Foto des Sammelbandes Weichnachtslieder von Jan Heinke

In memoriam Jan Heinke 2 – Christmas Song Collection

Dear fellow aficionados of Jan Heinke’s overtone music,

I would like to tell you again today about this moving story that touched me deeply. In April 2022, my friend and musician Jan Heinke passed away. But just a few hours before his death, he wrote me an email with a special attachment.

In this email, Jan told me that he felt he would no longer be able to complete his work and asked me to take care of it. I knew what to do. Attached was a huge collection of folk songs from all over the world that Jan had set for overtone singing – several hundred songs! Jan had already started working on this in 2013 and had received a work grant from the Kulturstiftung Sachsen.

Together with Jan’s partner Claudia, we have now completed the second volume of the series with 35 Christmas carol movements for polyphonic overtone singing. On the occasion of the 3rd Advent 2023, this volume will be published here and on Jan’s website as a free e-book with a free Creative Commons license.

Jan’s nine years of dedicated work on these arrangements will now be posthumously shared with the public, fulfilling his cherished desire. According to a report on the project, the initial objective was to explore the potential of overtone singing as a vocal technique for both performers and composers in Western culture, an area that had not yet been extensively investigated. These song arrangements were intended to encourage the practical application of overtone singing in music.

I am both grateful and honored to continue Jan’s legacy and share his remarkable work with the world. His music will live on and inspire others – exactly as he wished.

Warm regards, Wolfgang

Jan Heinke – Memories of Jan

Download: Christmas Songs set for Overtone Singing by Jan Heinke – ebook

Photo of the anthology Christmas Songs by Jan Heinke

Foto des Notenbandes Deutsche Volkslieder im Satz für Obertongesang von Jan Heinke

In memoriam Jan Heinke – German Folk Song Collection

Hello fellow aficionados of Jan Heinke’s overtone music,

I am eager to share with you an emotionally charged story that has profoundly touched me. In April of last year, my dear friend and talented musician, Jan Heinke, sadly passed away. However, just hours before his untimely departure, he sent me an email containing a very special attachment.

In the email, Jan confided that he felt he wouldn’t be able to complete his work and requested that I see it through. I instantly knew what I had to do. Attached was a vast compilation of folk songs from around the globe, meticulously arranged for overtone singing by Jan – several hundred songs in total! He had initially begun working on this project in 2013 and had received a grant from the Kulturstiftung Sachsen to support his efforts.

In collaboration with Jan’s life partner, Claudia, we managed to finalize the first volume of the series, featuring 126 German folk songs adapted for polyphonic overtone singing. To commemorate the anniversary of his passing on April 20th, 2023, this volume will be made available on Jan’s website as a free e-book, complete with a complimentary Creative Commons license.

Jan’s nine years of dedicated work on these arrangements will now be posthumously shared with the public, fulfilling his cherished desire. According to a report on the project, the initial objective was to explore the potential of overtone singing as a vocal technique for both performers and composers in Western culture, an area that had not yet been extensively investigated. These song arrangements were intended to encourage the practical application of overtone singing in music.

I am both grateful and honored to continue Jan’s legacy and share his remarkable work with the world. His music will live on and inspire others – exactly as he wished.

Warm regards, Wolfgang

Jan Heinke – Memories of Jan
Download: Deutsche Volkslieder arranged for Overtone Singing PDF

Foto des Notenbandes Deutsche Volkslieder im Satz für Obertongesang von Jan Heinke

Autumn forest with sunrays

Forest Birds – My Contribution to World Listening Day 2022

July 18, 2022 is World Listening Day again. Forest Birds. I recorded them to be able to accompany my future planned overtone chanting meditation music with them.

Since the use of other people’s sound material in own productions often causes problems with copyright protection, I make this recording freely available to everyone and publish it under public domain, or CC0 license. So, help yourself if you like it.

Download mp3 (320 kBit/s): Waldvögel

Download wav: Waldvögel


CC0
To the extent possible under law,
Wolfgang Saus

has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Waldvögel (090524-Vogelzwitschern-Hky-320.mp3) and Waldvögel (090524-Vogelzwitschern-Hky.wav) audio files.

This work is published from: Deutschland.

Free: sing2 – A Practice Book for Polyphonic Overtone Singing for Female Voice, English Version

 

It gives me great pleasure to present a book by two of my students and graduates of my overtone singing master class:
“sing2 – Overtone Melodies for Women”, by Beate Eckert and Barbara Lübben.

As the pitch increases, the number of singable overtones decreases. Polyphonic overtone singing therefore places high demands on women’s voices, as high voices have to change the fundamental tone more frequently than low voices in order to achieve certain melodic tones with overtones (→ Composing with overtone singing).

Barbara Lübben and Beate Eckert have published this booklet with polyphonic overtone singing exercises that specifically addresses the requirements of high voices and makes it easier for women to get started with polyphonic overtone singing. However, male voices can also transpose the melodies into their own register.

One of the challenges in learning overtone singing is the coordination of resonance and singing tone. The multitasking involved in concentrating on two melodies often initially leads to confusion between the two melody-generating principles in overtone singing. While the fundamental voice is produced by the vocal cords as usual, the overtone melody is created by changing the shape of the mouth and the pharynx.

Sing2 uses familiar melodies for the overtone part, which makes it easier to concentrate on two melodies sung at the same time. Even if you lose your bearings, which will definitely happen at the beginning, you will find your way back into a familiar melody more quickly.

I really enjoy the exercises myself and like to use them in my advanced courses.

The free English edition of sing2 was published in November of the coronavirus year 2020. The two authors have decided not only to make this edition available free of charge, but also to provide a download with sound files in which all the pieces are sung by the authors themselves.

If you like (and you definitely will), you can find a link on their homepage for a donation, which I of course encourage everyone who enjoys or benefits from the booklet to do. You can also buy the German edition in printed form together with a CD on the website.

 

https://www.polyphona.de/sing2-en.html

Voice Disorders - a Focus of Clinical Speech Science (in German)

Currently FREE: Voice Disorders – a Focus of Clinical Speech Science

As the Federal Association of German Clinical Speech Scientists announced today, the jubilee volume on the occasion of the DBKS’s 25th anniversary, Voice Disorders – a Focus of Clinical Speech Science, is currently available free of charge in Open Access. “This is a reminiscence of our wonderful colleague and former DBKS board member Anke Bergt, who died far too early and who had acted as co-editor,” said the spokeswoman of the Department of Speech Science and Phonetics and director of the Institute of Music, Media and Speech Sciences, Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Susanne Voigt-Zimmermann.

I contributed a short text on the control of formants to the volume. You can read the volume online and download it as PDF.

→Voice Disorders – a Focus of Clinical Speech Science (in German)

How Achim Winter (German TV channel ZDF) set out one morning to learn overtone singing…

Note: The video does not work in some countries.

Achim Winter is going on another adventure and attends an overtone singing class with Wolfgang Saus. A cheerful German television team, Achim and his cameraman Hans-Jürgen Schmitz, meet on a Sunday morning in the former synagogue in Freudental for an equally cheerful weekend course group and film, participate and interview participants. As you can see, we had a lot of fun. The participants: Bettina Güßmann, Michael Volz, Diana Leo, Dorothea Niedecken, Ottschke Hemmerlein, Nicola Kaupert, Peter Schneider, Roland Wagner, Edwin Lengl, Achim Winter.

Impressions from the shooting

Links

⇒ZDF Website

Beach with snail shell

Sea noise (public domain) at the beach of Kolka, Latvia – my contribution to the World Listening Day 2019

World Listening Day 2019

Today, July 18, 2019, is World Listening Day 2019. The gentle waves in the Gulf of Riga. I recorded them in order to be able to accompany my future planned overtone singing meditation music.

Since the use of third-party sound material in your own productions often causes problems with copyright protection, I make this recording freely available for everyone and publish it under public domain or CC0 license. So, help yourself if you like it.

Download mp3 (320 kBit/s): Waves at Kolka beach Latvia CC0

Wav on request.


CC0
To the extent possible under law,
Wolfgang Saus

has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to
Waves on Kolka beach Latvia audio file.

This work is published from: Germany.

photo: seth0s from Pixabay

European Overtone Choir

28.02.19 – 22h – DLF Kultur Radio Broadcast about the Europa Obertonchor

The Deutschlandfunk Kultur broadcasts on Thursday, 28 February 2019 from 22h to 22h30 a radio feature about the European Overton Choir. The EOC is an experimental project choir that once a year from Easter Monday invites interested singers for a week to experiment with the potential and new sound possibilities of overtones in choral music. Works will be sung by notes as well as improvisations developed with new methods.

DLF Kultur, Thursday 28. Feb 2019, 22:00 h

European Overton Choir, next project week 22.-28. April 2019

A few weeks of cyborg

My Accident and Move 2018

Something private of mine today. I haven’t updated my website since spring. The reason: I had separated my left wrist from my joint in a bicycle accident in Belgium in spring and broke it several times, so that the hand had to be re-surgeryed twice. My helmet (I can only recommend it) was a lifesaver.

I couldn’t work on the computer for a few months and spent the summer in hospitals and recovering my bones. Now I have a titanium plate in my arm that holds everything together. I still can’t fully use my hand. But the prognosis is good that I can start playing the piano again in about a year.

Appropriately, the accident happened a few days after I had cancelled my apartment in Aachen and signed the lease for my current apartment in Bavaria.

FahrradsturzMove from Aachen to Hirschbach

The move to Bavaria took place successfully with many great helpers in August and September, and I now live in the countryside on a 2.5 hectare site that three of us want to transform into a permaculture garden starting next year. The address: Hirschbach 1, 91602 Dürrwangen, Germany.

After 24 years in Aachen, now suddenly the heart and ears open in the silence and beauty of nature and the surrounding forest. How I enjoy this silence and how I missed it, I notice only now, although I have already lived relatively quietly in Aachen. I expect the move to create a new relationship with time, also for my music.

I had a longing for grounding, in the truest sense of the word. A quarter of a century of professional work with overtones has activated my right brain hemisphere and expanded my perception (scientifically proven). Even as a child I had planted a jungle in my room. Now I am curious how the plants and home-grown food will react to my overtones.

The new tranquillity will give me time to publish more and to put my experiences and many scientific achievements on paper or on the website. If everything goes as planned, my blog will get a new start in December, with more instructions on overtone singing, more from my research and more fascinating experiences with sounds.

My new home

My new home, impressions September 2018.

Umzug mit vielen HelferInnen

The move was only possible with the support of many dear helpers, as I could neither lift nor pack.

Free Download: Beginner’s Textbook for Polyphonic Overtone Singing by Stuart Hinds

Stuart Hinds - Making Music with Overtone Singing - Buch FotoStuart Hinds from the USA is undisputedly the star of polyphonic Western overtone singing. No one else handles two melodies in basic and overtone with such virtuosity. He is also one of the most productive composers for overtone singing and has written several pieces for solo and choral singing.

Now he has written a new book “Making Music with Overtone Singing” in 2017. It is a systematic learning aid that allows every slightly advanced overtone singer to get into the art of polyphonic overtone singing.The new book starts where overtone beginners begin to control their tones and leads from there into the complex polyphony. The book thus forms the bridge to his more demanding 15 songs.

His sheet music book “An Overtone Expirience – 15 polyphonic overtone songs you´ll love to sing”, published by Traumzeit-Verlag in 2012 and translated by me, required advanced overtone singing experience.

Stuart Hinds generously makes his book available as a free PDF download. In addition to the book, the download also contains sound samples sung by the author.

To the download page