John Duffill

I moved to Gloucester in 1982, and after I had settled in I looked down the list of Full Members and Associates in the Journal to see who was the nearest to Gloucester. In the list of Associate Members I found the name of John Duffill who lived at Cheltenham. I rang him up to ask if he would be interested in having lessons on Sinus Tone. After some thought he agreed, and was my very regular and enthusiastic pupil from 1984- 1987, when I had to leave the district for family reasons. During that time John kindly agreed to be one of my "guinea-pigs" when I took my practical examination in 1985, to become a registered teacher of Sinus Tone Production.

As a result of his lessons with me, John began to attend our meetings regularly. He was eventually elected to the Council and after a year or two became our very able Chairman.

John's interest in STP went back to his youth in the 1930's. In his article in the Journal of 1983, p.5, on "Ernest George White Remembered", he says: "1 loved songs, singing and choral music and found that, in my late teens (after my voice had broken, and should have settled), my voice was disappointingly not very good -so this set me thinking about voice production and the true nature of the voice. I learned about STP from the musical journals, where fierce battles then raged, and read E.G. White's books. I found therein something that was original, interesting and at least trying to be scientific, analytic and constructive, as opposed to other literature or advice on voice production which seemed mainly half-baked or sometimes downright ludicrous".

As a result of his studies John contracted E.G. White himself and had one lesson with him, described in his article. Alas, John was not able to return for another lesson, as White advised, because this was August 1939 and World War II intervened and he joined the army. White died in 1940. However, John subsequently had a few lessons in the 1950's in Birmingham with my father, Laurence West.

We in the Society were all very interested in John's studies on the acoustics of voice. I was glad to be his "guinea-pig" in my turn, and I recorded my voice for him at his home in Cheltenham in December 1988. I had to sing throughout my range, firstly on a hum and then to "ah". John gave me his findings at the next meeting. These proved most interesting and confirmed some of the textbook findings on the subject. They also confirmed some of the impressions I had myself with regard to my own voice, and showed up other factors I had not realised before.

In May 1989, John gave a talk and demonstration at the Society's meeting on: "Some experiments in acoustical analysis of the singing voice". Our President, Arthur Hewlett, and our three guest singers were invited to sing notes into a microphone and to see the corresponding waveforms on an oscilloscope. They were intrigued to see the patterns each individual voice made. John entitled his talk: "1 See a Voice" (Shakespeare, "Midsummer Night's Dream").

I was very sad to hear of John's untimely death on December 12th, 1993.1 will miss him as a friend and colleague, and the Society has lost not only an able Chairman, but a keen and enthusiastic member whose support was invaluable.

Ann McKay