PSYCHOLOGY OF VOICE CONTROL 337 
PSYCHOLOaY APPLIED TO THE IMPROVEMENT OF 
CONTROL OF THE PITCH OF THE VOICE 
IN SINGING. 
CARL J. KNOCK. 
The object of this research is to ascertain some of the ele- 
ments in the acquisition of accuracY of pitch in singing. The 
study was divided into three divisions : (1) a preliminary series 
of five tests, in which no information was given the observer 
in regard to the accuracy of his singing; (2) a practice series 
of ten tests, during which the observer was informed of the 
error in pitch after each trial; and (3) a final series of five 
tests conducted in the same manner as the first. The object, of 
the first test was to ascertain the accuracy of their singing with- 
out training; the second w;as the training series, the object of 
which was to correct the errors and to form new tonal concepts 
and voluntary control; and the object of the third series was to 
find out whether or not the observers had profited by the train- 
ing in the second series and to what extent they carried it over 
into actual practice. 
The.tonoscope, a 256 v. d. tuning fork, and a resonator were 
used in this experiment. The observers, four men and eight 
women, were all interested in music, but none of them had had 
any special training in singing. The tones sung were the funda- 
mental, third, fifth, and octave. The f undamentah tone was ob- 
tained from the fork. As soon as the observer had the given 
tone clearly in mind, he sang that tone and immediately fol- 
lowed it by singing one of the intervals. 
The tables below give the average errors in terms of vibra- 
tions and the per cent of gain in the .second and- third series 
over the first. 
MEN. 
First Secofid Third 
series. . ■ , series;- ■ . r ’[^eries. 
Error. Error. Gain. Error. Gain. 
Per cent. Per cent. 
Fundamental 1.9 .5 77 1.1 42 
Third 2.4 .9 62 1.8 25 
Fifth 3.1 1.1 64 2.4 23 
Octave 2.3 1.2 47 1.9 22 
