Of course with beginners these movements may be more or
less exaggerated. When singing songs, however, they do not show, at least
not nearly as much as wrong breathing and wrong effort. They simply give
the singer the appearance of proper dignity, position, and self-assertion.
By all means use the hands in training the movements of the body. You can
train the body by the use of the hands in one-fourth of the time that it is
possible to do it without using them. Be careful, however, not to raise the
hands too high, as is the tendency; when lifted too high the energy is
often put into the hands and arms instead of the body; in this way the body
is not properly aroused and influenced, and of course true conditions are
not secured.
"Practical rules must rest upon theory, and theory upon nature, and nature
is ascertained by observation and experience." Now, if you will practice
this arpeggio with a free, flexible movement of hands and body, getting
under the tone, as it were, and moving to a level of every tone, you will
soon find by practice and experience that these movements are perfectly
natural, that they arouse all the forces which nature gave us for the
production of tone, that they vitalize the singer and give freedom to the
voice. By moving properly to a level of the first tone you secure all true
conditions of tone; and if you have placed yourself properly upon a level
with the high tone, when that is reached you will have maintained those
true conditions--you will have freedom, inflation and vitality instead of
contraction and strain.
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