The development of a notation system for overtone music has not reached unanimous agreement as to standardization. Since the earliest composers of western overtone music started immortalizing it on paper, most of them have more or less invented their own way of conveying it.
In the late 60′s, early 70′s, both Folke Rabe and Karlheinz Stockhausen had elaborate scores that more resembled hieroglyphics to describe ‘events’.
Stockhausen did not rely on numbers of harmonics, and instead used a system of vowels according to the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Coming up to the present day, with a few more polyphonic overtone composers on the scene, it is beginning to take some shape that skilled overtone singers can follow.
The way I write has the following components:
*The overtone part, whichever range (SATB), has two staves, with the lower representing the fundamental pitches
*The upper stave represents the pitch of the overtone
*The overtone pitches have diamond shaped heads
*The numbers beneath the fundamentals represent the numbers of the overtones in the harmonic series
*The upper stave notes (pitches) are usually written one or two octaves below the actual sounding pitch. This is for convenience of sight reading, and our ears tend to perceive them as being lower anyway.
*The upper stave uses the treble clef with a small 8 above it to indicate the pitches sound an octave higher.
*In some cases, the treble clef with the number 15 above it indicate the pitches sound 2 octaves higher.
The number system used for the overtones has generally come to agreement that the 2nd harmonic is the octave above the fundamental, the 3rd is the fifth above that, the 4th is in the 2nd octave, etc.
Tuvan throat singing, as it appeared in their folk music, was never formally written down. It was not until the latter half of the past century that attempts were made to transcribe it by outside music scholars. Understandably, it was quite a difficult and obtuse representation that included numerous odd time signature changes. I’m sure that the original singers of these ‘pieces’ of music never once considered these elements.
Here’s some transcribed scores of a few of the Tuvan styles and sub- styles, with titles in Russian.
part 1
part 2
Other modern composers you can check out are:
Christian Bollmann (Germany)
Stuart Hinds (USA)
Baird Hersey (USA)
Sarah Hopkins (Australia)
And especially exciting for all you modern overtone singers (and aspiring ones) is a collection of 8 free scores of my music for overtone choir. I hope you will learn your parts (either regular or overtone parts), and join the virtual choir.
CommentMy good friend and overtone singing expert Wolfgang Saus has been researching the voice for over two decades. He has developed a brand new approach to the use of formants in singing, that is about to revolutionize the choral and classical singing world. He has even crossed the previously impenetrable barrier between western overtone singing and the opera world. So it is only a question of how the ‘twains’ shall meet. He recently related a story to me, of how a frustrated operatic tenor, who had a problem with his passaggio (transition from chest voice to head voice), frantically drove for 5 hours to meet with him. Wolfgang gave him simple exercises which solved this problem once and for all. The opera singer was gob smacked. He then went home and presented this new found knowledge to his fellow opera singing friends with similar issues. All were amazed.
He also told me that the IPA experts (International Phonetic Alphabet) were all mistaken when they claimed that only one possibility of a pattern of formants was responsible for any given vowel. And he’s got the proof.
So it is this new sensibility and new found cooperation between disciplines that I hope to bring your attention to. Where is this leading? To a disruption of the status quo? One can only imagine. As for me, as a professional overtone singer and composer of overtone choir music, I intend to be involved as a bridge in this scenario. It also means becoming more clever about writing lyrics with certain vowels on certain frequencies that can bring about the most effective results.
Here’s a link to a paper by Wolfgang Saus on this topic of formants, as it relates to Stockhausen‘s composition Stimmung.
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