
Explore the World of Throat Singing, Overtone Singing, and Other Multiphonic Vocal Techniques Listen to a playlist curated by Ken Ueno 94 that explores the diverse history and sonic possibilities of the human voice.
By
Bryan Parys
May 24, 2022
Composer, singer, and sound artist Ken Ueno 94
Image courtesy of the artist
The Have You Heard? playlist series offers brief introductions to musical genres, concepts, tools, artists, and more that may be less familiar to wider audiences. In this edition, Ken Ueno 94 curates a selection of pieces that showcase different forms of multiphonic singing.
Recording technology has made it commonplace for singers to pitch shift, auto-tune, and loop their own voices, and it can be easy to forget just how much the human voice, unadorned, is capable of. For one, there is vocal overdubbing, which allows for artists to record multiple tracks of their own voice, stacking layers of notes into complex compositions. Contemporary artists have used overdubs to stunning effect, from the chart-topping work of Bobby McFerrin to more experimental explorations such as Bj rks album Med lla. But even these techniques require technology to pull off.
Watch Ken Ueno discuss and demonstrate his vocal extended techniques.
Many of the aforementioned technological effects can actually be achieved by a single human voice through multiphonic singing, where a singer can simultaneously combine notes, tones, and even rhythmic textures. The human vocal mechanism is capable of many more sounds than are necessary for language, says composer, singer, and sound artist Ken Ueno 94, a professor at UC Berkeley who studied composition at Berklee. I have been inspired by diverse vocal traditions and individual artists who blew me away. These artists stretched my imagination of what is possible to sing.
Multiphonic practices have shown up in many cultures from around the world and go back centuries, including Tuvan throat singing, which involves guttural expressions of the voice, and overtone singing, in which a singer manipulates the vocal tract in order to create more than one pitch in the same breath. Modern examples of throat singing can be heard in the Dune soundtrack as well in the video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. In 2014, noted multiphonic singer Lalah Hathaway 90 22H earned a Grammy Award for her overtone vocal performance in the song Something by Snarky Puppy.
In the following playlist, Ueno offers several of his favorite works of multiphonic vocal music, from throat singing to heavy metal screaming to, in the case of one of his own pieces, the lack of breath.
Tracks and Notes All commentary by playlist curator Ken Ueno
1. Deep Blue, Sainkho Namtchylak
Ueno: [Charles] Bukowski says he'd forgotten which track of classical music initiated his lifelong engagement with it in his poem, Classical Music and Me. Similarly, I've forgotten which piece introduced me to throat singing in my early 20s, which set me on my path as a vocalist. Later, I was introduced to Sainkho's singing. Hailing from Tuva, where women are discouraged from throat singing, she discovered/invented her own way to sing. This track features her superhuman low range. She's one of my heroes.
2. Uja, Tanya Tagaq
Ueno: The Inuit have a throat-singing tradition too. And, like the Tuvans, the tradition is mostly gendered-it is the women who throat sing. Tanya Tagaq is a radical Inuk artist who brings forth traditional throat singing of her culture into new expressive, contemporary spaces.
3. UMNGQOKOLO, by the Xhosa
Ueno: The Xhosa people of modern-day South Africa also have a throat singing tradition.
4. Tenores Santu Franziscu of Sardinia
Ueno: Completing our tour of throat singing traditions from around the world, here is an example from Sardinia.
5. Voice Piece: One-Note Internal Resonance Investigation, Joan La Barbara
Ueno: Joan La Barbara learned to circular sing and sing multiphonics in a unique way. Collaborating with important composers, as well as composing her own pieces featuring her extended techniques, she is a pioneer in expanding the vocabulary of vocal sounds in contemporary classical music.
6. States, Shelley Hirsch
Ueno: Shelley Hirsch is a national treasure. A truly American shaman, she frenetically channels different types of vocal styles (jazz, Broadway, and the avant-garde) and juxtaposes them in wild narratives that presage the storytelling energies of the internet age.
7. Litany IV, Moonchild (Mike Patton)
Ueno: Even rock stars can be experimental. Mike Patton [of hard rock band Faith No More] bridges the screamo vocalizations of metal with other sounds and the structural invention of experimental music in this piece by John Zorn.
8. Strange Fruit, Billie Holiday
Ueno: There are many versions, but this three-minute version [from 1959] is a tour de force. A mini opera, some lines are delivered staccato and dry, like a recitative. Billie Holiday slides into blues notes and breathes vibrato into the second half of words like strange (a micro text-setting distortion), saving the largest fully-voiced interval for the last note. Here is everything I want to continue to unpack and learn for the rest of my life as a composer, vocalist, and social activist.
9. Tard, Ken Ueno (featuring Du Yun, Matt Evans, and Amy Garapic)
Ueno: Finally, a piece of mine. I've been thinking of this piece from 2018, after George Floyd and more recently, during the uptick in violence against Asian Americans. I hold my breath in a bowl of water for two minutes as an analog to the suspension of my breath and the muting of my voice as a person of color. Risking my life to protest the underlying premise of being of Asian American, invisibility, I am asking, What do I need to do for you to hear/see me?
Related Categories
Playlists
Most Popular
From left to right: Berklee Pr
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Foundry Releases SmartRoto for Nuke
Brie Clayton July 17, 2026
0 Comments
Spline-based AI powered plugin accelerates time-consuming rotoscoping, helping...
17/07/2026
A Short Documentary About a Giant Pencil Edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton July 17, 2026
0 Comments
SBIFF jury award winner finished fro...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
17/07/2026
Lightware has published its second voluntary Sustainability Report, showing how energy efficiency, product longevity and responsible material use are increasing...
17/07/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced Griptape Enterprise, a new tier of the Griptape AI workflow orchestration platform, extended to meet the str...
17/07/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the availability of SmartRoto, a new AI-powered plugin upgrade for Nuke, NukeX, Nuke Studio, and Nuke Indie ...
17/07/2026
The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available!
Brie Clayton July 16, 2026
0 Comments
Fairlight Live is a new audio mixer designed fo...
17/07/2026
Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP
Andy Marken July 16, 2026
0 Comments
Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There\s no win...
17/07/2026
New and returning series, live festival broadcasts, powerful documentaries and major sporting moments headline RT Radio 1's summer schedule
RT Radio 1 is...
17/07/2026
Think of a professional athlete. What separates elite performers is what happens...
17/07/2026
Up For The Match - Live From Croke Park this Saturday at 8pm on RT One and RT ...
17/07/2026
RT Commercial has today announced DiscoverIreland.ie, as sponsor of The Traitor...
16/07/2026
Media organisations with tested plans for new products, services or revenue models can now apply for grants of up to 30,000 through the Business Innovation Syn...
16/07/2026
This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work
In the live-sports-video in...
16/07/2026
TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...
16/07/2026
ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...
16/07/2026
FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...
16/07/2026
Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...
16/07/2026
ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...
16/07/2026
Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...
16/07/2026
The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...
16/07/2026
Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...
16/07/2026
Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...
16/07/2026
The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...
16/07/2026
With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...
16/07/2026
In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...
16/07/2026
Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...
16/07/2026
Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team d...
16/07/2026
With 42 RF cameras and high-power radio mics deployed, the spectrum environment ...
16/07/2026
A new benchmark in bass enhancement
Described as a new benchmark in bass enhancement , Baby Audio's latest release has been designed to augment the lo...
16/07/2026
Popular library rebuilt in new Orbita Engine
Other Worlds Evolved is the latest of Zero G's sample libraries to be treated to a ground-up rebuild using ...
16/07/2026
Created in collaboration with A. G. Cook
The newest addition to Native Instruments' software collection introduces a new synth created by A. G. Cook, a ...
16/07/2026
NITV and SBS bring Australians to the heart of Garma
16 July, 2026
Media releases
The Garma Festival returns from 31 July-3 August, with NITV and SBS deliv...
16/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz supplies conformance test systems to Marquistech for India's...
16/07/2026
June brought stabilization to the television market. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes a day in front of their TV screens exactly the same as i...
16/07/2026
Glensound returns to IBC with a major new addition to its intelligent loudspeaker range, the Greater Divine Supernal studio monitor, alongside recent developmen...
16/07/2026
33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...
16/07/2026
Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
16/07/2026
Zixi, a leader in live video delivery and workflow orchestration, and Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) today announced a strategic new integration to deliver ...