to avoid the faulty control of voice is, of course, to learn at the
proper time the general principles of what singers call voice
production. These principles are few and, in a sense, are very simple,
but they are not easily made perfectly clear in writing, and a perfect
application of them, even in the simpler forms of speaking, often
requires persistent practice. It will be the aim here to state only
what the student is most likely to understand and profit by, and to
leave the rest to the personal guidance of a teacher.

The control of the voice, so far as it can be a conscious physical
operation, is determined chiefly by the action of the breathing muscles
about the waist and the lower part of the chest. The voice may be said
to have its foundation in this part of the physical man. This
foundation, or center of control, will be rightly established, not by
any very positive physical action; not by a decided raising of the
chest; not by any such marked expansion or contraction as to bring
physical discomfort or rigid muscular conditions. When the breath is
taken in, by an easy, natural expansion, much as air is taken into a
bellows, there is, to a certain degree, a firming of the breathing
muscles; but this muscular tension is felt by the speaker or singer, if
felt at all, simply as a comfortable fullness around, and slightly
above, the waistline, probably more in front than elsewhere. An eminent
teacher of singing tells his pupils to draw the breath into the
stomach. That probably suggests the sensation. When the breath has been
taken in, it is to be gently withheld,--not given up too freely,--and
the tone is formed on the top, so to speak, of this body of breath,
chiefly, of course, in the mouth and head. For the stronger and larger
voice the breath is not driven out and dissipated, but the tone is
intensified and given completer resonance within--within the nasal or
head cavities, somewhat within the pharynx and chest. This body of