Lynn Allen, Age 12, of Waxahachie, Texas for her question:
How do you yodel?
Yodel practice may be very upsetting to friends and neighbors. So get some records of expert yodelling and take your phonograph off into the vast outdoors of Texas, When you are practiced enough to entertain you may want a costume like those worn in the yodelling territory of the Swiss and Tyrolean Alps. White blouse with gay embroidery, colored skirts and fancy bonnet. Boys wear gayly embroidered suspenders, shoes tough enough for mountain hiking, a cane and a jaunty hat with a jaunty little feather.
In the Alps, the mountaineers set the air dancing with their echoing yodels. Shepherds yodel to each other from slope to slope. For the yodel voice trick carries well in mountain country, Yodel comes from a German word meaning jubilant. You will see why when you listen to the merry notes swooping up and down on your records.
A yodeller will tell you that anybody can yodel. You need good lungs, strong voice and the ability to carry a tune. And, of course, practice. in yodel country, practice starts early. The first efforts are as horrible as your own will be. Girls can yodel. But boys are usually better yodeler than girls.
Every boy goes through a yodel stage, though he may not call it that. At the proper time, his voice changes from a boys to a mans. The deep man's voice may arrive suddenly and startle everyone by taking over in the middle of a sentence. It does not arrive to stay. A fellow needs time to handle a medium deep voice. Meantime he swoops between very low and very high. And that is the whole trick to yodeling.
The yodel singer swings his voice fast between very low and very high. The switch about creates a freakish vocal effect, very cheerful and pleasant when done properly. Actually, there is no freakishness to the trick. We train our voice to keep within a middle register, The very high and very low notes get rusty from lack of use.
Your speaking voice can go down to a lower register or up to a higher one: You can sing up and down a scale of notes, Deep singing is made with the chest voice. High singing is made with the head voice. Start yodel practice by switching fast between your highest and lowest notes,
When a boys voice changes, he may lose his choir soprano voice. But he, can still sing high notes in a register called falsetto. This is not a false range, The throat and tongue lift the notes high in the mouth. A girl can do the same thing.
The trick is to master the fast switch from chest to falsetto voice. The yodeler uses tongue and pallet to control the high notes and swoop them around. There is plenty of open space in Texas in which to practice, Remember, Andy wants no complaints from. the beautiful city of Dallas when you start your yodeling.