hat some may not
be able to produce head tones does not justify carrying up the chest
register to any appreciable extent, even by altos.

Now, as in past times, the high falsetto for males, if good, the
result of proper training, has the warrant of both art and sound
physiology.

In the use of registers, sensations are infallible guides. Of these,
the most important are those associated with the organs of hearing,
but those arising in the vocal organs are also valuable.

Those only should expect to sing artistically, and to preserve their
voices unimpaired for a long period, who wisely observe Nature's
teachings in regard to registers.

CHAPTER XII.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING VOICE-PRODUCTION.

It is highly important for the speaker or singer to realize early in
his career that all forms of artistic expression can be carried out
only through movements--muscular movements; in other words, technique
or execution implies the use of neuro-muscular mechanisms. However
beautiful the conception in the mind of the painter, it can only
become an artistic thing when it assumes material form--when it is put
on canvas. The most beautiful melody is no possession of the world
while it is in the mind of the composer alone; till it is _expressed_,
it is as good as non-existent.

Even poetry can only affect us when it exists in the form of words
produced by lip or pen. Between the glowing thought of the poet and
the corresponding emotion produced in ourselves there must intervene
some form of technique--_i.e._, some application of neuro-muscular
action. This latter term is a convenient one, and has been already
explained. It is a condensed expression for that use of the nervous
and muscular systems that results in movements, simple or complex.

Without nerve-cells and muscles movements are impossible, speaking
generally, and for a willed or voluntary movement there must be
something more, an idea or concept. Before one can make a movement
resulting in a simple line or even dot on a piece of paper, he must
have the idea of that line or dot in mind. In like manner, before one
plays or sings a single note, he must have the idea of that note in
mind; in other words, the idea is the antecedent to the movement, and
absolutely essential. To have such an idea, memory is necessary. It is
impossible to sing a tone after another, as an imitative effort,
unless one has the power to retain that tone in memory for at least a