tones in the scale. A sight-singing manual which I
picked up the other day says that the whole matter of singing at sight
lies in knowing where the semitones come. And from one point of view
this is true, but to the Tonic Sol-faist the semitones always come in
the same places, _i.e_., between _me_ and _fah_, and between _te_ and
_doh_. He has only one scale to learn, and as to modulation, that is
accomplished for him by his notation, while the time marks, separating
and defining the beats or pulses of the music, make rhythm vividly
clear.

If choirmasters wish to save themselves trouble, and get confident
attack and good intonation from their boys, they should teach them the
Tonic Sol-fa notation, and let them sing from it always. The staff
notation they can easily learn later on.

CHAPTER VIII.

FLATTENING, AND SINGING OUT OF TUNE.

The trainer of adult voices has constantly before him the problem of
making his pupils sing in tune. With boys this matter is less of a
trouble, for this reason. Many adults have fine voices which, if their
intonation can be improved, will do great things. Others have incurably
bad voices, but possessing the ambition and the means for studying
singing, they come under the hands of the professor. In the case of
boys, however, there is a preliminary process of selection by which the
teacher rejects at the outset any defective ears and voices. The trainer
of boys chooses his pupils; adult students of singing, as a rule, choose
their teacher.

Even, however, when a good set of boys has been chosen and trained,
every choirmaster is troubled from time to time by the evils which I
have named at the head of this paper.

What are their causes? Probably no cause is so fruitful as a misuse of
the registers of the voice, a straining upwards of the lower register
beyond its proper limits. This may be placed in the front as a perpetual
cause of bad intonation and loss of pitch. This straining is usually
accompanied with loud singing, but boys who have formed this bad habit
will not at once sustain the pitch if told to sing softly. Their voices,
under these circumstances, will at first prove weak and husky, and will
flatten as much with soft singing as they did with loud. A slow process
of voice training can alone set them right. But as boys' voices last so
short a time this treatment is not worth the trouble. Boys who have
fallen into thoroughly bad habits should therefore be dismissed, an