In the present atmosphere of western overtone music, most of the stuff out there is still based on a single note drone for the fundamental. This allows one specific set of pitches available for the harmonics for the entire length of the piece. Much of this material focuses on new age/spiritual/healing/ meditation type music. This is great, for those people whose main interest in overtones is related to healing. I’d like to expand on this idea here.
I mentioned that most of the therapeutic benefits of overtoning are ‘automatic’ regardless of how you are using them. I don’t feel it is necessary to dwell on these aspects. If one is so inclined, overtoning can be taken so much further into musical applications. I firmly believe this is the future of overtone singing. Western overtone singing is a very young discipline, with no real ‘tradition’ attached to it. It’s only been around since the late ’60s (with a few instances earlier than that), and has been growing in the public consciousness very slowly to this day. In comparison to Central Asian throat singing (the original inspiration behind it), which has many centuries of history, there is plenty of room for innovation.
One of the most satisfying developments of my years of experience in overtoning has been an increased level of intuition. By this I mean in improvisational situations, I can automatically navigate the ‘mathematical’ aspects, sub-consciously, subliminally if you will, so I can sing polyphonically over almost any background which has a lot of chord changes. In contrast to Central Asian throat singing, progressive western overtone singing incorporates a great deal of movement of the lower fundamental. (In Tuvan folk music, Mongolian and Tibetan throat singing, generally the fundamental remains the same throughout).
