THE HUMAN VOICE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4365, 13 January 1922, Page 3

THE HUMAN VOICE.

ITS IMPERFECTIONS.

Mr Thomas. A. Edison, in an interview, said:

"The object o! an inventor, attempting to produce a phonograph, should be tp achieve the highest possible degree of realism.. That has constantly been my goal, and, as is now well known, we have succeeded to a point where our phonograph reproduces, or re-creates, the human voice and other forms of music, with such fidelity to the original that the most sensitive ears are unable to distinguish an.’.' difference. Our success in registering and emitting every quality of the human voice has revealed some rather remarkable facts.

“I have collected, through my agents in Europe and America, phoney graphic voice trials by approximately 3800 singers. Of these there are but 22 who sing pure notes, without extraneous sounds and the almost universal tremolo effect. A singer’s tri 1 ! is quite a different thing from a tremolo. A trill can be and is controlled by the brain, but a tremolo is not within brain control, and, so far, there has been no means found for correcting it. Most singers cannot sustain a note without breaking it up into a series of chatterings, or tremolos. The number of waves varies from two per second to as high as twelve. When at the latter rate the chatter can just be heard and is not particularly objectionable. When at a slower rate it is very objectionable. “If this defect could be eliminated nothing would exceed the beauty of the human voice, but, until this ’S done, there will be only a few singers in a century who can emit pure notes in all registers. Patti, for example, was- conspicuous for emitting pure notes, except in the lower part of her scale, and she was always reluctant to sing ,a song requiring the use o? her lower register.”