d sense of that term. When I sing this tone it is
accompanied with a sensation as though the tone were being reflected
downward from the voice box over to each side of the chest just in front
of the arm-pits and then downward into the abdomen. Here the great
danger arises that the unskilled student will try to produce this
sensation, whereas the fact of the matter is that the sensation is the
accompaniment of the properly produced tone and cannot be made
artificially. Don't work for the sensation, work for the tone that
produces such a sensation. At the same time the tone has a sensation of
upward reflection, as though it arose at the back of the voice box and
separated there, passed up behind the jaws to the points where your
fingers are resting, entering the mouth from above, as it were from a
point just between the hard and soft palates, and becoming one sound in
the mouth.

The uvula and part of the soft palate should be associated with the dark
sound. The hard palate and part of the soft palate should be associated
with the strident tone.

THE TONGUE POSITION

In making the strident sound the tongue should rest in the same position
as for the dark sound. The dark tone never changes and is the basic
sound which gives fullness, foundation, depth to the ultimate tone.
Without it all voices are thin and unsubstantial. The nearer the singer
gets to this the nearer he approaches the great vibrating base upon
which the world is founded.

Remember that the dark tone never changes. It is the background, the
canvas upon which the singer paints his infinite moods by means of
different vowels, emotions, and the tone colors which are derived in
numberless modifications from the strident tone. Another simile may
bring the subject nearer to the reader student. Imagine the dark tone
and all the sensations in different parts of the body as a kind of
atmosphere or gas which requires to be set on fire by the electric spark
of the strident tone. The dark tone is all necessary, but it is useless
unless it is properly electrified by the strident tone.

A PRACTICAL STEP

How shall we utilize what we have learned, so that the student may
convince himself that herein ties the truth which, properly understood
and sensibly applied, will lead to a means of improving his tone. If the
foregoing has been carefully read and understood, the following exercise
to get the tone which results from a combination of the dark and the
strident