Overtone singing – this woman will astound you
She certainly astounded me, anyway. No wonder she has over 17 million views.
If you want to learn the technique in your spare time, here’s a lesson from the same woman:
And here’s a longer lesson from someone else:
I had a high school teacher for AP Music History- part of AP Humanities- who IIRC demonstrated getting 2 different simultaneous tones out of his trombone. In his younger years, he had played trombone in one of the Dorsey brothers’ bands. After about a decade of teaching high school, he resumed his former life as a full-time jazz musician. I looked him up in Leonard Feather’s Jazz Encyclopedia. He was definitely NOT of the “If you can’t… teach,” crowd. Also a very good teacher.
Many of our North American thrushes sing polytones (Wood, Swainsons, Hermit, etc.) but the Veery, to my ears anyhow, has this quality in spades — champ of the heap.
https://youtu.be/cK1gaTqBRRk
This is also a skill that former Pentatonix bass singer Avi Kaplan is famous for.
Mongolian throat singers + the lady above
https://youtu.be/qhSEKxQjOpY
You can go the other way and sing really low too, using “subharmonics.”
Geoff Castellucci does some low notes like that throughout this song and the final note’s really impressive — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrg0ksSQdw
And then he’s got these tutorials:
How to sing low — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKLaYGHJoJM
Q&A part 1 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW-s5fotJNo
Q&A part 2 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVGFTMb_3ns
I can’t deny that the woman is very talented or has put a lot of time and effort into such an interesting skill.
But that just doesn’t sound very pleasant.
Guitar overtones or harmonics are old hat compared to the vocal variety, but I thought this guy is special.
Neo’s fave, British Wings of Pegasus guitarist analyzes Sonny Landreth’s “harmonics” playing.
This song, Brave New Girl has overtone playing throughout, but the weird one for me when I saw him live, is at the end (4:50) where he uses his open right hand palm to damp the fundamental tone while leaving the high pitched overtones.
Mitchell Strand:
It’s a a decidedly unpleasant sound.
LOL. She sounds like a Theramin, though those only produce single tones… 😀
This came up on the first vid when it finished
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNaPmq8n6S8
She has a workshop on it.
}}} This is also a skill that former Pentatonix bass singer…
Did we not just have a discussion about EARWORMS?
So, we chose one of the worst EARWORMS, in the entire history of music, to demonstrate this technique?
No. Just NO.
😛
“The Bass Singer” has some other stuff that is interesting…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnAQQ-HSLU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVnAQQ-HSLU
Then there this one:
https://youtu.be/zT894S_zoD0
Which made me think instantly of this one (Warning: language… Seriously)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0LgBgdApo4
I can whistle and sing at the same time (though not with words). Does that count?
Seriously, this is interesting but, like juggling and other curiosities, I think I’ll pass on spending time to learn this.
Is it music, or singing, or just noise?
The classic example.
(Warning! Don’t turn on the sound.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdZ9weP5i68&t=66s
She has amazing vocal control, really amazing. But how would one compose for this? What melody would showcase this type of skill I wonder? Aside from being relegated to a special sound effect in a science fiction movie, maybe, I wonder how a serious composition would treat such a skill. Calling Charles Ives…..
These people are aliens. Are we sure that’s not actually Klaatu’s niece or something?
In Byzantine psalmody, theoretically this ability could have considerable value, but unfortunately it seems impossible to form words while making these efforts. It would be nice for a solo chanter to be able to chant melody of a hymn and hold ison (what they call here foundation) at the same time, but it would really be unrealizable in practice. Well, in the meantime, a reasonably well-trained solo chanter will already have the ison accessible in his head mentally even without an isocratima chanting with him. But even if it were possible to do this overtone singing in the psalmodic context, when time comes that one has to change modes within the same hymn, yikes.