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i78 TRAINING THE SINGING VOICE
scope of this study but are available, for reference, in any standard encyclopedia or physiology text.
Theories of Ear Training general considerations
Ear training has as Its primary purpose the building up of the power to feel, think and express in tone. Its method is to give students "opportunities to think music before they sing or play it." [Mursell and Glenn 413, p. 169] In this educative process the ear is the receptor, or transformer of energy, which definitely contributes to the performance. [Owsley 441, p. 1] Proschowski points out that, through the sense of hearing, the ear controls the mechanism of voice, whether in singing or speaking. [455] All other trained muscular mechanisms achieve their coordination by the senses of touch or seeing, but the voice is unique in that it responds almost exclusively to the auditory sense in its method of control. [Brew 148] Murseil likewise states that "aural perceptions seem considerably more important for vocal control than any kinaesthetic elements.** In other words, becoming "ear-minded" is an essential factor in musical training. [411, p. 227]
After making an exhaustive study of comparative anatomy, Negus comes to the conclusion that "perception of vibrations [hearing] was acquired before the power of purposive production of sound." He also finds that "discrimination of differences of pitch by the organ of hearing is very much more sensitive than differences of shade in sight or of odours in olfaction. . . . Man makes greater use of differences of pitch than do any animals." [418, p. 288] Philip compares the organ of hearing to "an intricate piano having about 16,000 strings," each of which can be made to vibrate alone or in combination with others. [446, p. 17] The average ear can detect pitch differences as small as 1/17 of a tone and the trained ear acquires a sensitivity that may respond to 1/100 of a tone or less. It is this sensitivity to minute pitch differences that contributes to the ear's perception of overtones and vocal quality. On the other hand, a poor ear can be insensitive to pitch differences as large as a semitone. [Seashore 505] According to Negus, the faculty of pitch discrimination Is most acute for tones "whose vibration rates are between 128 dv. and 256 dv., pitches which roughly comprise the range of the conversational voice." [Op. cit., p. 482] Lewis and Lichte find experimentally that **a trained listener might perceive two complex tones as being different in timbre and yet be unable to designate the exact nature of the difference in terms of (say) saliency of specific partials." [341] |
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