Note:

The piece was recorded in a dry, almost non-reverberating space. The walls were covered with cloth to prevent the sound from travelling through the space and creating unwanted reverb artefacts. Often, in such an arid sound situation, it is a challenge for the singer to perform in. Usually, harmonics (overtones as well as subharmonics) are reinforced when being bounced back from the surfaces (walls, floor, ceiling, etc.) of the performance space. In a resonating space, like a church, it is easier to produce and to amplify (in a pure acoustical sense) the harmonics. Each architectural environment provides its own frequency characteristics enhancing certain frequency responses while others are lowered. According to the given acoustic premises, the singer, once received, can put an emphasis on the heard frequencies or, in other words, the feedback from its own voice and, by doing so, is able to reinforce the harmonics. Most of the time, unless the singer decides to focus on the opposite, this happens automatically simply because earthly beings, as we are, are trained to be tuned into the sound environment they are momentarily staying in. Additionally, the singer has no comparison between the actual, reverberant space s/he's in, on the one hand, and the sound-insulated, laboratory-like studio situation, on the other. In the case of the latter, the singer is forced to rely on her/his singing experiences as bodily perception only, focusing exclusively on the muscular apparatus of the entire voice components and the memory for the interplay of the involved body parts. In any case, of course, this is a premise that is always required. But what's missing is the simultaneous and additional procedure of also listening, during the vocal performance, to one's own voice in the room performing in. In addition, what the singer then tries to track down is to answer the question — through the actual performance act — how the voice reacts in and to the acoustical conditions of the given space. Despite the fact that every single voice bears its own, idiosyncratic sound properties, is characterised by an unrepeatable uniqueness, as Adriana Cavarero puts it in her book For more than one voice, and therefore is distinctively recognisable, the voice always reveals itself different in regards to its sounding qualities which are determined by the dependence on the physical and mental state of the singer, on the one hand, and the actual given acoustic environment, the sonic surrounding, that s/he is performing in, on the other.

Comment:

The title is obviously alluding to speaking in tongues an expression from the bible that denotes a glossolalia or, also known as gibberish, a nonsensical speech. With regard to the expresssion of speaking in tongues, 'the Old Testament describes an ecstatic emotional state in which the adherents mind is absorbed into that of the deity, whom may be oblivious to the external world, while self-conscious and rationale thought may be impaired. (Edgerton, The 21st-Century Voice, p. 136)'. The subtitle, in contrary, has no double meaning, but indicates the components which the tongue slaps are to be executed on. German composer Dieter Schnebel (1913-2018) from the generation Darmstadt and its protagonists, such as Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, etc., was very influential regarding novel modalities and the directions he gave in composing for the voice. He created a number of vocal works, like Glossolalia or Maulwerke, all of which are addressing the questions about the voice in its common use as vehicle to communicate linguistic meaning. Instead Schnebel explores the sounding qualities of the voice by isolating specific muscle parts and let the performer focus on those  exclusively. The sounding results and the hereby transmitted range of human expressivity are astounding. For more insights on his work see Schnebel, "Sprech- und Gesangsschule (Neue Vokalpraktiken)" [Speech and Singing School (New vocal practices) my translation], in Mit Nachdruck: Texte der Darmstädter Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, ed. by Rainer Nonnemacher (Mainz: Schott, 2010), p.235- 249.

Note:

This is the same piece, but now with artifically added reverb which brings in a sense of space and, in so doing, enriches the sounding spectrum of the voice reenforcing the frequencies applied. This way, the voice appears more 'natural' since we are used to listen to the voice in a specific space rather than to the voice isolated in a sound booth.
Note that, most of the time with regard to the other sound and video examples on this page, for the reason of sonic clarity, I did not attempt to amend the recordings. If so, then it concerns only the recordings of the singing voice that I treated afterwards in the studio. It seems that—every singer will confirm it—this kind of voice cannot live without, but 'needs the space'.

Performance Instruction:

Invent three nonsensical, but similiar sounding syllables as if you're taking samples from your cultural background. Make sure they don't make any sense in  regards to linguistic semantics, but still exhibit a meaning that due to the strength of onomatopoeia carries the potential power for expression in its purest sense!

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).

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.