Also, stars. I was hoping this would turn into one of those rekukhkara things where the chicks snowball their voices back and forth, but this is pretty hot too.

^rekuhkara, sorry. And yes, I know it's Ainu, not Inuit, but still, it felt like the natural place for this to go.

ten years ago I was in the shower and I kind of figured out how to get one of those high pitched overtones Tuvan throat singing is big on, but I'm not that good at it and can't really do it when other people are around because I'm not relaxed enough. I tried it the other day or the first time in years, though, and I can still get it. Can't circular breath or anything, and can't control it much, but I can sing two notes at once. No clue if I'm doing it the right way but it sounds right.

Anyhow, in my completely ignorant experience, it's all about tongue position. I do a kind of deep, chest tone and then make a tongue taco in my mouth and fiddle with the curl of it and the position relative to the roof until I find a position that brings out a very high pitched, almost tea-kettle like overtone that's nearly as loud as the tone coming from my chest. I don't have a clue how the people who can do three notes at once pull it off, though.

With this stuff, I actually learned a bit about it years ago from a composer visiting from New Zealand who was studying it informally. She said that having two people standing face to face was a key element, because you actually sing in to each others' mouths to create standing waves or make the other person's vocal cords resonate or both, I forget exactly but it gets a kind of a sustaining drone that sounds like circular breathing sort of, but isn't. You can't hear it that well in this because they're using microphones.

I can really see that now that you mentioned it, Zirc. Remarkable. Say, singing into another persons mouth is a bit like playing your guitar through another guitar, no? The human droniac.

OZ - yeah, that "taco tongue" thing is, at least from what I've found, the most basic step in producing overtones. You can shift the tone by altering both the position of the tongue against the roof of your mouth (further back, further forward), and the shape of the cavity in front of it (by moving your jaw and your lips around). I've also found that by really jamming your throat up (sort like as if you were going to make a fake vomiting/wretched sound) you can make a louder and harsher sound, such as seems to be common in various Mongol styles. That's about all, though; like you, I mostly do it in the shower, or while I'm downtown waiting for the bus.

Also, you should check out some of that Ainu stuff. It's all internet-age reconstruction (since the last living practitioners died in the 1970s), and hardly anyone is any good at it, but the idea is similar to Inuit singing: two girls snowballing overtones into each other's mouths. The Ainu stuff, however, is a lot more direct, since they actually make funnels with their hands and blow directly into their partner's mouth.

I'll check that out, thanks!

Are you familiar with Arrington de Dionyso? You might like him.

I've always wondered if the line "sing into my mouth" in This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) by the Talking Heads is a reference to Inuit throat singing, I could definitely see David Byrne having known all about this stuff even back then.

It's mostly about how the air in your body moves around your diaphragm, pharynx, and hard palate. What I'd try is doing a basic diaphragm excise where you start of with a "mmm" sound and slowly transition to the hard "th" sound or a "Castilian C" sound.

I can do the sound pretty well. I think what I'm doing is very similar to a "vocal fry", where you just barely tightening the vocal chords so they flap at a very low frequency that's not really perceived as a pitch. It's a kind of creaking rocking chair sound.

I think you can go from a fry to the neato low chanting sound by just playing with the force of exhale and the tension in the chords. Do it while you are alone in your car so you can get lots of practice without embarrassing yourself.

But in some stuff they're also simultaneously singing one or two high notes in the piccolo range too, that stuff is crazy. Like, there's the Tuvan stuff where they do a mix of high and low, but I've heard some where one person is doing full chords.

Mainly the Tibetan/tantric stuff, although these guys aren't bringing out quite as much of the upper harmonics as the stuff I'm thinking of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvyhxY54M3I

It's a totally different style of singing (very pinched and nasal) but since i know about it, here are some traditional methods for training your voice to sing in the Balinese style:

-Go to the ocean on a windy day when the surf is as loud as possible. Scream at the ocean as loud as you can until you lose your voice. Repeat.

-Find a waterfall. Lie on your back under the waterfall so that it's coming down right on your throat. Scream as loud as you can until you lose your voice. Repeat.

-If you are lazy, a lot of singer apparently used a special drink made out of vegetable oil and a ton of the freshest, hottest peppers they could find. Make a big class of it and pound it right before your performance starts.