speech-tone from _uninterrupted_
speech-tone--such is our problem.

But tone is breath before it becomes speech, so our first concern is
with the initial stage. The process of breath control in the Ricardo
method of tone production (as in my own) is analogous to the process of
pumping water. Let your chest with its lungs represent the reservoir,
your diaphragm, the great muscle at the base of the lungs, becomes the
piston and your mouth the mouth of the pump. If the mouth of the pump
runs dry the pump itself runs down and has to be primed. Priming a pump
is precisely analogous to "catching your breath" in speech.

The active principle of breath control in the Ricardo method is the idea
of a _constant mouth-breath_. A sense of uninterrupted breath is as
essential to a knowledge of correct tone as a sense of uninterrupted
tone is to a knowledge of correct speech and song.

In breathing to speak or sing there must be such perfect diaphragmatic
control that the mouth shall never be out of breath. You must learn in
speaking and reading to take easily and quietly breath enough and _often
enough_ to supply the tone which is to be made into a single word, a
phrase, a sentence, or a series of sentences, and leave the mouth-breath
unexhausted, even unaffected. You must never catch your breath; the
breath must pass continuously, the _mouth-breath_ remaining a _constant_
quantity.

It was gratifying in my work with this master of tone production to find
that my own method in the training of the speaking voice was in accord
at almost every point with her method in the training of the singing
voice. In reprinting for you the exposition of my own method, as set
down in _The Speaking Voice_, I have found it necessary to make but few
changes. I have altered entirely the method of handling the tongue. I
have added a word as to the part the lips play in the production of
speech. In the few exercises it is safe to offer under the reinforcing
of tone I have used the _[=e]_ instead of the _ae_, convinced that it is
the more effective vowel sound through which to work for uninterrupted
tone.

It was also a pleasure to find my own instrument, through its training
for speech, adequately prepared for the work in song. The studies which
constitute _Part Three_ of this book, if faithfully attended, will fit
your voices for higher work in either art.

LEARNING TO SUPPORT THE TONE

Before attempting the exercises involved in the first ste