Voice Production in Singing and Speaking

Voice Production in Singing and Speaking Synopsis

Excerpt: ...palate is seen terminating in the uvula, and on each side, extending from it, are the pillars of the fauces, a pair of folds between which the tonsil is seen to lie. Fig . 48. View of the nose, etc., from behind, showing the parts enumerated above. It is not hard to understand that any considerable amount of swelling of the lining mucous membrane might give rise to difficulty in breathing through the nose, and even compel mouth-breathing. Fig . 49 (Spalteholz). Showing well the scroll (turbinated) bones of the nose, which break up the space and make it more cavernous. It can be seen that there is free communication behind, between the mouth and the nasal cavities, and that if the soft palate and the tongue approximate, the breath-stream must pass into and through the nose, giving rise to nasality in utterance. A short description of a part to which many voice-users remain strangers all their lives will now be given. These resonance-chambers remain, for many, an apparatus used daily and absolutely essential, yet never examined. Fortunately, a few illustrations, which should be followed by an examination of the student's own resonance-chambers and their various parts as they may be seen in a mirror, will remove all difficulty in the understanding of them, and prepare for that detailed study to be recommended in a subsequent chapter. Passing from before backward, one meets the lips, the teeth and gums, the hard palate, which is a continuation of the gums; then, suspended from the hard palate, behind, is the soft palate, back of which lies the pharynx (often termed "the throat"), and above it and constituting its continuation, the naso-pharynx; and lying on the floor of the mouth there is the tongue. Certain of these parts, as the teeth, gums, hard palate, nasal bones, etc., constitute fixed structures, and though they determine in no small measure the shape of the resonance-chambers, and so to a degree the quality of the voice, so movable...