Squeal

“ The cavity of the mouth must be large enough to allow of the largest possible wave of sound, since upon the size of that, as we know, the strength of the tone depends. When the pupil, after some practice, has learned to give the right direction to the stream of sound, he must be required gradually to form the other vowels like the soo in the front part of the mouth, passing from this syllable immediately to the other vowels, as, for example, soo-a, soo-o, soo-e, soo-o-e-ah, &c. Only care must be taken that the course of the air preserves its right direction. ”

“ This, said Squealer, was something called tactics. He repeated a number of times, 'Tactics, comrades, tactics!' skipping round and whisking his tail with a merry laugh. The animals were not certain what the word meant, but Squealer spoke so persuasively, and the three dogs who happened to be with him growled so threateningly, that they accepted his explanation without further questions. ”

“ The audience laughed, but next day, sure enough, the Countryman appeared on the stage, and putting his head down squealed so hideously that the spectators hissed and threw stones at him to make him stop. "You fools!" he cried, "see what you have been hissing," and held up a little pig whose ear he had been pinching to make him utter the squeals.
Men often applaud an imitation, and hiss the real thing. ”

“ I awoke with a sound in my ears like the never-ceasing surge and hiss of waters, a sound that waxed ever louder. Hearkening to this, I presently sought to move and wondered, vaguely uneasy, to find this impossible: I strove now to lift my right hand, found it fast held, tried my left and found it in like case, and so became conscious of something that gripped me about the throat, and ever my wonder and unease grew. ”

“ But when she had not been making it for some hours, she was apt to forget just how, and to get it too high or low in the throat, producing an extraordinary collection of squeaks and grunts. She usually hit it at last; but after repeated losings, it became quite dissolved away among the many new ones it had apparently given rise to.
Later, she took much pains over some imperfect lip sounds; she would lie looking earnestly at me, draw her breath, gather her lips into shape, and finally explode the sound with a great expenditure of breath. ”

“ And the cheeks, too, are aids to speech, contracting and expanding in accordance with their structural arrangement, or propelling the voice through a narrow passage by various movements of the tongue, which it effects now with one part of itself now with another, giving hardness or softness to the sound which passes over it by contact with the teeth or with the palate. ”

“ There is no sense of fire or life, but the face is like a dull sculptured mass. The immobile face finds a sharp contrast in the alertness of the ears, which may be carried one forward and another back, but fixed and yet ready to turn to catch every sound. ”

“ I omit both here, for, since this publication of Garcia’s, the movements of the breath generating sound in expiration have been thoroughly investigated and determined by Prof. Helmholtz; and in the physical section of the present work all may be found that is of value in the culture of the singing voice. Whatever can be definitely communicated in regard to the working of the muscles of the larynx may likewise be found in any anatomical work. An acquaintance, however, with the action of these muscles is not directly necessary to our purpose, and is of interest only to the physiologist. ”

“ For when we hear, the drum of the ear, which is the first organ of hearing, is stricken; and the drum being stricken, the pia mater is also shaken, and with it the arteries which are inserted into it; by which the action being propagated to the heart itself, by the reaction of the heart a phantasm is made which we call sound; and because the reaction tendeth outwards, we think it is without. ”

“ This cavity is filled with a liquid, and when the drum of the ear is caused to vibrate by the air which is set in motion by sonorous bodies, it produces undulations of this liquid upon these nerves, and thus the sensation of sound is produced. By the expansion of other nerves, the sense of feeling is extended all over the body, excepting the nails and the hair. ”

“ By eleven o’clock most of the pigs have arrived, and the space allotted to them presents a lively spectacle: a fearful squeaking and squealing prevails. Proud mother pigs stand surrounded by enormous litters. ”

“ By death or distance parted will descend,
Severing, in crowded rooms ablaze with light,
As by a magic screen, the seer from the sight
(Palsying the nerves that intervene
The eye and central sense between) ;
⁠So may the ear,
⁠Hearing not hear,
Though drums do roll, and pipes and cymbals ring ”

“ For since each terminal nerve, of the thousands in the cochlea, responds to a given simple tone, the group of such tones forming a musical sound will excite a corresponding group of nerves, which will of course be related among themselves, as are the exciting tones among themselves ”

“ They learn to vary the pitch of their voices partly by feeling with the hand the vibrations of the throat and chest,—quick and in the throat for high tones, slow and in the chest for low ones—partly by help of Bell’s written signs, which represent the position peculiar to each sound of the various organs of speech—throat, tongue, lips, back of the mouth, &c. ”

“ The quicker and the more easily these movements take place, and the farther forward in the mouth the vibrating column of air is reflected, the more beautiful, full and telling is the tone. If the air rebounds farther back in the mouth from any part of the roof of the mouth, then the high inharmonic over-tones are prominent, and there arises either one or the other of those hollow, disagreeable colorings of timbre which are known as throat and nasal tones. ”

“ The squall that rose up, covering half the heavens, and swept down upon us, as likely as not split into two squalls which passed us harmlessly on either side while the tiny, innocent looking squall that appeared to carry no more than a hogshead of water and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with wind. ”

“ The loud dissonant sounds are produced by friction of the wings, which have hard, drumlike membranes and edges like curved files. He shuffles them with a continuity that is nerve-racking. Often I would suddenly start from sound sleep, with an indistinct apprehension of some impending peril. ”

“ Sometimes it requires a phonetician’s knowledge to understand the individual sound-laws of a child. Thus I pick out from some specimens given by O’Shea, p. 135 f. (girl, 2.9) , the following words: pell (smell) , teeze (sneeze) , poke (smoke) , tow (snow) , and formulate the rule: s + a nasal became the voiceless stop corre [108] sponding to the nasal, a kind of assimilation, in which the place of articulation and the mouth-closure of the nasals were preserved, and the sound was made unvoiced and non-nasal as the s. In other combinations m and n were intact. ”

“ It seems as if a solid and vigorous squeeze, as of a hearty handgrip, enters our very beings, and we feel the warming up at work inside us, as a mason works busily from below to brace a tottering wall. Every bit of this good feeling comes from our stomachs, and our hearts hasten to share in it. When we again plunge out into the rain, we work our jaws, thinking that now we can hold our own. ”

“ It should rise from the lungs through the bronchial tubes, the windpipe and the larynx into the mouth and flow out from between the lips like a river between smooth and even banks and bearing voice upon its current—a stream of melody. ”

“ The Word prohibits us from doing violence to nature [101] by boring the lobes of the ears. For why not the nose too?—so that, what was spoken, may be fulfilled: “As an ear-ring in a swine’s nose, so is beauty to a woman without discretion.” ”

“ It is these physical sensations that have given occasion to many erroneous conjectures in regard to the formation of tones, but we are satisfied that they have no direct relation to the generation of sound, and appear so only through the nerves active in the process. ”

“ Those who have never had a bit in their mouths cannot think how bad it feels; a great piece of cold hard steel as thick as a man's finger to be pushed into one's mouth, between one's teeth and over one's tongue, with the ends coming out at the corner of your mouth, and held fast there by straps over your head, under your throat, round your nose, and under your chin ”

“ When the limits of audibility are approached, the sound becomes much fainter, and when that limit is reached, the sound usually gives place to a peculiar sensation, which is not sound but more like dizziness, and which some persons experience to a high degree. Young people hear shriller sounds than older people, and I am told there is a proverb in Dorsetshire, that no agricultural labourer who is more than forty years old, can hear a bat squeak. ”

“ For cheek is what gets you on in the world nowadays. Why, if I had the cheek of that bird, I might be the Queen of Sheba. And yet he knew where to draw the line, did William. When I got the cage down, and stood it on the table with the door open, he understood that he'd got to go back, and let me catch him and put him back without so much as a murmur. ”

“ It is kept gently on the stretch by two small muscles, one of which draws it tighter, and the other loosens it, by acting upon a chain of small bones. We shall not undertake to describe the curious and complicated anatomy of the inner ear—the drum, containing air, the curious chain-work of minute vibrating bones, the labyrinth filled with water containing little crystalline particles and fine elastic bristles, and where the delicate fibres of the auditory nerve commence. ”

“ For the purposes of vocal utterance, inspiration into the thorax produces an expiration from the abdomen by way of the œsophagus, accompanied by vocal sound, while an inspiration into the abdomen produces an expiration from the thorax by way of the trachea, accompanied by vocal sound; the special mode of inspiration regulating the special sound to be produced. ”

“ His mouth also marks a supreme sadness, which depresses the lower lip and seems to weigh upon it, while the upper lip, contracted from the top to the bottom, expresses at once both physical suffering and that of the soul. Under the mouth there is an expression of indignation that seems to protest against an undeserved suffering, and is revealed in the nostrils, which swell out and enlarge and draw upwards. ”

“ Each must locate for himself his own difficulty, or go to a vocal specialist and have it located. The tension may be altogether in the muscles [Pg 318] governing the throat, or it may be in those about the mouth. There is the resultant, breathy tone, the hard tone, the nasal tone, the guttural tone, the tone that issues from a set jaw or an unruly tongue. All mean tension of muscles somewhere, and must be met by relaxation of these muscles and the freeing of the channel. How to relax the throat shall be our initial point of attack. ”

“ Others, more inquisitive, would explore the inside of your ears; while millions—actually millions—of pium, the tiny gnats—more impertinent than all the others taken together—dashed with great force up your nose, into your eyes, into your mouth, and far into your ears, and were most troublesome to remove. ”

“ Thus, by singing staccato the syllable koo, slowly at first and gradually quicker, with a movement of the larynx and windpipe that is both seen and felt; and with the tongue and lips at rest and motionless, the right movement is given to the organ in trills and all other embellishments, and by continued practice the movement becomes more rapid. Those who need to be taught this movement must never practice continuously for any length of time, for we must avoid fatiguing the organs. ”

“ A correct touch of the voice consists in causing the air, brought into vibration by the vocal ligaments, to rebound from immediately above the front upper teeth, where it must be concentrated as much as possible, rebounding thence to form in the mouth continuous vibrations, which are, at the same time, communicated to the external air. ”

“ An approximate sound may be observed by placing the palm of the left hand on the right ear and drawing a finger of the right softly over its back. The sound is quick and jerking, one or a few jerks only being heard with each inspiration as the act is cut short on account of the pain attending the friction. ”

“ He attributes the sound to the friction of the third and preceding abdominal segments, and I find that these surfaces are marked with very fine concentric ridges; but so is the projecting thoracic collar, into which the head articulates, and this collar, when scratched with the point of a needle, emits the proper sound. ”

“ After many hours of profound meditation on this subject I have come to the conclusion that this slight folding of the ear’s margin is the beginning of a new phase of human evolution. In course of time—this cannot be disproved—the fold of the margin will become larger and larger, until finally the shells of the ear will have been transformed into mobile lids for shutting out at will disagreeable noises, even as the eyelids have been developed to shut out glaring light. ”

“ It can be attained by practice, and is a vowel-sound produced far back and down in the throat. Special throat-muscles must be developed to produce it, so that a European can never imitate the sound at the first attempt. ”

“ To pronounce a ‘stressed’ syllable all organs are exerted to the utmost. The muscles of the lungs are strongly innervated; the movements of the vocal chords are stronger, leading on the one hand in voiced sounds to a greater approximation of the vocal chords, with less air escaping, but greater amplitude of vibrations and also greater risings or fallings of the tone. In voiceless sounds, on the other hand, the vocal chords are kept at greater distance (than in unstressed syllables) and accordingly allow more air to escape. ”

“ On the other hand, the vocal organs show no straining when the action of a higher series of tones is kept for a lower, only the fulness of the tones is thereby diminished.
III. We have further seen that only the transition from the chest register to the falsetto is in all voices at the same tones, the fa fa ; but, both in men’s and women’s voices, the other transitions of the registers are different. As the male larynx is about a third larger than the female, it is plain that the registers in the male voice have a greater expansion. ”