Tuvan Throat Singing
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Tuvan Throat Singing
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In Tuvan throat singing, dual tones are produced simultaneously. The unique style of singing originated in central Asia, where Tuvans have been practicing for generations.
Sandra McLean, York University, and Mikayla Mace, University Communications
Tuvan throat singing originated in central Asia and has been practiced for generations.
This MRI shows a cross-section of the vocal tract during production of overtone singing. 2 of 2
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Researchers have solved the mystery of how Tuvan throat singers produce what sounds like two different pitches at once – a low rumble and a high whistle-like tone.
Tuvan throat singing, called Khoomei , originated in central Asia and has been practiced for generations. Fascinated with how this form of throat singing creates dual tones, scientists studied members of the Tuvan performing group Huun Huur Tu to see firsthand how the singers do it.
"They can produce two different pitches, which goes against the typical way we think about how speech sounds are produced," said lead study author and University of Arizona alumnus Christopher Bergevin, who is now at York University. "It was a bit of a mystery how they did it and it's something researchers have wondered about for the last two decades."
The researchers' findings are published in the journal eLife.
Study co-author Brad Story , a professor in the UArizona Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences , is an expert on the physics of sound production in speech and singing, and he developed a computer model to simulate what happens in the throats of the Tuvan throat singers.
To figure out the mechanisms involved, researchers recorded the singers in a sound booth and shot a series of images of one the Tuvan performers singing while in an MRI scanner. Those images were sent to a co-author at Western University, who helped reconstruct the vocal tract shape, as well as Story, who modeled and simulated the singing.
"These singers are using their vocal tracts like musical instruments," Story said. "We found two locations (involved in throat singing) – one just behind the upper teeth using their tongue and another in the area of near the back of the mouth that turns into the throat."
In normal speaking, "we adjust our pitch, we change our loudness or amplitude, and we extend the vowels," said York University co-author Chandan Narayan. "What is interesting about this type of throat singing is that it does something different. It's a highly unusual sound that you don't hear in other forms of singing."
Birds and some frogs can produce two distinct tones, but the Russian republic of Tuva, located in central Asia, is one of only a few locations where throat singing is practiced by humans.
"The question becomes, why are there two pitches heard when Tuvan singers sing? They don't have two sets of vocal cords," Narayan said.
In humans, vocal folds make sound by vibrating creating a buzzing noise. How fast or slow the vocal cords vibrate determines whether a high- or low-pitched sound is produced. The faster they vibrate, the higher the pitch of the voice. But they also produce a series of harmonics or "overtones." The mouth and tongue shape theses overtones, creating resonances at certain frequencies called formants. Vowels in human speech are determined by the first three formants – F1, F2 and F3.
Each formant is usually distinct, but Tuvan singers can merge multiple formants to create one exceedingly sharpened formant.
"The Tuvans are able to make this sound through such precise control of their vocal track that they can kind of tease these things out and create simultaneously sounds. One of the things that's so remarkable about it is that it doesn't sound like any human could do this, to have that degree of motor control," Bergevin said.
"Potentially anyone could learn to do this," Story said, "but it takes a lot of practice."
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences
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Jerry Walsh is a musician and vocalist, weaving together ancient and otherworldly sounds from sacred traditions across the globe and creating shamanic sound journeys. He has collaborated with Merkaba (Kayla Scintilla), SriKala, Native American hip-hop artist Supaman, and American beatbox champion Mark Martin. He has been student of Taino elder, Maestro Manuel Rufino since 2012, studying the indigenous shamanic cultures of the Americas and other wisdom traditions. Jerry has traveled to 30 countries on five continents and spent a full year studying Buddhism and Himalayan culture in India, Nepal, and Bhutan from 2010-2011. He currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with the Golden Drum community when he is not on tour sharing music and meditation with partner, Ixchel Prisma.
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Circular Breathing October 28, 2015
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Tuvan Throat Singing is a vocal style that features harmonically rich sounds created by oscillating parts of the throat not used in western singing styles. This video is an introduction to the three fundamental styles of Tuvan throat singing: Kargyraa, Khoomei, and Sygyt. Examples and demonstration of techniques are provided.
Generate a small bubbling sensation in your larynx by gently toning the phrase “Ahhh” and feel where the bubbling is strongest. This bubbling is created by your vocal cords/folds moving in your larynx. This is the region the throat that needs to be constricted.
Now, sing the phrase “Ahhh” and squeeze the region of the throat (the larynx) that was creating the bubbling sound in the previous exercise. When you squeeze the larynx while simultaneously singing, it creates the xorekteer voice.
Generate the Xorekteer voice. Now, bring the lips and mouth into the shape of a small circular opening to create a chamber for the sound to resonate in. This proper reshaping of the mouth creates the Khoomei style.
While still practicing Khoomei, you can now bring the tongue to the top of the jaw, filtering the sound out through a small opening wherever you feel comfortable, creating the high whistle of Sygyt.
Begin with the mouth closed for back pressure. Begin by clearing the throat with a squeeze of the larynx. Almost like making the tone “Hmmm”. When you feel the vibration of the throat coming on, open the mouth and experiment with different vowel sounds.
*Photo of Kongar-ol Ondar by Bill Loewy courtesy Wikimedia Commons
I’ve been getting into throat singing recently and was really amazed to learn how many different styles there are. My interest was spurred after visiting a monastery in Nepal many years ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I finally started studying a bit more. And by studying, I do mean just the absolute basics for now, but it’s an art form I will definitely continue.
3 Awesome Examples of Tuvan Throat Singing
While throat singing is practiced in a multitude of cultures around the world , from the Inuit to the Xhosa to of course Tuva and Mongolia, the Tuvan forms are the most well known globally.
“World” music is a generally unpopular genre.
We tend to gravitate most towards things we understand and can easily relate to. It’s hard for many of us to sit down and actively listen to music in a foreign language because unless we can actually understand it, we can’t associate it with our own lives.
For most of us in “developed” countries with pop culture scenes that have adopted and adapted a lot of Western style music, it can be hard for us to break outside the rhythms and modes that we’re so accustomed to. We often find these sounds to be dissonant and alien and they can even cause negative reactions.
Most people don’t really notice it, but if you really stop and listen to a lot of popular music in a country like the US, you’ll start to realize that the songs are almost all the same .
They use the same chords. They use the same beat. They’re all in 4/4 time and they usually sing about the same overdone topics. Now I’m not saying there’s necessarily anything wrong with this. I’d be lost without my rock – infamous for only using 4 chords, but its the lack of familiarity that we hold with foreign music that, I think, so often drives us away and prevents us from expanding our horizons.
But for those of you looking for something different, something utterly unlike anything you’ll ever hear on your lite rock station, we look to the grassy, windswept steppes of Central Asia at the Tuvan; a nomadic people with a very long tradition of throat singing.
Throat singing can be kind of difficult to wrap your head around but the gist of it is that a throat singer can manipulate multiple pitches simultaneously, usually a lower or higher tone, that revolves around a central “normal” pitch called a drone note.
Throat singers manage to create these unique sounds by manipulating their vocal folds.
The people of Tuva have been marginalized by the governments of Russia and the former USSR for decades and state efforts to preserve their culture and language have been minimal at best. With around a quarter of a million speakers , Tuvan is considered to be “at risk” of dying out, but is still doing fairly well considering.
Luckily for this fascinating Turkic language; its isolation has meant that Russian, despite being an L2 for most Tuvans, has not had the same ‘mainstreaming’ effects on Tuva that it has in more urbanized regions of the republic.
Throat singing is meant to emulate the sounds of the geography of the Tuvan homelands. Yeah, I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean either, but it sounds nice and so does the music, so we’ll just go with it.
The sounds are supposed to kind of resemble a musical interpretation of the winds on the steppes and in the mountains and thick forests that still cover much of Siberia.
Linguist K. David Harrison writes of the Tuvan that their language allows for an extraordinary deal of often untranslatable terms for directions and geographical features and their intimate knowledge of their homelands is reflected in their voices.
I’ve linked three of my favorite Tuvan throat singers or groups here for your enjoyment.
Probably my favorite example of Tuvan throat singing is this particular performance by traditional Tuvan folk music ensemble Huun Huur Tu.
They’re a little difficult to understand at times, but they explain and demonstrate examples of several different common styles of Tuvan throat singing such as Khoomei, Sygyt and Kargyraa.
This is a complete concert performed at Berkeley in 2008 and I highly recommend listening to all of it if you can find the time to do so. It’s quite the unique experience:
I’d love to get my hands on some of those instruments too.
You can find Huun Huur Tu’s albums on Amazon if you’re particularly taken by their sound and are interested in supporting efforts to bring endangered language music to the world.
Kuular Traditional folk music is all well and good, and should be practiced and maintained; but I genuinely feel that in order to preserve indigenous or minority languages, some degree of cultural integration must take place.
So if something a little bit less “traditional” is more your style, check out Tuvan performer Kuular cover Adele’s hit ‘Rolling in the Deep.’ 1 I know I’ll get shit for this, but I dislike Adele and I think Kuular improved the song considerably.
The throat singing starts around 1:00.
Kuular’s YouTube channel has several more similar covers including those of Queen’s ‘ We Will Rock You ‘ and Linkin Park’s “Numb”. 2 I really can’t stand Linkin Park either.
Some of Kuular’s work can be found here on iTunes .
The late Kongar-ool Ondar was a master Tuvan throat singer who specialized in the style known as Sygyt. This video, featuring a performance of his alongside Bela Fleck and the Flecktones explains a little bit more thoroughly the differences between Sygyt, Khoomei and Kargyraa.
Sadly; Ondar passed away in 2013 but his legacy has remained and he is still considered to be one of the most prominent modern Tuvan musicians. His work can be found on iTunes as well .
Fun fact from this video: Kargyraa is the same style used to produce the voice for popular cartoon icon Popeye.
There is certainly something uplifting and calming about Tuvan music and I really hope that you find it as unique and mystifying as I do.
Please consider sharing these musicians’ videos and their music. Music appreciation gives us an intimate connection to the performer’s culture. It has a way of traveling from person to person and spreading awareness of endangered cultures faster and more effectively than academic papers and revitalization conferences chalk full of linguists ever will.
Tuvan stands a better chance of enduring as a language for many decades to come if the world shows it the interest it deserves and the Tuvan people’s unique singing style is a great way to bring it the recognition it needs.
So what are your thoughts on throat singing? Do you enjoy it or do you find it grating, weird and unpleasant? Leave a comment with your thoughts!
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Apex-editor of Languages Around the Globe, collector of linguists, regaler of history, accidental expat, serial dork and English language mercenary and solutions fabricator. Potentially a necromancer. Hates it when people call themselves "wordsmiths." All typos are my own.
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