Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/149

Rh listener. The point at which the readjustment takes place, i.e., the place where the voice goes from one register into another, is called the break; and one of the things the voice trainer tries to do for each pupil is to teach him to pass so skilfully from one register to another that these breaks will not be noticeable to the hearer—the voice eventually sounding an even scale from its lowest to its highest tone. There is considerable difference of opinion as to the number of registers existing in any one voice, but perhaps the majority of writers incline to the view that there are three; the chest or lower, the thin or middle, and the small or head. It should be noted, however, that the readjustment in the action of the vocal cords referred to above probably .takes place only when passing from the lowest register to the next higher one, and that such changes in action as occur at other points are more or less indefinite and possibly even somewhat imaginary. Authorities differ as to just what the change in mechanism is in passing from the chest register to the middle one; but the most plausible explanation seems to be that in the lowest register, the change in pitch from a lower tone to the next higher one is accomplished at least partly by stretching the vocal bands more tightly, and that when the limit of this stretching process has been reached, the cords relax slightly, and from this point on each higher tone is made by shortening the vibrating portion of the cords; in other words, by decreasing the length of the glottis (the aperture between the vocal cords). This point may become clearer if we compare the process with tuning a violin string. The string may be a third or a fourth below its normal pitch when the violinist begins to tune his instrument, but by turning the peg and thus stretching the string tighter and tighter, the tone is raised by small degrees until the string gives forth the pitch that it is supposed to sound. But this same string may now be made to play higher and higher