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Stuart Hinds

stuart hinds

I would like to thank Dr. Richard Sjoerdsma, Editor-in-chief of the Journal of Singing , for suggesting the topic of this article. I have written several papers on contrapuntal practices and other compositional issues associated with overtone singing, but those works might give their readers the mistaken idea that what I am doing vocally, as unusual as it is, is not of general interest to singers. I believe that overtone singing is more than a mere vocal curiosity; it is not a magic trick that only I can perform. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to provide rationale for the investigation and use of overtone singing, and to show benefits that may come to any singer who makes the effort to try it.

OVERTONE SINGING BASICS

To begin, a brief definition of overtones and their function in music would seem appropriate. Every musical note is a composite sound consisting of a fundamental tone, which is usually the pitch we perceive, combined with a number of additional pure tones above it called harmonics or overtones. These overtones are not normally heard individually, but they are important elements of the sound. The greater or lesser prominence (amplitude) of some of the overtones over the others determines the timbre, or tone color, of the note. It is the overtone structure, called the spectrum , that makes the sound of each voice or instrument unique and identifiable, and that allows us to distinguish the sounds of the various musical instruments and to recognize individual voices. The significance for singers is that the greater the strength (amplitude) of the partials is, the richer and more brilliant their sound will be.

The term "overtone singing" refers to techniques that allow a singer to isolate one (or more) of the natural harmonic partials in the overtone series of a sung fundamental pitch, thus making audible two discrete pitches simultaneously. This is accomplished by altering the shape of the vocal tract in the same way that a singer uses vowels in speech or singing. In all the traditional overtone singing styles--the Tuvan, the Tibetan, and the Western--the singer creates a drone-based musical texture with a "melody" of overtones over an unchanging fundamental pitch.

A crucial difference between...

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