Part 1

Name: Mark van Tongeren
Occupation: Sound explorer, sound- and performance artist, author
Nationality: Dutch
Recent release: Mark van Tongeren's substantially updated version of his classic book Overtone Singing is available via David Rothenberg's Terranova press.
Recommendations on the topic of overtone singing: Haha, my new book of course!
And the page I am working on to direct people to more sources. Worth checking out every once in a while for updates.
Books that will certainly be featured there are works by Michael Vetter (German only), Ted Levin (English) and Valentina Suzukei (in Russian), Bernard Lortat-Jacob (in French and Italian), some recent PhD theses like the one by Johanni Curtet (in French).

[Read our David Rothenberg interview]

If you enjoyed these thoughts by Mark van Tongeren and would like to find out more about his music and work, visit his official homepage. He is also on Facebook.



When did you first start getting interested in the world of overtone singing?  

First by playing with my mouth in search of the things that create the effect we call “timbre”. And then probably Michael Vetter and Tibetan chanting around 1990.

The first concert I heard was of Ensemble Euphonia: Rollin Rachele and Martin Spaink.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances using alternative tuning systems captured your imagination in the beginning?

Vetter’s Missa Universalis and Overtone Voice and Tambura. But even more so recordings of traditional music from all corners of the globe and a weekly Dutch radio program featuring people who brought back recordings from their travels.



Of course there is the whole Asian gong culture, gamelan and all that, which I heard and also played for a short while as a student. When you listen worldwide, 12TET (the Twelve tone Equal Temperament system that has become the global standard) is just one of many tuning systems. I also noticed early on that classical European singers stretch their notes, moving away from 12TET in the strict sense, though I did not get that confirmed at that time.

I had been curious about some New Music as a schoolkid, then as a 20-year old I got a proper introduction into that, but also Gregorian chant. So lots of things happening at the same time. And I really enjoyed the course in acoustics at the university, though I missed classes where Rollin Rachele came to sing overtones and heard about that years later only!

Working with overtone singing can be a very incisive transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

Not really, it was all about looking for sound itself, especially timbre.

Well, I certainly did not want to go into European art music. I had a strong sense, already before university, that I thought it unlikely that “my culture” happens to have all the right answers to any question you may want to ask – quite the contrary.

At university I soon became very motivated to get my hands on all these different kinds of music, hearing them, understanding them, trying out my own imitations.

Overtone singing is not part of all musical cultures, but it has emerged all across the world. What are some of the preconditions, would you say, for these techniques to form and for cultures to develop them?

In my 1994 M.A. thesis I wrote about that. It had chapters on the Tuvan lullaby; environmental influences; the Jew’s harp (or khomus); shamanism; Buddhism and etymology of the word khöömei.

Later on, I also realised that herding cattle is present in both North Asia and Sardinia, who have some strikingly similar vocal styles. But then, most of that in Sardinia is not actually overtone singing.

How would you describe the shift of moving from unawareness of overtones towards awareness of them?

I now prefer to call it “breaking through our habitual patterns of listening”.

My case is a-typical because I hear vocal overtones very easily, also in music where they are never intended by the singers. If you take Sardinia as an example, you see that a certain music can get pretty close to Tuvan or Mongolian throat singing, and yet there is no outspoken concept or awareness of vocal overtones, except in some very rare instances. It really is mostly implicit, if it is there. You will find such implicit examples everywhere.

That step, the fully conscious integration of overtones into vocal music, has rarely been made until recent years. The Western “tradition” of overtone singing is now in existence for about half a century, it is still emerging. Time will tell if everybody hears overtones more easily in the future.

Recordings:
My anthology: Sardinian track for clear overtone "effects" from a Sardinian group.



Shomyo example:



Tibetan example:



This last one is one of my favorite recordings of Tibetan chant, by BonPo monks residing in Nepal. I always preceived it as a perfect blend so that the overtones come out. But for many people the overtones will not be clear enough, and that includes the monks themselves, who are not thinking about overtones.

In 2007 I learned that the ethnomusicologist who recorded this in the early 1980s lived nearby me, in Taipei. And now, 16 years later, I finally assembled a group of enthusiasts to learn to chant it with him, in all its details.
 
Terms like consonant and dissonant are used in school, but mostly with very limited understanding of what they mean. How has your own idea of these terms changed over time and how do you see them today?

I now think they are just one set of terms that dominate in Europe and euro-centred cultures around the world. It works for a lot of music we hear all the time and I am not against it.

What was your own learning curve / creative development like when it comes to overtone singing - what were challenges and breakthroughs?

Ooph, it was a long process with many stations. The hardest thing for me was to be really confident about my musical expression or language. But like I said, finding overtones in my voice itself was easy: it was almost as if they found me as soon as I began to solve the riddle of timbre. The start was so easy that I thought: “everyone can do this. Once you know this is possible with the voice, people will start to hear it in their own voice and bring out the overtones.”

It took me a long time to fully understand this is not the case. Some people will never get it, no matter how clear the overtones are. My case turned out to be a bit exceptional. On the other hand I noticed that nearly all my regular Voice Yoga students begin hearing overtones in vowels, where they are only implicit.

In how far has working with overtone singing led to creating different music for you personally? Are there creative ideas / pieces which you could not realise in equal temperament?

Most of them don‘t need equal temperament. I don’t work from scores, which inherently favour 12TET. I start with listening, sounding, imitating things I have heard in the past or that I am listening to now, and with making up my own patterns, noises, languages.

If you take Tibetan Buddhist chanting as an example, it’s got nothing to do with equal temperament. I approach their tuning in my imitations, but couldn‘t tell exactly what the tuning is.