Tag Archive for: formants

Of Overtones and Love Messages: How a Video Redefines the Boundaries of Vocal Control

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In a universe where Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday and World Sound Healing Day magically come together, a fascinating video reveals the hidden world of vocal sounds: a spectrogram of curious vibrations that look like letters and form the words “I LOVE YOU”. But what exactly is behind this amazing phenomenon?

Welcome to the world of the secret language of overtones, a realm that only a few have explored. As the author of this blog, I have probably mastered one of the most precise controls of human vocal resonance on the planet. Because let’s be honest, who else but me could accomplish something so masterful? (Of course, you are welcome to prove me wrong at this point. And I would be very happy if you did. Just give it a try!)

The voice, a miracle of nature, harbours more secrets than most people can imagine. Did you know that the true essence of the voice lies in the resonances of the vocal tract?

Yes, the overtone chord may seem like the star of the stage, but the real magic lies in the resonances that make our voices unique. This is just the beginning of an exciting journey I want to take you on. Are you ready to push the boundaries of controlling your voice? Then subscribe to my newsletter so you never miss a post. Because there is still a lot to discover in the world of vocal resonance.

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

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

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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)

Why Does Choral Music Sound So Good?

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I was very happy about this video from Barnaby Martin. It is a wonderful introduction to the basics of my → Choral Phonetics. In this video he shows why formants are so important for intonation.

Choral phonetics uses our hidden ability to perceive resonances in the vocal tract as pitches (→ hearing test). And it trains a special fine motoricity of the tongue to control these resonances and to adapt the timbre to chords. This know-how enables singers to tune resonances just as precisely as their vocal tones. This turns timbre into a musical instrument. Choir sounds, as they can be heard in the video, become controllable.

What otherwise requires many years of experience and voice training for choristers can be achieved much faster with the knowledge of choral phonetics. Choir singers and conductors usually learn the necessary vocal techniques in just a few days and can develop them into a retrievable skill set within half a year. This refines not only intonation and homogeneity in the ensemble, but also the carrying capacity and lightness of the voice.

Besides, Barnaby Martin has a great talent to explain complex musical phenomena in a simple and entertaining way. Be sure to subscribe to his YouTube channel “Listening In”, there are a lot of first-class videos about the effects of musical sounds.Among other things I recommend his video about the completely crazy intonation movements that Jacob Collier uses in his choir pieces. Guys, choral phonetics is slowly becoming mainstream :)!

Spectacular MRI Video of the Tongue while Singing Overtones

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“Ode to Joy”, overtone singing by Wolfgang Saus inside an MRI.

This spectacular dynamic MRI video shows how the tongue moves during overtone singing. The melody of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” is created by double resonances which are shaped by the tongue in the mouth and throat. Overtone singing is based on the combination of the second and third resonance frequencies of the vocal tract on a single frequency to increase the volume of a single overtone from the vocal sound.

The second resonance frequency is controlled by the base of the tongue along with the epiglottis. The third resonance frequency is regulated by the space under the tongue, which is larger than it appears in the video, because it also spreads to the side of the tongue frenulum, which covers the space in the image. Overtone singing requires constant fine tuning of the two resonance chambers.

BBC Doku 2017 University Freibrug, Prof. Bernhard Richter,Wolfgang Saus. Screenshot ZDF
BBC Doku 2017 University Freibrug, Prof. Bernhard Richter,Wolfgang Saus. Screenshot ZDF
BBC Doku 2017 University Freibrug, MRT, Wolfgang Saus
BBC Doku 2017 University Freibrug, MRT, Wolfgang Saus

It is not easy to sing in the very loud magnetic resonance tomograph and even record the sound. The noise level is so high that I had to wear hearing protection and couldn’t hear my own overtones. I had to sing by feeling. That the right melody came out is spectacular in itself. It shows that it is possible to develop a body feeling for the exact pitch of the resonances that also works without acoustic control through the ear.

The team in Freiburg has developed highly specialized equipment for recording and filtering. Of course the sound is not HiFi.

MRT footage with kind permission and a big thank you to:
University Hospital Freiburg
Clinic for Radiology – Medical Physics & Institute for Music Medicine
https://fim.mh-freiburg.de/
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Richter
Prof. Dr. Dr. Jürgen Hennig
Prof. Dr. Matthias Echternach
(c) 2015

Almost overtone singing… a genius beatboxer

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Gene Shinozaki voice-performes his own composition Home in YouTube Space New York. The new generation of beatboxers starts using the formats purposefully – the art of western overtone singinger of the 2nd generation.

Two overtone melodies at the same time – Cosmicbow

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Christopher Vila is the inventor and manufacturer of this ravishing music instrument, that leads you in a deep self-forgetfulness when you play it, what you can still feel as a listener:  Cosmicbow.

In the video, he demonstrates an incredible control of the first and second formant, by playing two independent melodies simultaneously with both resonances. He controls the deeper overtone with the anterior mouth, the high harmonics are determined mainly by the position of the epiglottis and the root of the tongue.

This skill is an example of how much music is yet to be discovered in our vocal resonance cavities alone. A reference to the vocal Phonetics is interesting, in which also a control of the formants is required to enable the brilliance and load-bearing capacity of the voice, which is required for classical singing. I can recommend any classical singer to play around with the Cosmicbow for a while.

Tag Archive for: formants

Tag Archive for: formants

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