauty is sadness," but he was evidently thinking from cause to effect, not
contrariwise, for sadness is rarely a producer of beauty--that is peculiarly the province of joy.
The exquisite beauty of a sunset is not exhilarating but tends to a sort of melancholy that is not far from
delight The haunting beauty of deep, quiet music holds more than a tinge of sadness. The lovely minor
cadences of bird song at twilight are almost depressing.
The reason we are affected to sadness by certain forms of placid beauty is twofold: movement is stimulating
and joy-producing, while quietude leads to reflection, and reflection in turn often brings out the tone of
regretful longing for that which is past; secondly, quiet beauty produces a vague aspiration for the relatively
unattainable, yet does not stimulate to the tremendous effort necessary to make the dimly desired state or
object ours.
We must distinguish, for these reasons, between the sadness of beauty and the joy of beauty. True, joy is a
deep, inner thing and takes in much more than the idea of bounding, sanguine spirits, for it includes a certain
active contentedness of heart. In this chapter, however the word will have its optimistic, exuberant
connotation--we are thinking now of vivid, bright-eyed, laughing joy.
Musical, joyous tones constitute voice charm, a subtle magnetism that is delightfully contagious. Now it
might seem to the desultory reader that to take the lancet and cut into this alluring voice quality would be to
dissect a butterfly wing and so destroy its charm. Yet how can we induce an effect if we are not certain as to
the cause?
Nasal Resonance Produces the Bell-tones of the Voice
The tone passages of the nose must be kept entirely free for the bright tones of voice--and after our warning in
the preceding chapter you will not confuse what is popularly and erroneously called a "nasal" tone with the
true nasal quality, which is so well illustrated by the voice work of trained French singers and speakers.
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