Saturday 15 October 2011

Overtone singing

We are always keen to explore the art and science of vocals and singing and this was recently received from Brother Chris A.

"A sprinkling of the Magnificent AK47 brotherhood recently attended a workshop on overtone singing in Bradford-on-Avon. As always, google is your friend but I've included a couple of video clips that do a good job of illustrating the techniques.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zZainT9v6Q

This first clip is remarkable in having such a range of styles sung by the same person. We were working towards the first style (khoomei) with varying degrees of success but it is exciting to hear those first overtones start to ring out. As with anything, I suspect they will strengthen with practice.

For those who want a more visual explanation, try this:


What's interesting here is not so much the technique proposed but the tool he uses to illustrate it. He has downloaded a spectrum analyser that he uses to show the overtones. This gives great feedback when experimenting. I looked at the application menu headers on the video and searched for them on google and came up with the app he was using: it's called Visual Analyzer and can be downloaded for free from http://www.sillanumsoft.org/. I have just downloaded Visual Analyzer 2011 onto my laptop running Window 7 and it works really well. It is particularly interesting to move from the OOO to the EEE sound and see all the higher frequency harmonics growing in amplitude on the right hand side of the spectrum.

"And I love her" in Dag Kargyraa style anyone?

Chris A"

As Chris mentions, give the phrase "throat singing" a Google (other search engines are available!) or follow the suggestions from the YouTube site and you can wander off for a fascinating journey into the world of overtone singing.

You might also like to look at http://khoomei.com/types.htm which has many links to other sites.

Not to be confused with THE Overtones, a popular vocal harmony group of a similar name.

See more at www.overtones.tv, they are supposed to be very good.

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