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Show 40 HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS OF Hints. Vocal culture will do little to INTERPRETATION improve the voice in the normal activities of- speaking and reading, unless it can be tied to the normal processes and behavior of speech and interpretation. But whether by technical exercises, or by the suggestive method of and effect, practice, practice, and more practice is the only royal road to good vocal habits. A few hints on how to improve the voice and overcome the most common faults may be of value to the young teacher in her class cause work. Open the throat, tongue down and canalized, placing the root (N otice birds when singing.) 2. Use the diaphragm with a contracted outward stroke on every important idea. Laugh, cough, or sneeze, and it will be easy to 1. of the tongue in the angle of the neck. understand this movement. 3. Form a habit of taking breath before each idea. 4. "Use the diaphragm, breathe deep, and go home and practice." -Alfred Ayres. 5. Voice control must become automatic. 6. "A voice however powerful it is, should be inferior to the power that animates it."-Delsarte. 7. Remove tension and you will improve the quality of the voice. 8. "Take breath often-very often, and take it inaudibly. Never gasp. If the speaker loses his voice, he- has only to take a deep full breath and pull himself together."-Alfred Ayres. "If you would move others, put your heart in the place of your larynx; let your voice become a mysterious hand to caress the 9. hearer." - Delsarte. 10. "Exercises should be employed strictly as exercises; and it is best that they should be kept back until the beginner has gained the power to maintain conversational conditions upon the platform, through actual practice in addressing the class or some other audience."-Winans. 11. "A man can no more declaim well who has not passed the point where he is obliged to exhaust his mental energy in valuating how to modulate his voice in inflections, or to move his hands in gestures, than he can sing or play well while his attention is con- |
