VOCAL GYMNASTICS.

To gain and keep a well-rounded, flexible, ready, and tireless voice; an ear that forehears, notes, recognizes, and criticizes; lips and tongue that are elastic, prompt, and accurate in their myriad actions and adjustments; a breath control that insures instant response to every dynamic demand of thought and feeling,-daily practice is imperative.

HOW LONG AT A TIME SHOULD THE BEGINNER PRACTICE?

While your voice is still unformed and your ear uncertain, at least an hour daily should be devoted to careful, observant practice; and two hours are better than one. Fifteen or twenty minutes at a time, at intervals through the day, is better than an unbroken task of sixty minutes. Work and rest help each other. If voice, organs, and interest keep their freshness, the more practice, the speedier the improvement. You may well practice the livelong day, so long as you feel that you are doing well and getting good.

DOES THE EXPERT NEED TO PRACTICE?

After you have acquired a good voice and learned measurably how to use it, do not fondly presume that you have a fixed possession, without further care. Regard it rather as a precious accumulation, as a talent that you have improved and increased with much labor and care; and be encouraged to go on, until it grows near to your ideal of vocal perfection. That means that you decide to pay the price of lifelong daily practice; for your ideal will rise, and keep rising, higher always than your attainment.

But it costs less to keep and improve than to acquire, and fifteen to twenty minutes daily will serve, if that is all the time you can spare. Nobody is so busy that he cannot spare that much time; indeed, the busiest people, as I have found them, always have time to do a little more, if it is worth while.

FIND OUT YOUR WEAK POINTS.

Study minutely your voice and speech, making an inventory of good points and bad points. Is the pitch habitually too high? too low? Is the tone harsh? shrill? breathy? nasal? raucous? hollow? heavy? thin? Is the enunciation indistinct? slipshod? overprecise? mouthing? mincing? drawling? too staccato? Is the pronunciation good? bad? indifferent? pedantic? Is the melody monotonous? meaningless? capricious? formal? do you 'elocutionize?' Does your voice carry?—that is, does it carry words and syllables as far as the voice itself goes?

Work to keep and improve the good, to eliminate the wrong, to strengthen the weak, to supply the wanting.

All the exercises in the following pages of Vocal Gymnastics are salutary and necessary for every learner; but each learner should study his own especial needs, or his greatest need or needs for the time being, and practice mainly the exercises that best fulfill them.

A universal code, or scheme, of daily practice should cover the cardinal points and principles:-Breath control; projection of tone; the modes of utterance, effusion, expulsion, and explosion; vowel shaping; articulate nimbleness, precision, and energy; syllabication; time, force, pitch, and quality. Interspersed or supplementary practice in reading or reciting short didactic, forensic, dramatic, and poetic passages should be added.

For convenient reference, the elementary sounds are tabulated below, grouped as Tonics, Subtonics, and Aspirates. The Tonics are given in the order of the Murdoch Table.

*A Tonic, or, rather a sonant Glide; included in this group

that it may be practiced as it usually occurs,

of the preceding Tonic.

THE ASPIRATE GROUP.

as the vanish

A SCHEME OF DAILY PRACTICE.

We cannot always dispose of our time according to our wish or a set plan; but, if you aspire to artistic command of your voice, it should undergo daily systematic practice. No day should pass without at least an hour's faithful work.

Reading aloud, varied in mood and done for improvement, is always in order. A minute or two of shouting examples, 'as loud as you can bawl,' without shrillness, or hoarseness, or throat irritation, is a magnificent voice-builder; but should

invariably be led up to with lighter practice, on the same principle as the 'warming up' of a horse for a race.

The scheme of simple gymnastics given below contains too many for any one day's undertaking, but they are all good, most of them precious. Some of them ought to be used every day, and all of them in the course of every three or four days.

1.

Take a moderately full breath; after a brief retention, whisper hŭ effusively, as long as you can sustain it smoothly. Keep the pitch level (singing note) till very near the close, then let the sound vanish downward. Keep the diaphragm firm, but not by strenuous effort: simply do not relax until the very end of the expiration.

2.

Vocalize one of the narrow vowels effusively. Begin with light but clear radical attack; prolong on a level pitch, in a slender, smooth vocality, until the breath is nearly expended, then let it vanish in a slow falling movement.

3.

Click off the tonics, by stroke of the glottis, with a barely perceptible expenditure of unvocalized breath. An invaluable exercise. It can be practiced almost anywhere, at any time. (See 'For the Stroke of the Glottis', p. 50.)

4.

Practice the equable concrete, with voice, on the tonics, at different pitch levels, each impulse abrupt, clear, and brief. (See 'The Stroke, with Voice', p. 51.)

5.

Practice the equable concrete with a rising progression of radical pitch. With a falling progression. (See d, e, f, p. 52.)

6.

Practice the tonics, with emphatic rising inflections:

a.

Explosive opening, with slow vanish;

b. Explosive opening, with rapid vanish;

C.

A slow expulsive rise, from slight direct attack, ending bluntly;

d. A slow expulsive rise, from slight direct attack, end

ing abruptly.

Practice falling inflections, with corresponding variations of force and time.

7.

Hold b, d, or g hard firmly, with the murmur as strongly resonant as possible; then break explosively into each tonic successively. Weld subtonic and tonic together without hiatus; make the tonic explosion instant and brief. The breath current should be arrested as the syllable vanishes.

8.

Prefix, affix, or prefix and affix, b, d, and g hard to each tonic, and make slow, strong, smooth expulsive slides, rising and falling, prolonging the subtonics, initial and final. The initial subtonic is on level pitch; the tonic begins the slide, which is completed on the final subtonic, when given.

9.

Practice the long tonics with wide falling-wave inflections, . Begin each wave with a clear, light radical, swell gradually to full expulsion on the rise, and diminish smoothly to a vanish on the fall. As the pitch rises and the volume and force increase, expand the fauces and pharynx more and

more.

10.

In groups of four, and again of eight, pronounce the tonics, each as a monotone effusive swell, attenuated smoothly as nearly to a vanish as possible without reaching it, and implicated with the succeeding impulse; the last tonic of each group ending, of course, with a complete but very gradual and delicate vanish. Employ the w- or the y-glide, when