Mental conception precedes execution. The picture must exist in the artist's mind before it can be drawn on the canvas. The architect must mentally see the majestic cathedral in all its details before he can draw the plans from which it can be built. In the field of physical activity no movement is made until the mind has gone before and prepared the way. A person's ability to do is in a great degree measured by his determination to do, but sitting in a rocking-chair and thinking will never make an athlete. Mental action is necessary, but only through trained muscular action can the mental action materialize in a finished performance.

So too the mind must anticipate the action of the vocal organs, but the organs themselves must be led to interpret the mental concept until such action becomes spontaneous. Action in turn quickens the mental process, and the mental picture becomes more vivid.

Note with emphasis that the mental concept precedes the action and governs it. Therefore, instead of producing tone by local effort, by conscious muscular action of any sort, correctly think the tone, correctly shape and color it mentally. Every vocal tone is a mental concept made audible. The beginner and the confirmed bungler alike fail in this prime essential—they do not make this mental picture of tone before singing it. Kindred to this is deficiency in hearing, in discriminating between good tone color and poor. The student must constantly compare his tone as it is sung with the picture in his mind. Training the voice is therefore largely a training of mind and ear, a developing of nicety in discrimination. Singing is mental rather than physical, psychologic rather than physiologic. Think therefore of the effect desired rather than of the process.

In considering the details of voice production analytically we are apt to forget that man, notwithstanding his complexity, is a unit and acts as a unit. Back of all and underlying man's varied activity is the psychical. In the advanced stages of the art of speech and song this psychical element is of pre-eminent importance.

The speaker who essays to give expression to his own thoughts must have his ideas sharply defined and aflame in order to so utter them that they will arouse his hearers to enthusiasm. The speaker or singer who would successfully interpret the thoughts of others must first make those thoughts his very own. When this is attained, then the voice, action, and the whole spirit of the performer, responding to the theme, will beget a like responsiveness in his audience.

THE SINGER BEHIND THE VOICE

Books upon books have been written on voice training, and will continue to be written. The preceding pages have been devoted to the fundamental subject of tone production, but it is time to suggest that back of the voice and the song is the singer himself with his complex personality. Back of the personality is the soul itself, forever seeking utterance through its mask of personality. All genuine impulse to sing is from the soul in its need for expression. Through expression comes growth in soul consciousness and desire for greater and greater self-expression.

Singing is far more than "wind and muscle," for, as Ffrangcon-Davies puts it, "The whole spiritual system, spirit, mind, sense, soul, together with the whole muscular system from feet to head, will be in the wise man's singing, and the whole man will be in the tone."

Of all the expressions of the human spirit in art form, the sublimated speech we call song is the most direct. Every other art requires some material medium for its transmission, and in music, subtlest of all the arts, instruments are needed, except in singing only.

FREEDOM

In song the singer himself is the instrument of free and direct expression. Freedom of expression, complete utterance, is prevented only by the singer himself. No one hinders him, no one stands in the way but himself. The business of the teacher is to set free that which is latent. His high calling is by wise guidance to help the singer to get out of his own way, to cease standing in front of himself. Technical training is not all in all. Simple recognition of the existence of our powers is needed even more. Freedom comes through the recognition and appropriation of inherent power; recognition comes first, the appropriation then follows simply. The novice does not know his natural power, his birthright, and must be helped to find it, chiefly, however, by helping himself, by cognizing and re-cognizing it.

No student of the most human of all arts—singing—need give up if he has burning within him the song impulse, the hunger to sing. This inner impulse is by its strength an evidence of the power to sing; the very hunger is a promise and a prophecy.

DETERRENTS

The deterrents to beautiful singing are physical in appearance, but these are outer signs of mental or emotional disturbance. Normal poise, which is strength, smilingly expresses itself in curves, in tones of beauty.

Mental discord results in angularity, rigidity, harshness.

Impatience produces feverishness that makes vocal poise impossible; and impatience induces the modern vice of forcing the tone. Growth is a factor for which hurried forcing methods make no allowance.

Excess of emotion with its loss of balance affects the breathing and play of the voice.

Exertion, trying effort, instead of easy, happy activity induces hampering rigidities.

Intensity, over-concentration, or rather false concentration, emotional tension, involves strain, and strain is always wrong.

Over-conscientiousness, with its fussiness about petty detail, and insistence on non-essentials, is a deterrent from which the robust are free. Over-attention to the mechanics of voice production is a kindred deterrent. Both deterrents prevent that prime characteristic of expression—spontaneity.

Anxiety is a great contractor of muscle, a great stiffener. Anxiety always forgets the power within, and falsely says to the song-hunger, "You shall never be satisfied."

Self-repression is a great deterrent that afflicts the more sensitive, particularly those of puritanic inheritance. It is a devitalizer and a direct negative to expression, which is vital, is life.

All of these deterrents are negative and may be overcome by fuller recognition of the inner power that by its very nature must perpetually seek positive expression.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, the student can perpetually find encouragement in a number of happy facts.

Man is endowed by nature, except in rare instances, with a perfect vocal apparatus. When abnormal conditions are found they are usually in the adult voice, and are due solely to misuse. In other words defects are not inherent but acquired and can be removed.

By nature the human voice is beautiful, for the tendency of nature is always in the direction of beauty. Whatever is unlovely in singing, as in all else, is unnatural. True method is therefore never artificial in its action, but simple, because the natural is always simple.

Finally, no, not finally, but firstly and secondly and thirdly and perpetually, every student of singing and every teacher of it must constantly bear in mind the happy law:

THE RIGHT WAY IS ALWAYS AN EASY WAY