Make
no effort to hold or control the breath. Maintain correct position the
level of the tone, in a free, flexible manner, and sing with perfect
freedom, with abandon. As the movement or action gave you the breath, so
will the position hold it. The more you let go all contraction of body and
throat muscles, the more freedom you give the voice, the more will the
breath be controlled,--controlled through automatic form and adjustment.
This is a wonderful revelation to many who have tried it and mastered it.
Those who have constantly thought in the old way, and attempted to breathe
and control in the old way, cannot of course understand it. The tendency of
such is to condemn it,--to condemn it, we are sorry to say, without
investigation.
Knowledge is gained through experience. The singer or pupil who tries this
system of breathing and succeeds, needs no argument to convince him that it
is true, natural and correct. The greatest drawback to the mastering of it
on the part of many singers and teachers, is the artificial habits acquired
by years of wrong thinking and wrong effort. With the beginner it is the
simplest, the easiest, and the most quickly acquired of all systems of
breathing; for automatic breathing is a fundamental, natural law of
artistic singing.
For further illustration of this principle of breathing we will use the
following exercise:
[Illustration: FOURTH STUDY. Ah....]
Place yourself in a free, flexible manner on a level with the first tone.
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