Overtone Drone
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Drone built around the human voice and overtone (harmonic) singing, in which a singer holds a low fundamental and shapes the mouth to amplify individual upper harmonics into whistling, flute-like melodies floating above the sustained root. Massed voices create beating, shimmering overtone clouds, sometimes joined by throat-singing's growled sub-tones. Production favours highly reverberant sacred spaces that let the harmonics ring, with little or no instrumentation. The mood is meditative, ancient and transcendent, spotlighting the physics of the voice as a natural drone instrument.
History
Western overtone drone was pioneered by David Hykes, who formed The Harmonic Choir in 1975 and, drawing on Mongolian khöömei and Tibetan chant, recorded the landmark Hearing Solar Winds in a twelfth-century French abbey, released in 1983 and still the most celebrated overtone-vocal record. Central Asian throat-singing masters such as Tuva's Huun-Huur-Tu and vocalist Sainkho Namtchylak brought authentic traditions to world-music audiences, while sound-healers like Jonathan Goldman applied overtone chant to wellness. Nurtured by labels including Ocora, Shanachie and Etherean and by the overtone-singing pedagogy of teachers like Michael Vetter and Wolfgang Saus, the idiom fed chant, sound-bath and meditation practice around the globe.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- Ocora Radio France liner notes to Hearing Solar Winds (1983)
- Jonathan Goldman, Healing Sounds (1992)
- world-music writing on Tuvan throat singing