To understand the concept of a word such as overtone, you first need to listen or sing it, since it is an additional sound or overtone located above the main tone sung by a voice or played on any musical instrument. An overtone is a kind of decoration of natural natural sound.
History of overtone classification
In Europe, no one had previously paid much attention to the additional sounds produced on musical instruments. But everyone understood perfectly well that they heard additional ones and an overtone appeared, what it is and how it is designated, let’s try to figure it out.
At one time, the classification of overtones was carried out by Professor Keyserling and his student named Ralph Rousing, who even surpassed his teacher by improving the concept of overtones. At the same time, he even wrote music based on this unique scale.
Harmonic and non-harmonic overtones
Surely, many people know that there are sounds that evoke positive or negative emotions. These are the overtones. The lowest sounds, such as hums, are considered to be “bad” sounds. But overtones and sounds in the upper range have a calming effect on a person. Then let's look at the overtone - what kind of sound it is, and how it affects a person.
Overtones cannot be imagined without some additional terms. This applies to their varieties. The meaning of the word overtone is general and includes two main categories into which overtones are classified.
There is also such a thing as a harmonic overtone. What this is, we need to figure out. In the world of music and research in physics, harmonic overtones are usually called additional sounds in the upper range, the frequency of which is a multiple of the frequency of the fundamental tone. In music theory, a combined sound is called a harmonic.
In some cases, overtones may go beyond the multiple of the fundamental tone. The concept of non-harmonic overtone is used here. What is it? In essence, this is too strong a difference in the sound of the main and additional sounds, which can arise, for example, when massive strings vibrate.
The most popular musically are harmonic overtones, the multiplicity of which is expressed in regular and improper fractions. The second option is used for instruments without a specific tone, such as drums. Here you also need to take into account the amplitude of the sound, which is often confused with volume, and the frequency of vibration, and resonance indicators.
The meaning of overtones in music
The use of overtones in music cannot be overstated. Indeed, it is thanks to them that one can observe a wide range of instrument timbres. If all the sounds on a musical instrument did not have overtones, we would simply not distinguish between them. Each sound would be similar to one another. It is clear that, emotionally, such sounds will not cause any moral satisfaction.
It is from a musical point of view that answering the question: what is an overtone, we can give a lot of striking examples of how overtones can decorate the sound of an instrument. Thus, guitarists very often use playing techniques called artificial harmonics. Moreover, if such a sound is produced on a guitar using effects such as Fuzz, Drive or Overdrive, the manifestation of the overtones is greatly enhanced. In addition, overtones of different heights can be obtained by playing harmonics on different sections of the fingerboard.
If we take history, overtones were given special preference in Ancient China. The Chinese were very meticulous about tuning musical instruments and producing sound. In principle, they had no concept of overtones, but they felt the emerging harmony on a purely intuitive level.
The role of overtones when tuning instruments
Tone overtone is of great importance for tuning instruments. Of course, you can use special devices called tuners. But those same professional piano tuners never use them, because they are used to relying only on their unique hearing. When tuning, they hear the difference in the sound of several strings when struck with a hammer.
In the lower registers there are two strings per key. There are three in the upper octaves. One can only imagine how subtle the tuner's perception of sound must be in order to hear subtle differences in amplitude and sounding overtones.
The same can be said about professional guitarists who use a tuning technique based on comparing the natural harmonics played on adjacent strings (usually the fifth fret).
Vocal overtones
The overtones of the voice, as well as the overtones obtained on musical instruments, play one of the key roles in conveying all the emotional shades of vocals. This is understandable. After all, the human voice is the most interesting instrument of natural origin. And it cannot be configured. Here you just need to learn how to use it using many singing techniques.
Probably, many of us have paid attention to the strong vibration of the voices of opera singers. It is at this moment that additional harmonic overtones can be heard. You just need to be very careful with vocals, because if you position your voice incorrectly, a situation may arise when it sounds somewhat false. To prevent this from happening, you can use quite a few techniques for learning to sing. And you will have to spend more than one month or year on this. But when a person has learned this, listening to him perform any song will become a real pleasure that will take your breath away.
"Singing Overtones"
There is nothing more powerful in the World than an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
In this interview, I would like to introduce you to Galina Parfyonova, a singer and presenter of overtone singing seminars.
For the first time, I learned about overtones at the concert of Galina and Olga Anisimova in April 2009. I didn’t realize that you could hear something else above the main sound. It happened like this - the entire auditorium was a single choir, and, amicably alternating the sounds A, O, U, Y, I - under the leadership of Olga, at some point I heard “sound above sound” - as if bells were ringing... it was marvelous! Added to the new sound was a feeling of human unity with all the singers. Some sang with their eyes closed - this made it easier to concentrate and hear the overtones.
Galina has been practicing overtone singing for a long time, and according to her, overtone “is deep knowledge about the law by which we were created...”
Galina, please tell me what an overtone is?
I will tell you what overtones are in the context of music and traditions, and how overtone singing is related to human life. The word overtone itself means “oversound.” Overtones always sound, at every moment, above any sound - noise, the sound of a musical instrument. Overtones are a whole host of overtones. There is another word for overtones - “harmonics”. Thanks to the “golden section effect” - I will talk about it in more detail later, overtone singing brings the soul and body into harmony. And the main feature of overtone singing is that you can sing two sounds at once: tone and overtone.
Since the human voice is also a sound, does it mean it has its own overtones?
Yes, the timbre of a voice is nothing more than a combination of overtones. We may not know the numbers of the overtones, and may not assume that we are using them at this time. There are quite a lot of overtones. There is an overtone ladder - 16 harmonics - this is what is included in the range of sounds that we hear. There are more overtones, but then there are such small multiplicities that are not perceived by the human ear. But they all sound, some of them are more audible, and some are quieter.
Professor Morozov, who studied resonant singing a lot, suggested that when we need to make a nasty voice, at that time those overtones that form dissonant intervals become loud.
This means that overtones are directly related to the internal state?
Very connected. We read timbre as information almost immediately. When a person’s voice sounds, we may not yet understand what words he is saying at this time, but we have already perceived the characteristics of the timbre. We already react whether this voice is attractive to us or not.
The timbral spectrum depends on many characteristics of a person - the shape of the palate, physical tone, how we feel today. From the way sound is used to spreading within us; where it resonates and where it doesn’t - all this makes up the timbre.
Galina, what is the “golden ratio” effect?
Overtones are high frequency in nature. They arise according to the acoustic law in the interval of the “golden section”. And the “golden ratio” is contained in the steps of the overtone ladder - at first the intervals are large - the first overtone is an octave away from the tone. The next smaller leap is a fifth, and so on... - amazing consonance *
. An important feature is that these are intervals of pure scale, that is, still Pythagorean intervals, and not equally tempered ones, in the system of which we now live.
All our proportions are according to the “golden ratio”. We have this measure. We are used to visually responding to aesthetic properties through a sense of the golden ratio. But in sounds we encounter this much less often. Thanks to this effect, through overtone singing we connect with the primordial, deep principles of the universe.
The term “Pythagorean intervals” is unfamiliar to me - what does it mean?
Pythagorean intervals differ from equal temperament intervals, which arose in the 17th century, and were historically determined - they gave their benefit to composers and musicians. However, equal temperament shortened the natural intervals somewhat. As a result, music no longer falls into the proportions of the “golden ratio”.
When archaic or Pythagorean intervals sound (and this remains in folklore, in medieval music and in overtone singing), we return to pure intervalics. And this resonates in the resonance of the body. There are very unexpected sensations when people listen to such sounds. Some feel as if they have returned to their homeland.
How did people in the Middle Ages learn about overtones?
I think that in the Middle Ages no one uttered such words. But nevertheless, many have heard the effect in the temple that the angels sing along. When a choir sings with one voice, conditions are created to hear the overtones. When you notice the sound above the sound, you stop paying attention to those who sing... As if it no longer has anything to do with the singers.
How did overtones become known among us? Who can you name among the performers?
Overtone singing came to us not from European traditions, but from the East. The New European style arose on the basis of Tibetan, Altai and Tuvan throat singing. It incorporates simple and accessible ways to manifest overtones, using them in music and for your own development and health.
In the 70s, harmonic choirs began to emerge in America and Europe. One of the amazing performers in America is David Hikes.
At the same time, harmonics began to be used in music. One of the first who began to use overtones in his works was the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In parallel with the work of David Hikes, Jonathan Goldman's book Healing Sounds appeared. This is one of the main books where you can get information about overtones.
Now in different areas of music they are starting to remember the pure system. For example, Egor Daniilovich Reznikov, a professor at the Paris Conservatory, Russian by origin, teaches courses at the Moscow Conservatory in the fall and spring called “Singing in Pure Formation.” In his classes you can hear natural, calm, quiet singing using examples of ancient antiphons. Both Gregorian chants and Znamenny chant. We are close to the research of Yegor Danilovich.
In one of the articles (in text from the forum) by David Hikes, there is a very interesting and correct idea. That overtones are an area where there are no boundaries. There are no Russian, American, Ukrainian overtones... You can’t set any records here. This is the sound for unity. In order to understand sound as a wave, as a vibration... Overtone singing is a subtle phenomenon that connects people.
Galina, how did you start studying overtone singing?
The time has come for this phenomenon to become apparent. I found myself at Robert Norton's seminar in Moscow. She invited an English musician to a seminar in St. Petersburg, where she made friends and allies. For example, we conduct seminars together with Olga Anisimova. It became clear to me that there is another musical dimension. And with its help you can hear much more. And gradually, this happened to my hearing. For example, on the same discs that we have known for a long time - which we have listened to more than once before, now we have begun to hear overtones.
Should a person pay attention to sound and overtones as a special phenomenon? We perceive most information visually, this is the type of culture in which we live. We do some tasks in seminars with our eyes closed. The main channel of perception becomes hearing. And discoveries occur - about the feeling of oneself in space, about fear and joy. Auditory perception provides additional sources of vital energy.
Does a person need to sing?
This is a deep need. And in the lifestyle of a modern person, sometimes you eat only while washing the dishes...
I sing, but I don’t hear overtones, why?
Because attention has not yet been directed there.
It is important to relax and understand that there are overtones.
Practice is important, and then you hear overtones in drops of water, in the sound of a tram, in the noise of a vacuum cleaner and drill. And they are beautiful, of course, if the decibels are not off the charts.
Overtone singing exhibits one of the overtones. When moving from one overtone to another, the ear begins to hear this jump and registers that there is some kind of “whistle” there. A frequency shift is needed. And it happens when we move from one vowel sound to another. Then you begin to understand the glassiness of the tints and the iridescence of the sound. And the fact that this is a certain song.
I know that you are now teaching overtone singing. How and where does this happen?
Now Olga Anisimova and I are holding seminars in different cities, creating a harmonic choir “Obertonia”. We have an interesting form of relaxation concert, which in its effect is obviously similar to a breathing session according to Grof in a soft version. Deep relaxation occurs, without any influence, only with the help of sound vibration. You can just listen, but most likely you will want to sing yourself.
At our seminars you can learn to hear overtones, start singing them yourself, and figure it out. Along the way, urgent needs arise that concern your own voice. Who wants to learn to speak loudly and intelligibly; someone does not have hearing and voice coordination. Someone is dissatisfied with his voice and cannot accept it, and is in a difficult situation. Everything can be worked with. Changes occur in seminars.
Voice is a physiological and psychological phenomenon. Therefore, we can give strong motivation and ways of what to do in a specific situation, and then it depends on personal motives to develop your voice. It takes time for the muscle system to work in a new way. Usually this is at least 3 months of hard work. But the main thing is regularity, not the number of hours.
What is the main goal of your seminars?
The main thing is that it is possible to create conditions in the classroom where a person experiences a feeling of resonance and harmony within himself. The main goal of the seminars is to hear the overtones of the world, to meet your resonance. With your own voice. When you open yourself to the possibility of change, then it happens. The experience of harmony makes you want to open up further.
What is the use of overtones?
When we started running an overtone singing club, everyone asked about the benefits, but as soon as we started singing and hearing it ourselves, we stopped asking. But, indeed, overtone singing feeds the cerebral cortex. We, the inhabitants of the metropolis, have a huge thirst for high frequencies, which we do not know about. Birds, violins - this is all that replenishes thirst. Plus overtones that you can sing yourself.
Connections between cells are restored through the perception of high-frequency sounds. We notice how both the level of perception and immunity changes, how the auditory range of us and our students expands.
The German cymatic (“kyma” – Greek – wave) Alexander Lauterwasser, who studies the effects of sound frequencies on water, learned to photograph the surface of water, which is given some tone (be it noise, Bach’s music, the sound of a stream). It turns out that stunning images are formed on the water at this time, which are similar to many natural forms. And how the water dances in us when we sing or listen to music!
…Galina told me a lot more about overtones. But an interview cannot contain all the information. Therefore, I invite you, dear readers, to get acquainted with this unusual singing by coming to a concert or taking part in a seminar. You can start getting acquainted with overtone by listening to compositions on the website www.oberton-piter.ru
Have wonderful discoveries!
* Galina lists the intervals that are obtained between the tone and the first overtone. And between the first and second overtone. On the website www.oberton-piter.ru in the audio gallery you can see the table of intervals.
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Reprint only with a direct link to the source.
Overtone(overtone) literally “oversonic” or “supersonic”.
Overtones are present in almost every sound.
The Great Soviet Encyclopedia defines an overtone as “a component of a complex vibration (mechanical, including sound, electrical) with a frequency higher than the fundamental tone. The relationship between the frequencies of the overtone and the fundamental tone is revealed by decomposing a complex vibration into a series. The frequency overtones of which relate to the frequency of the lowest, fundamental tone as integers 1:2:3, etc., are called harmonic, or harmonics, but if the relationship turns out to be more complex - non-harmonic"
In music, sound is a combination of fundamental tone and harmonic overtones. Any sounding body can vibrate not only as a whole, but also at the same time as if in “parts”. So in a guitar string, not only the core vibrates, but also the braid, as well as the pegs, neck and body. The core sets the main tone, and all other elements are like additional sounds - overtones. Together we get the timbre. If you put a string in another guitar or change the type of braid, the basic tone will be the same, but the timbre will be different.
So, thanks to overtones, the unique timbre of the human voice is formed.
What is it overtone singing?
Overtones are weaker than the fundamental tone, so it is difficult to hear them directly. But if you listen to the sound of the voice, for example, Snatam Kaur
Then you can hear that the timbre of her voice includes sounds of different pitches. The high-pitched glass sound can be heard very clearly. This is one of the overtones. A timbre rich in overtones speaks either of good natural abilities, or of a good and deep voice development.
In overtone singing, overtones are enhanced consciously through skillful control of the muscles of the lips, jaw and tongue. When we listen to overtone singing, we hear two or more sounds at the same time. Overtones are especially pronounced in throat singing. This is the name given to the overtone singing of the peoples of Siberia, Mongolia, and some others.
Overtone singing is one of the best ways to enter deep meditation. And both for the performer and for the listeners. Overtones have the magical property of purifying consciousness, calming the mind, and balancing the energy body. Despite the deep meditative state, the sound of overtones helps maintain complete clarity of perception.
In our workshops we touch on the basics of overtone singing, doing exercises that help us strengthen and hear our own overtones.
Overtones are the root cause of the meaningfulness of tone; they contain the aesthetic reasons for vocal miracles, they are the heart and pulse of the human voice.
P. Bruns.
If in ordinary colloquial speech the nature of timbre is not something particularly significant, then in the art of singing it is the most important property of the voice, constituting its main wealth. To agree with this, it is enough to recall, for example, the voice of our outstanding singer F. Chaliapin with its amazingly diverse, each time uniquely colorful timbre.
Voice timbre is often called “sound color,” “color,” or simply “voice color.” () By timbre, we can easily distinguish the voices of friends. () By the “color” of the voice, vocal teachers determine the type of voice of the singer (baritone, bass, tenor, etc.) .d.). The statements about the timbre colors of the voice of the famous baritone Titta Ruffo (1966) are interesting: “I tried to create an authentic palette of colors using a specific vocal technique. With the help of certain changes I created a white voice sound; then, darkening it with a more saturated sound, I brought it to a color that I called blue; amplifying the same sound and rounding it, I strove for a color that I called red, then for black, that is, for the darkest possible” (p. 302).
What does the timbre of the voice depend on? As you know, speech sounds are complex: they consist of a fundamental tone and numerous overtones, that is, sounds of a higher frequency than the fundamental tone. If the pitch of a person’s voice is determined by the frequency of the fundamental tone, then the timbre of the voice and whether it belongs to a particular vowel or consonant is determined by the degree of expression of certain overtones in the sound.
Anatomy of timbre
A hundred years ago, the famous German physicist Hermann Helmholtz used a very simple device to determine the overtones of a voice: it was a glass or metal ball with two holes (Helmholz, 1913). The ball was inserted into the ear with a narrow hole, and if the ball resonated, this meant that the voice contained overtones close to the resonant tone of the ball. The own resonant tone of this ball (f0) is determined by the formula: f0 = k vs/lv, where s is the area of the hole, v is the volume of the resonator, l is the length of the resonator throat, k is the proportionality coefficient, depending on the air density. It is easy to see that the smaller the volume of the ball and the larger the area of its hole, the higher the natural resonant frequency of such a resonator. To highlight overtones of different heights, there were balls of different sizes, the own resonant tones of which were known to Helmholtz.
Rice. 20. Helmholtz resonator. Explanation in the text.
By “anatomizing” the vowels in this way, Helmholtz was able to establish the presence in each of them of one or two areas of special enhanced overtones, which he called “characteristic tones of vowels.” Helmholtz showed that it is precisely thanks to these “characteristic tops” that vowels differ from each other in hearing.
Nowadays, incomparably more complex, accurate and objective equipment is used to study sound overtones. One of these devices, called a sound spectrometer, is shown in Fig. 21. If Helmholtz, with the help of his resonator ball, could only listen to overtones, then this device, in addition, allows you to see them on the screen. Just as a sunbeam, passing through a prism, is decomposed into its constituent colors of the rainbow, so the complex sound of a voice, passing through a spectrometer, turns out to be divided into its individual overtones. The sound receiver in this device is a microphone. Next, the sound in the form of an electrical signal from the microphone enters the amplifier, and from the amplifier passes through a system of electroacoustic filters, which separate it into its component parts. As a result of a series of transformations, a series of luminous columns appear on the device screen, each of which corresponds to a certain frequency of the overtone, and the height of the column corresponds to its intensity. These columns are outlined by the inertia-free beam of the cathode ray tube of the spectrometer. Thus, using the scale of the device, we can determine not only the frequency of the overtones that make up the sound of the voice, but also the strength of each of the overtones. The spectrometer shown in Fig. 21, allows you to detect overtones with frequencies from 40 to 27,000 Hz in a complex sound, i.e., almost the entire frequency range audible to the human ear.() Low components are located on the left side of the device screen, high ones are located on the right side.
The picture resulting from the decomposition of sound on the spectrometer screen is called the sound spectrum, and individual strongly prominent peaks, consisting of a group of overtones and influencing the recognition of speech sounds, were called formants. Thus, speech formants inherently correspond to Helmholtz's characteristic tones.
Detailed studies of the formant composition of speech sounds made it possible to establish that there are not one or two formants in each vowel, as Helmholtz thought, but much more - three, four and even five. Although all of these speech formants influence the recognition of sounds, the most important are the first two or three, the average frequencies of which are given in Table. 5.
For different people, formants, even in the same vowel sounds, vary somewhat in their frequency position, width and intensity (in a child’s and woman’s voice all formants are slightly higher than in a man’s). In addition, even for the same speaker, the formants of the same sound, for example A, differ noticeably depending on in which word the sound is pronounced, whether it is stressed or unstressed, high or low, etc. (Artyomov, 1960 ; Zinder, 1960). The individual characteristics of the formants, as well as the presence in the voice of other overtones specific to each person, give the voice of each person a unique timbre, inherent only to him alone.
Now we see that teaching a machine to understand all these features of overtones, i.e., solving the problem of “speech capture,” is not an easy task. So far, the machine has learned to perform sound analysis well, i.e., the “anatomy” of overtones, as, for example, a spectrometer does. But in order to identify a sound, it is necessary to essentially carry out its synthesis, that is, to find formants among the overtones, compare all their features and classify the sound into a certain category, despite a number of random signs interfering with this operation. So, for example, when classification of speech sounds, the machine should not “pay attention” to different pitches of the voice, its strength and differences in timbre. Since essentially the same mechanism is involved in the formation of timbre as in the formation of vowels, it is very difficult to distinguish between these two phenomena. It is easy to imagine that for a person who does not know a foreign language, different vowels of that language sound like sounds of different timbres. Thus, the problem of classifying sounds in speech is closely related to the study of timbre. Advances in science, however, allow us to hope that in the near future, when we pick up the telephone, we will no longer need to perform the monotonous and boring operation of dialing a number with our finger; All we have to do is say the number in a clear voice, and the machine will immediately connect us to the subscriber. Of course, this will happen when the secret of the prophetic words “sim-sim, open the door!” from the famous fairy tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” will be fully revealed and transformed from fantasy into reality.
Table 5
Average frequencies of vowel formants (in gr) (according to Fant, 1964)
