l action. By
listening to himself the singer may know whether his tone-production is
correct. If the tones are beautiful the tone-production cannot be wrong.
The ear must always decide. A normally constituted ear instinctively
delights in hearing beautiful sounds. While attentive listening renders
the ear more keen and discriminating, no vocal student of average gifts
need be told the meaning of tonal beauty.

Instinct prompts the possessor of a fine natural voice and a musical ear
to sing, and to sing beautiful tones. No normally constituted student
can take pleasure in the practice of mechanical exercises. This form of
study is repugnant to the musical sensibility. Vocal students want to
sing; they feel instinctively that the practice of mechanical exercises
is not singing. A prominent exponent of mechanical instruction
complains: "I tell them to take breathing exercises three times a
day--but they all want to go right to singing songs." (_Werner's
Magazine_, April, 1899.) These students are perfectly right. They know
instinctively that the voice can be trained only by singing. There is no
connection between artistic singing and the practice of toneless
breathing exercises. "Five finger drills" and studies in broken scales
of the types generally used are also utterly unmusical. Mechanical
drills, whether toneless or vocal, have little effect other than to
induce throat stiffness.

CHAPTER V

IMITATION THE RATIONAL BASIS OF VOICE CULTURE

It is generally assumed by vocal theorists that the voice cannot be
trained by imitation. Browne and Behnke state this belief definitely:
"Singing cannot be learned exclusively by imitation." (_Voice, Song, and
Speech._) Having ascertained the futility of the attempt to teach
singing mechanically, it is now in order to determine the truth or
falsity of the statement that the exercise of the imitative faculty
alone does not suffice for the training of the voice.

In the first place, no one has ever thought of questioning the existence
of an instinct of vocal imitation. On the contrary, this instinct is
everywhere recognized. In childhood we learn to speak our mother tongue
by imitating the speech of those about us. "Talking proper does not set
in till the instinct to _imitate sounds_ ripens in the nervous system."
(_The Principles of Psychology_, Wm. James, New York, 1890.)

Vocal imitation would be impossible without the ability of the voice to
produce sounds in obedien