asal passage and is charged with a disagreeable
nasal quality.

For every tone produced there is a special adjustment throughout the
entire vocal tract. These adjustments should, by practice, become
automatic, simple acts of swift and unconscious obedience to the will.
Then the question of "forward," "backward," or "middle" production,
according to the part of the roof of the mouth where the tone-vibrations
appear to centre, will become a matter wholly of the quality of voice
which it is desired to produce for any given emotional state. Forward
production--vibration appearing to centre a little back of the upper
front teeth--is, as a general thing, the best. Yet a voice brilliant to
the point of hardness can be mellowed by middle or backward production.
These are matters of judgment. But when I am told, as I was by a young
girl, that she was being taught to centre the tone-vibrations "back of
her eyes," all I can do is to throw up my hands and exclaim, "O
voice-production, what crimes are committed in thy name!" Yes--there
should be a Rescue League, or a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Singers.

CHAPTER VII

REGISTERS OF THE VOICE

The subject of vocal registers is a difficult one--difficult to
understand and, when understood, difficult to make intelligible to
others. In fact, it is so difficult that some people get rid of it by
calmly asserting that there are no registers. This is unfortunate,
because the blending of the registers, the smoothing out of the voice
where one register passes over into another, the elimination of the
"break" between them, is one of the greatest problems which the teacher
of voice-production is obliged to solve. Like so many other branches
in the art of voice-production, the subject is complicated by initial
misunderstandings. Numerous people suppose, for example, that the vocal
registers are synonymous with the different kinds of voices, and speak
of the alto, soprano, bass or tenor register as if register stood for
quality, which it does not. Another complication results from the fact
that certain phenomenal voices, chiefly tenor, literally rise superior
to the law of vocal registers. Thus, a phenomenal tenor like Duprez sang
with ease the whole tenor range, including the high C, in the powerful,
vibrant "chest" register, whereas the average tenor, while producing
a great portion of his voice in the chest register, is obliged at a
certain point in the ascending scale