effort is used to describe the direct
innervation of the throat muscles. A logical application of the
mechanical idea absolutely demands the use of local effort. This is the
main argument of the local-effort teachers.

Those teachers who discountenance local effort have only their own
experience to guide them. They simply know that local effort results in
throat stiffness. Yet these teachers have nothing to offer in place of
the mechanical management of the vocal organs. Even though aware of the
evil results of local effort, they yet know of no other means of
imparting the correct vocal action. The weakness of the position of
these teachers is well summed up by a writer in _Werner's Magazine_ for
June, 1899: "To teach without local effort or local thought is to teach
in the dark. Every exponent of the non-local-effort theory contradicts
his theory every time he tells of it." To that extent this writer states
the case correctly. Every modern vocal teacher believes that the voice
must be consciously guided in its muscular operations. Until this
erroneous belief is abandoned it is idle for a teacher to decry the use
of local effort.

CHAPTER IV

THE TRUE MEANING OF VOCAL TRAINING

In all scientific treatises on the voice it is assumed that the voice
has some specifically correct mode of operation. Training the voice is
supposed to involve the leading of the vocal organs to abandon their
natural and instinctive manner of operating, and to adopt some other
form of activity. Further, the assumption is made that the student of
singing must cause the vocal organs to adopt a supposedly correct manner
of operating by paying direct attention to the mechanical movements of
tone-production. Both these assumptions are utterly mistaken. On
scientific analysis no difference is seen between the right and the
wrong vocal action, such as is assumed in the accepted Vocal Science.
Psychological principles do not countenance the idea of mechanical vocal
management.

Yet the fact remains, as a matter of empirical observation, that there
is a marked difference between the natural voice and the correctly
trained voice. What change takes place in the voice as a result of
correct training?

Singing is a natural function of the vocal organs. Learning to sing
artistically does not involve a departure from natural and instinctive
processes. The training of the voice consists of the acquirement of
skill in the use of the vocal organs,