Argument of the Chapter.-The quality of a speaker's voice has much to do with the conviction he carries and with his comfort and assurance while speaking. The problem of improving the voice is five-fold: breathing, resonance, openness of throat, treatment of special ailments, and enriching the tone. VOICE AND CONVINCINGNESS THE purity of a voice can actually have influence over the beliefs and ideas of a listener; for purity of tone strongly affects the listener's estimate of the truth or falsity of the ideas he listens to. At first this seems like a pernicious doctrine. It seems to argue that convictions must be pretty cheap to depend upon the sound of a man's voice. And yet, after all, it is not so dangerous as it seems. If we were to accept the doctrine that a speaker possesses absolute truth. which the audience has no right or power to refute or reject, then we could believe that this notion is dangerous; but when a speaker stands before an audience he is at best giving only one man's views. If he utters his thoughts in a tone of voice so rough and unpleasant that the listener finds it difficult to listen, the opinion he desires others to accept is not so well received as when uttered with a voice smooth, flowing, and pleasant to the ear. Opinions, even the best of them, need the help of a pleasing voice. There are in the world so very many ideas a man may accept that he is dependent upon certain forces to choose his ideas for him. Sometimes it is his daily paper; again it is. his church or his political party or his previous public utterances, or any kind of personal interest or desire. The law of action is that whatever tends to dominate attention tends to determine action. A pleasant, resonant, dominating quality in a voice can easily be one of these action determiners. Nor is it necessarily to the discredit of the hearer when he is thus influenced. He naturally reacts to the meanings that are carried by the speaker's vocal apparatus. This is no less dignified or unworthy than to be led by a politician's great. name or by a scholar's reputation or by the fame which a brilliant preacher happens to enjoy. True, the beautiful voice may easily gull us, but the fact still remains that when ideas come to us with thrilling resonance, with reverberating vibration, and with delightful verve, they somehow grip and are easily made acceptable to us as truth; they carry full freightage of meaning. For this reason the speaker, if he be honest, can be one of mankind's greatest benefactors; and, of course, if a cheat and a fraud, can be one of its most dangerous foes. Frequently we wonder at the conversational powers of some man we meet in business relations or in the drawing-room, and we agree that such a one is a "wonderful conversationalist"; or if we are a little bit given to ecstasy, we say that he is possessed of "great spiritual power" or "marvelous brilliance of intellect." The point is that frequently the pleasingness of the tone of voice of such a person makes it easy for the listener to follow his ideas and to receive an unusually full measure of meaning. A pleasing voice makes listening easy, and whatever tends to make it pleasant for the listener in trying to comprehend what the speaker means, is so much gained; whatever makes it difficult is so must lost. Consequently, purity of tone and smoothness of voice are fundamental necessities if a speaker desires to carry his thoughts to others on the safest terms. The voice comes from a mechanism. Note the phonograph and radio, mechanisms undeniably; one voice mechanism reproducing another; imperfectly, but in the same general way. Any mechanism can be analyzed to see how it works. If now we analyze the voice process to see how it operates, we ought to be in position to lay down rules for improvement. PRELIMINARY SUMMARY Following is a preliminary summary of the steps in improving voice for various and varied uses: 1. Control and strengthen the breathing. 2. Free the neck and throat from undue strain. 3. Form the various vowel sounds accurately and flexibly. 5. Widen the range of resonance by learning to place the reso- 6. Use vowels and consonants in combination, retaining full resonance. 7. Increase the force of the voice, at the same time retaining the desired quality. 8. Improve the duration of tone without affecting quality and force. 9. Improve the range of pitch without adversely affecting quality, force, and time. 10. Combine these four elements into speech of richness and variety; of both sense and sensitiveness. A simple formula to remember under all circumstances is: In the abdomen, POWER In the neck, RELAXATION In the mouth and face, FLEXIBILITY A. INFORMATION HELPFUL TO A STUDY OF VOICE IMPROVEMENT BREATHING Voice is based upon breathing interrupted on its way out and caused to vibrate in a manner that produces sounds usable in speech. The process begins in breath control, and breath control remains always of primary importance, for breathing furnishes the power; and mastery of the power apparatus is the first step in voice improvement. Breathing is done by muscles. The air is contained in a sacklike receptacle, the well-known lungs. This receptacle is operated by muscles, which furnish the two movements of breathing, inspiration and exhalation. These muscles are of three general systems: of the abdomen, of the diaphragm, and of the ribs. Some small help comes from muscles of the shoulders; but less in importance than that from the others. The lungs are only passive, merely expanded or compressed by the muscles that control them. |