Language:
Multiple languages
Pages:
1 online resource (40 min.).
,
003930
Edition:
Electronic reproduction. Alexandria, VA : Alexander Street Press, 2014. (Ethnographic video online, volume 2). Available via World Wide Web.
Series Statement:
Ethnographic video online, volume 2
Keywords:
Ethnomusicology.
;
Sound recordings in ethnomusicology.
;
France
;
Documentary films.
Abstract:
In the practice of overtone singing (called also bi-phonic singing), whose best known examples can be found in Mongolia and with the Tuva people of Southern Siberia, a single person sings what the audience perceives as two voices at the same time a low pitch with his vocal cords, and in addition, a high-pitched melody using harmonics (overtones) selected by modifying the volume of the mouth cavity. This documentary is not an ethnography filmed in location. It is partly an illustration of the results of former research, partly the very actual investigation on overtone singing carried out in Paris, in the Ethnomusicology Department of the Musée de l'Homme, during a workshop, during a concert of the Mongolian National Ensemble, and in the medical visualization department of a hospital. The central figure is Tran Quang Hai, a well-known musician specialized in Vietnamese music, a performer and researcher in overtone singing, who is there working with the filmmaker in the same research group. The initial idea was to explore new technologies allowing the visualization of music structure and performance. The film shows for the first time in real time and with synchronous sound how biphonic singing operates from the physiological as well as the acoustical point of view. While shooting the x-ray pictures of tongue movements and the spectral views of overtones, the filmmaker and his collaborators discovered for the first time — like the viewer of the film — how this unique vocal technique operates.
Note:
Title from resource description page (viewed Feb. 6, 2014).
,
Recorded in Paris in 1989.
,
Previously released as DVD.
,
This edition in Mongolian, French and English with English subtitles.
URL:
http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?ANTH;2069333
URL:
https://fid-ska.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?ANTH;2069333
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