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Expressive Voice Culture, Including the Emerson System by Jessie Eldridge Southwick
page 6 of 35 (17%)

First, freedom of voice is attained (technically speaking) by right
direction of tone and vital support. A few words of explanation will make
this patent.

If the vibrating column of air when it leaves the vocal cords is so
directed that it passes freely through all the cavities of resonance, it
cannot fail to find the right one. The following exercise, if properly
taken, will induce right direction of tone: produce a light humming sound
such as would be the sound of _m, n,_ or _ng_, if so idealized
as to eliminate that element of sound commonly spoken of as nasality. That
which is called nasality is caused by the failure of the tone to reach
freely the anterior cavities of the nares. The cavity which lies just back
of the nose and frontal bone imparts a musical resonance resembling the
vibrating after-tone when a note has been struck upon a piano and allowed
to die away gradually. The "nasal" effect comes when the tone is confined
in the posterior or back part of the nares, or head cavity, or is split by
the dropping of the uvula so that part of the tone is directed through the
nares and part through the mouth. Many so-called "humming tones" are given
for practice, but in accepting them observe whether the foregoing
principle is obeyed.

The controlling center of consciousness is the extreme limit of the
_nares anteri_. The tone should be thought of as outside. Keep the
mind upon results, just as one would hold the thought of a certain figure
which one might desire to draw. If one wishes to inscribe a curve, he
thinks of the curve as an object of thought, not of the muscles which act
in executing it. So with the voice. A tone is not a reality until its form
of vibration reaches the outer air. One should always think of the tone
one wishes to make--never listen to one's own execution. If the ideal is
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