Today’s blog is a report on my bizarre experience of being invited to the Polyphonic Singing Festival in Albania in 2008. I was the furthest away of all foreigners (British Columbia, Canada). The others were a small older group from Greece and Tenores di Bitti from Sardinia.
All the other singers were Albanian choirs, representing several variations of the national singing form- UNESCO proclaimed “masterpiece of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity”, otherwise known as Shqiptar-Iso-polyphony. You can learn more from this video.
What was fairly strange for these folks was the presence of a solo singer. How could a single person be singing polyphonically? As soon as they heard my overtone singing, there were audible bursts of ‘Aha!’ Now they understood that I was splitting my voice into 2 separate controlled pitches, moving in counterpoint.
Strangeness…well it abounded, firstly due to the location of this festival. It took place on a high hilltop, in a 3rd century BC amphitheater setting (the ancient ruins of Bylis). Most of the seating had eroded away.
Another odd element of my participation was due to there being no electricity. They would have been perfectly fine with all the rest of the singers, but my act required electricity/ amplification for my computer, keyboard and mic. They had to go and find the necessary equipment, a sound engineer and a generator (very noisy) to haul up there. I don’t think that they generally have a lot of experience with audio gear. Many of the Albanian choirs, deciding to take advantage of this new-found technology, had certain members almost screeching into the mics, creating a lot of distortion in the inadequate outdoor speaker system.
I was supposed to perform on the first evening. I’d asked for an 88 key electric keyboard that had a reasonable piano sound, as the 49 key one I brought with me was just for the looping and various effects. They found something, though it was less than 88 keys, with very complex looking controls. I had no time to figure out how to get a piano sound out of it.
So there I was, waiting to set up and get some kind of sound check with an engineer who spoke no English. It was worrisome that time was getting on, and the crowd was already large. The master of ceremonies proceeded to announce my name to start my performance when none of the set up had even begun. Panic setting in, I explained from the wings that it was impossible to go on.
The next day, I was able to communicate just enough with the engineer to make the sound work, in time for the afternoon concert. This was reasonably successful, and ensured that later that evening, things would go smoothly for the finale.
The most rewarding part of this whole journey was getting to hang with (and jam with) the Tenores di Bitti from Sardinia. They are a quartet of men performing a one thousand year old tradition of vocals which include rich overtones sung together rhythmically in immaculate precision. You can learn more about it at their official site.
You can watch a video mash-up of me performing in the Albania festival here.
Today I will bring your attention to a few composers of overtone music. By this, I mean those that actually score their pieces. Mostly, these artists compose for overtones choirs, where some or all the singers are skilled in overtone singing. Often, the notation requires singers to be able to sing polyphonically, with fundamentals and overtones moving contrapuntally. Some of the pieces do not require a high level of skill and most singers are capable of the directions. And of course, there are those that score out solo pieces as well.
The genres covered by overtone composers also vary- from New Age to New Classical to pop/ experimental and beyond.
The styles of notation in overtone music vary slightly from one to the other, but perhaps in future there will be a universal standard set of ‘rules’ that everyone can follow. When Karlheinz Stockhausen composed his ‘Stimmung‘ in 1968, he used quite a different and complex system based upon vowels rather than a numbering system commonly used today.
So, besides myself being one of these composers, here is a partial list of some more. (I will eventually add more to this list in further blogs). I have sung compositions in overtone choirs from the first four mentioned here.
Sarah Hopkins (Australia)
Stuart Hinds (USA)
Linda Alexandersson (Sweden)
Baird HerseyUSA)
Lothar BergerGermany)
For examples of some of my overtone notation for choir, click here.
CommentFor all musicians, ear training is especially important. It is a small percentage of the population born with ‘perfect pitch’. Research has shown that those whose native tongue is one of the ‘melodic’ languages are more likely to be endowed with this ability (i.e. Chinese). This can be a huge boost in musical endeavors, but also can prove to be a burden. These people are extremely sensitive to anything out of tune and it can drive them crazy! For myself, I was not born with it, nor have I ever developed it, but I think that at times I’ve been able to ‘memorize’ a pitch if I get a certain anchor tune in my head.
It may be developed later in life, although it may be more successful if taught to young children, whose ears are more adaptable than adults. The best resource for this training is David Lucas Burge’s Ear Training Library.
Relative pitch (also taught through the above link), is quite different in nature and may be taught quite successfully to anyone. Once one establishes a root pitch, they may learn to identify at least a second pitch above or below it. I believe this is by far the most necessary ability for musicians of any kind. In jazz college, I was blessed with a wonderful ear training teacher, Sam Lancaster. He very methodically opened our ears in a progressive system that became quite complex in later stages.
For overtone singing, if one is to pursue serious polyphonic movement particularly, the ability to recognize intervals is very important. Not only does one need to know what the various intervals are (mainly the ones present in the natural harmonic series, and secondarily other intervals as they relate to the movement of the fundamentals), but also the singer needs to really hear these intervals present in their own voice. This requires a certain inner monitoring of oneself. Often, beginning overtone singers produce lovely clear overtones that others hear easily, but the singer still does not hear them themselves. They need encouragement that the overtones are definitely there.
One helpful idea I recommend for beginning overtone singers is the use of tuning forks. The most useful combinations for this practice are those that produce:
- a perfect 5th (C and G above, or A and E above) for recognizing the 6th harmonic
- a major third (C and E above) for recognizing the 5th and 10th harmonics
The next most important would be those that produce:
- a natural 7th (C and Bb above) for recognizing the 7th harmonic
- a major 9th (C and D above) for recognizing the 9th harmonic
The way to use these tuning forks is to first strike the lower pitched fork and hold the end to one ear, just in front of the little flap of cartilage at the mid area. Then immediately strike the other fork and do the same at the other ear. You can try this with alternating which ear gets the fundamental. Done often enough, the intervals become reinforced in the brain.
I will get further into the topic of tuning forks in a later blog, as there are many different frequencies of forks used for various purposes according to various value systems (i.e. not according to ‘artificial’ concert pitch).
Another useful approach to identifying intervals is by the association of certain well known songs with the first two notes creating a certain interval. You can find a good list of these here.
Comment
Welcome to my brand new blog! Harmonicovertones.com has just launched the new online overtone singing course. I’m very excited about this, as I’ve got so much to share with you. Apart from the course (of course!). For all of you fine blog reading folks out there who share a common love of overtones and all such related stuff, I aim to provide a wealth of useful and thought provoking tidbits. Many will be specifically about the world of overtones, but I will take lots of detours. The kind of detours that we never expect to take in life, but nonetheless spark all kinds of adventures and opportunities to expand our consciousness. I’ll introduce you to folks you really ought to know about, if you don’t already.
I’ve worked hard at creating what I believe to be a very (perhaps even the most) comprehensive course about western (polyphonic) overtone singing, bringing it into new under-explored realms of innovation. I’ve gotten down to the nitty gritty about every imaginable detail. Without getting overly technical, I’ve developed a ‘user friendly’ approach that I think most singers can relate to. Those that hunger for advanced formulas, algorithms and charts may easily find that type of information. From what I have witnessed, there seems to be big gap between the musical mainstream and the overtone community. My goal is to bridge this gap and bring the huge potential of the human voice into common knowledge. And to have all kinds of fun in the process.
I’d love to have you join in and to read your comments in the future. And don’t forget to ‘like’ and ‘share’!
CommentIn 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).
