Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Dream Theater: Tuvan throat singing

Tuvan throat singing.  Are you NUTS?  Give me the old time Rock and Roll.  You know, the tired and repetitive Bob Seeger and the rest of rusting Classic Rock.  Not from this venue.

We will always seek to be pleasantly surprised.  Not by rebellious crap, but by just plain great new music.  The surprise in the latest DT effort in the previous post is Tuvan throat singing by Jordan Rudess at the beginning of "Bridges in the Sky."  WTF.  Is is NOT Lady Gaga singing to Bill Clinton.  Southern Siberian origin.
JA

Tuvan throat singing

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The Alash Ensemble
Tuvan throat singing is one particular variant of overtone singing practiced by the Tuva people of southern Siberia.
The art of Tuvan throat singing is a style in which one or more pitches sound simultaneously over a fundamental pitch, producing a unique sound. The history of Tuvan throat singing reaches very far back. Many of the male herders can throat sing, but women are beginning to practice the technique as well. The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient pastoral animism that is still practiced today. Often, singers will travel far into the countryside looking for the right river, or will go up to the steppes of the mountainside to create the proper environment for throat-singing.[1]
The animistic world view of this region identifies the spirituality of objects in nature, not just in their shape or location, but in their sound as well.[2] Thus, human mimicry of nature's sounds is seen as the root of throat singing. (An example is the Mongolian story of the waterfall above the Buyan Gol (Deer River), where mysterious harmonic sounds are said to have attracted deer to bask in the waters, and where it is said harmonic sounds were first revealed to people.)[citation needed] Indeed, the cultures in this part of Asia have developed many instruments and techniques to mimic the sounds of animals, wind, and water.[citation needed] While the cultures of this region share throat singing, their styles vary in breadth of development.
It is simply the harmonized sounds that they are able to produce from deep within their throats.[3] Ordinarily, melodies are created by isolating the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th partial in accordance with the harmonic series (if fundamental frequency were C3, the overtones would be: G5, B♭5, C6, D6, E6, G6). The base pitch is typically around a G below Middle C.
The people of Tuva have a wide range of throat singing vocalizations, and were the pioneers of six pitch harmonics.[4] There are several different classification schemes for Tuvan throat singing. In one, the three basic styles are khoomei, kargyraa and sygyt, while the sub-styles include borbangnadyr, chylandyk, dumchuktaar, ezengileer and kanzyp. In another, there are five basic styles: khoomei, sygyt, kargyraa, borbangnadyr and ezengileer. The substyles include chylandyk, despeng borbang, opei khoomei, buga khoomei, kanzyp, khovu kargyraazy, kozhagar kargyraazy, dag kargyraazy, Oidupaa kargyraazy, uyangylaar, damyraktaar, kishteer, serlennedyr and byrlannadyr.[5] These schemes all use Tuvan terminology.

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