All Videos Tagged tract (Overtone Music Network) - Overtone Music Network

View into an Overtone Singer

2016-06-02T17:59:50.491Z

"Freude schöner Götterfunken" (Ode to Joy) in overtone singing style by Wolfgang Saus.

More information: https://www.oberton.org

What you see in this amazing dynamic MRI (MRT) is the tongue movement building up double resonances along the melody line of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy". Overtone singing is based on bringing together the second and third resonance frequency of the vocal trakt (also referred to as "formants") on one frequency to enhance the loudness of a single overtone in the vocal sound spectrum. The second formant is controlled by the root of the tongue together with the epiglottis. The third formant is ruled by the space under the tongue, which is bigger than it seems in the video. Overtone singing is a constantly fine adjustment of the two resonance cavities.

It's not easy to record (and sing) sound in the very noisy environment of a MRT (MRI). The team in Freiburg developed highly specialized equipment for recording and filtering. Nevertheless, the sound is of course not HiFi.

MRT footage with kind permission and many thanks to:
University Medical Center Freiburg
Medical Physics Dept. of Radiology &
Institut for Musicians’ Medicine
http://fim.mh-freiburg.de/
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Richter
Prof. Dr. Dr. Jürgen Hennig
Prof. Dr. Matthias Echternach
2015

Visualization of Vocal Functions

2013-06-11T20:03:52.196Z

The video visualizes the relation of overtones, vowels and vocal tract resonances. The spoken text is in German. I will make an english version soon.

Harmonics # 2-3-4-5-6, back rounded vowels

2010-03-01T17:57:19.908Z

This video refers to this image here on OMN:
With an aspiration to become the Betty Dodson of the vocal folds, an exercise with the back rounded vowels, which may bring out the first elements of the harmonic series.
This is not 'overtone athletics', I aim to use 'neutral', not constrained voice quality with a focus on carefully shaping the vocal tract and the lips... and listening!

It is the merging of phonetics, music and mathematics in one natural primordial and holistic language.

Proportion/ Interval/ approximate vowel sound (please do not interprete the correlation too rigidly!):
2:3/ just fifth/ [u]
3:4/ just fourth/ [o]
4:5/ just major third/ [ɔ]
5:6/ just minor third/ [ɑ]

To separate the vowel sounds I use the [ŋ] nasal which also helps accentuating the overtones.

NB! It will probably be beneficial to begin the exercise with only two neighbouring elements.

4:5:6, - the major triad - is a signpost which is really worth listening for and practising the accentuation of to find orientation in the harmonic universe.