eath.

In diminishing the tone the opening of the throat remains the same.
Only the quantity of breath given forth is diminished. That is done by
the diaphragm muscles.

"Filare la voce," to spin the voice from a tiny little thread into a
breadth of sound and then diminish again, is one of the most beautiful
effects in singing.

It is accomplished by the control of the breath, and its perfect
accomplishment means the complete mastery of the greatest difficulty in
learning to sing.

I think one of the best exercises for learning to control the voice by
first getting control of the breath is to stand erect in a
well-ventilated room or out of doors and slowly snuff in air through the
nostrils, inhaling in little puffs, as if you were smelling something.

Take just a little bit of air at a time and feel as if you were filling
the very bottom of your lungs and also the back of your lungs.

When you have the sensation of being full up to the neck retain the air
for a few seconds and then very slowly send it out in little puffs
again.

This is a splendid exercise, but I want to warn you not to practice any
breathing exercise to such an extent that you make your heart beat fast
or feel like strangling.

Overexercising the lungs is as bad as not exercising them enough and
the results are often harmful.

Like everything else in singing, you want to learn this gradually. Never
neglect it, because it is the very foundation of your art. But don't try
to develop a diaphragm expansion of five inches in two weeks.

Indeed, it is not the expansion that you are working for.

I have noticed this one peculiarity about young singers--if they have an
enormous development of the diaphragm they think they should be able to
sing, no matter what happens. A girl came to see me once whose figure
was really entirely out of proportion, the lower part of the lungs
having been pressed out quite beyond even artistic lines.

"You see, madam," she exclaimed, "I have studied breathing. Why, I have
such a strong diaphragm I can move the piano with it!" And she did go
right up to my piano and, pushing on this strong diaphragm of hers,
moved the piano a fraction of an inch from its place.

I was quite aghast. I had never met such an athletic singer. When I
asked her to let me hear her voice, however, a tiny stream of contralto
sound issued from those powerful lungs.

She had developed her breathing capacity, but when she sang she held
her b