Tracing Subharmonics And Overtones, Sensing Body And Space: Towards A Practice Of Multiphonic Singing
for voice solo
Über den virtuosen Gebrauch von Fingern und Mundwerkzeugen am Beispiel der Technik des Unterlippenpfiffes mit und ohne Summtöne einerseits und von Lippen- und Zungenklangerzeugungstechniken ohne den Einsatz der Stimmbänder andererseits: Multiphonie und das vertikale Konzept im Gegensatz zum horizontalen Denkbild einer multivokalen Stimmpraxis
for voice and whistling voice solo
[On the virtuosic use of fingers and mouth tools exemplified by the technique of lower lip whistling with and without humming sounds, on the one hand, and techniques to produce sounds with lips and tongue without using the vocal chords, on the other: Multiphonics and the vertical concept versus the horizontal notion of a multivocal practice]
Quick insight into the materiality used:
Part 1 presents variations of click and plop sounds as well as mouth flutter sounds and head motions. The ingressive sounds are produced by constricting the muscular apparatus.
In part 2, in contrary, the performer is less active and focuses on dry and isolated glottal beats produced by both ingressive and egressive phonation.
Part 3, again, features mouth flutter sounds and head motions. Single as well as cluster sounds are produced by ingressive phonation constricting the vocal apparatus. Gradual timbre transitions are produced by smoothly changing single sound entities into multiphonics and into noise-soundscapes, as well as reversely. Furthermore, a variety of repetitive, percussive sounds that are derived from plosive consonants as well as from tongue clicks and lip ploppings are presented. The work ends with breath-related, subharmonic sounds.
* Before playing back the videos, lower the volume level to a very soft degree, almost to zero sound! Do NOT listen to the video clips at maximum volume! Increase the level only later on and to a pleasant degree!
Performance Instruction:
Invent and take three syllables from your cultural background that don't make any linguistic sense, but have a meaning in an onomatopoetic sense and carry the potential power for pure expression!
Note:
The piece was recorded in a dry, non-reverberating space with damping cloth on its walls. In this respect it is a challenge to enhance and amplify overtones as well as subharmonics. The singer is forced to rely on his singing experiences as pure physical perception. In contrary, in a resonating space like a church it is much more easier to produce overtones since the frequencies get enhanced. Once received the singer can put emphasis on the heard frequencies an, by doing so, amplifying the overtones. The microphones, in this case, picked up only the voice as opposed to the voice in a specific room.
"Frau schafft Räume
Kind schafft Träume
Herr schafft Zeiten"
[woman creates spaces/child creates dreams/man creates times] my translation
Note:
In German, 'Herrschaftszeiten', with single 'f' and 's' usually indicating the genitive case, means the times of reign. In some parts in the south of Germany, Bavaria respectively, Herr, schaff Zeiten!, in its form as exclamation is an obsolete expletive whose meaning appears to be obfuscated, but maybe could be translated into: My Lord, create the times! I got to know it from my grandfather who often used a number of curse words whose expressive power, especially in combination with a language that, at that time as a child, I didn't understand, but nevertheless fascinated me. Of course, like it is the case with any curse word, there is a religious background to it that I wasn't aware of. To me as a child it did not make any sense, but instead revealed how powerful 'nonsense' language can be. In other words, to me, since that time, words must not necessarily bear any linguistic semantics in order to be meaningful. In fact, it was the 'powerfulness' itself that was transmitted and that I was hooked on. However, if splitting the word apart, one actually gains the sentence Herr schafft Zeiten which can be translated as Man creates times. I’d like to point to the fact that I did not pre-compose the three line-poem. Instead it popped up during the recording sessions of those improvisations that are now, in this presentation, embracing it.
Note:
Velimir Khlebnikov, in 1920, wrote that 'rows of mere syllables that the intellect can make no sense of [...] form a kind of beyonsense language. [...] an enormous power over mankind is attributed to these incomprehensible words and magic spells' (as quoted in LaBelle: Lexicon of the Mouth, p.63).