So, since I like teaching people things, and a few people have expressed an interest in some of the throat singing I've been doing, I figured I'd write out a tutorial explaining how to learn to throat sing and achieve the various styles. There are lotsa instructions online, and some of the YouTube demonstrations are pretty good, but I feel like I can explain things a bit better than the ways I've seen them described. A lot of these tips were gleaned (or stolen) from others, but re-explained or modified from my perspective.
1. Khoomei:
You should start by learning Khoomei. Khoomei is the most basic style of throat singing, and is a necessary component of Sygyt. Khoomei was pretty simple for me to learn, but for others, it's very non-intuitive. I'm not trying to brag, I'm merely saying that it may make sense immediately, or it may not. Just stick with it.
Start by just "singing" a simple tone like "Ah" somewhere in the middle of your range (not too high, not too low). Then try to constrict the back of your throat to make it sound tighter and a bit grittier, while at the same time flexing your abs and really pushing the air up from your abdomen. It's very much a valsalva maneuver, like you're trying to have a bowel movement. The transition should sound like
this.
It should not hurt to do this. When I was learning, I found my throat was a bit sore for a few days, but once I learned how to do it correctly, it didn't hurt at all. Take it slow. A little bit of practice, and a long break.
Alright that's Khoomei. That's it. A Tuvan throat song may have a melody sung in Khoomei with some minimal changes in pitch. I don't really know any true Tuvan songs, as I can't find any lyrics online... But
here's a comically ridiculous "melody" line in Khoomei, consisting entirely of gibberish.
2. Ok, now Sygyt. Sygyt means "whistle," and is characterized by high flute-like overtones that sound on top of a lower bagpipe like drone. You're shooting for
this.
Alright, now here's how you do it. First off, you HAVE to be able to do Khoomei before you do this. If you haven't got Khoomei yet, go back to part 1 and learn that. Then come back to here.
Ok, so say "her." Take note of your tongue position. It should be curved up a bit with the tip a bit behind your front teeth. Now sing "her," kind of high in your range. Now, trying to keep the tip of your tongue where it is, try to move the BACK part of your tongue up and down a bit. This is tricky. Try saying "yuhree," while keeping the tip of your tongue where it is. Realistically the tip will move back a bit while you say the "yuhr" part, and forward a bit when you say the "ree" part, but focus on keeping it stationary. It should sound like
this.
What you're doing is creating a second reasonating chamber in your mouth, above your tongue, so that you've got some air vibrating from your vocal cords, and some air above your tongue vibrating too. Note that there needs to be a way for the air to "escape" from the upper resonating chamber; if you had made a perfect seal with your tongue against your hard palate, the air wouldn't be able to resonate and escape properly. If I think about it, I can ALMOST feel the tip of my tongue vibrating a little bit against my hard palate behind my teeth, but this is very subtle, it shouldn't be like you're rolling your R's like in Spanish. Your lips and jaw should NOT move much at all while you're doing this, they should remain in a loose "ooh" shape.
Now if you listen carefully while you're doing this "yuhree" thing, you might hear some hints of overtones, which will sound like higher pitched variations on top of the "body" of the sound. Here's where the Khoomei comes in. When you do exactly what was described in the paragraph above USING A KHOOMEI VOICE, you'll selectively filter out some sounds, producing clearer overtones.
Now do the "yuhree" thing, while siging in Khoomei. Your overtones will probably appear and disappear kind of randomly, and I bet you'll feel your tongue hit the right frequency and then get "out of phase" while this is occuring. With time, you'll get better at localizing the tongue positions necessary to produce the overtones.
Here's a sample of me performing some pseudo-Sygyt WITHOUT the Khoomei voice, and then adding in the constriction to produce true Sygyt.
You'll hear the overtones get alot clearer in the sample.
This takes practice, practice, practice. Learning where the overtones are is like learning where the notes are on a trombone. Practice your Khoomei too, as the more constriction you can get, the easier it is to find overtones.
3. Kargyraa.
This is much simpler than Sygyt, in that there aren't tricky tongue positions to master or anything. Basically, once you can get the initial Kargyraa sound, all you do is mouth exaggerated vowel shapes to get overtones. The hard part though is figuring out how the hell to get that distinctive low sound of Kargyraa.
Once you do though, it's extremely rewarding. It literally will just click into place, and then you'll think "OH, THAT'S how you do it."
Alright so what you need to do is get a part of your voice-box vibrating that you probably don't even know you have, the vestibular folds (or false vocal cords).
When you make a growling noice with your mouth closed, or clear your throat, you're vibrating these. As much as I hate the show Home Improvement, the man-grunt that the dad in that show does is a pretty good example. So
here's the kind of closed-mouth growl/throat clearing that I'm talking about.
Now Kargyraa is singing a tone while vibrating this same area. HOWEVER, you don't want to just try to perpetually growl while singing, this will really hurt. The best way I've found to make this happen is as follows. Sing "Ho" relatively low in your range. Now, sing "Hoden", with a very short "den." It's almost just like "Ho-dn." It should sound like
this.
Alright, so when you're singing that "den" part, you should be able to feel some pressure or vibration on your palate / the back part of your nasal cavity, and if you put your finger under your nostrils, you should feel a bit of air coming out your nose at this point. My point is you're producing some backpressure in your mouth/throat by blocking with your tongue to say the "n" sound. Now is the really tricky part. This backpressure can be increased by pushing hard from your abdomen, and then you can get your false vocal cords vibrating. Try to visualize the part of your voice box that you want to get moving; again, it's the part that moves when you growl or clear your throat. Increase the force with which your singing "den," and try to visualize directing the pressure back down your throat. It will probably take a number of tries, but eventually you'll feel part of your larynx just leap into vibration. When this happens to me, I can feel my nasal cavity vibrate really hard too... it tickles the inside of my nose. Now the first time you get this vibration, it will probably hurt a bit, and will feel like you just cleared your throat really really hard. This is where you need to take it slow. DO NOT PRACTICE THIS TOO MUCH AT ONE SITTING. Only a few minutes day until you can get the vibration without much effort. When you're really trying hard to GET the vibration, it hurts. When you're actually vibrating, it's painless.
Alright, so the "Hoden" --> vibration should sound like
this.
Now, you have to open your lips and tongue while keeping your false vocal cords vibrating, so that you can shape your mouth into other vowel shapes (other than the "den" you are pronouncing). It's a bit tricky to open your mouth without losing the vibration at first. Try saying "Hoden-Ay." When you can get your mouth open into the "ay" position and still have the vibrating going on, you're 90% there. It should sound like
this.
Once you get better that vibration, you'll find out you can drop into the vibration without having to do the backpressure method. This isn't a crucial step though, at this point, so just stick with the Hoden-Ay approach for now.
Now you've just got to move your mouth into shapes like "A E I O U," and you'll get different overtones to sound. They're alot more subtle than the piercing Sygyt ones, and they're hard to record on a crappy microphone, but it will sound something like
this.
There you go. The three main styles of throat singing. Take it slow and be patient. I think my instructions are pretty good, and I think if you follow them, you could learn this all in a week.
Good luck : )
No pictures of me wearing it because, as much as I respect the kilt and am excited about it, a picture on the internet of a random American guy proudly standing there in his homemade kilt is just a little pathetic.
And all of my Nerfenemies will be giving thanks for a quick Nerfdeath.... if I choose to grant them that.
Well, thanks again to Bill's hookup, I'm the proud new owner of this Raleigh XXIX SingleSpeed 29'er. It makes me feel like a kid again. A kid who is now no longer limited by the quality of his steed, and can now start to become a decent off-road rider. This thing is a blast, and was ridden hard on its maiden (under my command) voyage, as is evident by the copious mud : )
Shirt, pre-washing (it faded a bit in the wash, but I'll take pics after it's dry):
Wow, isn't that sad looking?
