Overtone Singing Techniques

There are many ways to produce vocal overtones. It depends by the structure of our vocal tract - tongue, cavities, ... - and our sensitiveness. We could explain our technique here.

Khoomii (throat singing) lesson by Sundui

Rowan Hartsuiker created a very useful video and added it to YouTube with Khoomii (throat singing) lesson by Sundui.



Rowan was so friendly to give an English translation about this Khoomii lesson by Sundui, followed by two traditional melodies.


"To do exercises, you have to use the constricted voice of the "khoomii" (throat singing).

We use the vowels A, E, I, O, U, Ü to perform the exercises.
Let me demonstrate it for you.

(1st singing)

After this we connect it to the khoomii (tongue).

(2nd singing)

For beginners, you have to know the difference between making a sound from high and lower in the throat. Let me show you the one with making a sound from low.

(3rd singing)

Now you can connect it with your nasal pasages (open your sinus).

(4th singing)

There's also constricting high in the throat way from near and make sounds only with the voice.

(5th singing)

There's also sounding from afar.

(6th singing)

Aside from this, there's also a style called "harhiraa", or root constriction, here's how it sounds

(7th singing)

Then you can bring the constriction up,

(8th singing)

These are the types of constriction you have to learn to do khoomii."

Photos which are used in this video are taken from these YouTube-videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaZ_JHWRboQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkgKf_YqJnY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVRajBMrixI

1st Audio-track is from the CD called Mongolia Traditional Music by UNESCO (1995).
Second track is extracted from the vinyl copy of "Vocal music of Mongolia", recorded by Jean Jenkins.