Overtones

Overtones used in Tibetan Buddhist Chanting and in Tuvin Shamanism.
Dr. TRAN Quang Hai (National Centre for Scientific Research, France)

30 years ago, we discovered the overtones in Tibetan Buddhist chanting, then later in Mongolian and Tuvin throat songs in xöömij style.
Spectral analyses from the physiological and acoustical point of view enable us to have a new way of listening to different vocal techniques. The phenomenon "overtones " has become the new centre of interest.
I would like to present in the framework of the symposium "Music and Ritual" the phenomenon of overtones used in Tibetan Buddhist Chanting and in Tuvin Shamanism. Is it a resonantial voice or is it a formantic voice ?
Before going into details, I think that it is necessary to give a short description of these two types of voices mentioned above.
The resonantial voice is the voice with some uncontrolled overtones by resonance when singing. If the vowels (è) or (i) are sung with a slight nasal resonance, some overtones can be heard. ²One can hear this effect in some Bulgarian songs, in Sardinian sacred polyphonic songs with the presence of the 5th virtual overtone voice called la quintina.
The formantic voice is the voice using specific overtones to create a melody or a fixed pitch upon the fundamental (the case of Mongolian and Tuvin xöömij singing style and Tibetan chanting). In this aspect noticed in Mongolian and Tuvin throat song xöömij , a singer creates a constant pitched fundamental considered as a drone, and at the same time, modulate the selected overtones to create a formantic melody from Harmonic 4 (H4) till Harmonic 16 (H16), depending the range of the song. For the Tibetan Buddhist chanting, the fixed fundamental and the fixed overtone (especially Harmonic 10 (H10) are the characteristics of one of the prayers recited by Gyütö and Gyüme tantric universities .
Until the middle of the 20th century, Western accounts of Tibetan Buddhism often made it seem mystifying or bizarre. The exile of several thousands of Tibetan Buddhist monks after the Chinese invasion in Tibet enabled the Westerners to have a better understanding of Tibetan Buddhism. The Drepung Monastery, one of the three great colleges of the Geluk Order (the two others are Ganden and Sera), whose rituals are chanted in a distinctive chordal style, in which each participant produces three notes at once. For the Gyütö and Gyüme tantric universities, the chant master umze, with his deep voice, produces the sound rich in overtones, trying to create the overtone number 10 (H10 for the Gyütö school with the vowel (ô ), or the overtone number 12 (H12 for the Gyüme school with the vowel (ö ). The Drepung school has another style and has two colleges, Loseling and Gomang . The chant master begins with a powerful segment of chordal chanting jok-khah, at a deep pitch (around 70Hz) One can see the presence of overtones 6 and 7 (H6 and H7) and the audible upper overtones 11, 12 and then up to overtones 16 (H16) when the master pronounces the vowel (i: ). Loseling's prayers feature barda, melodies that start softly, at a low pitch (around 105 Hz), and then gradually ascend higher and higher in a sustained crescendo up to 420Hz, that means two octaves higher from the starting pitch. When the melodies come to the end at the highest peak, then several monks sing chords in the deep bass, creating the mixture of the opposite pitch, colour and timber between the two groups of monks.
In Tibet, in every monastery, all the monks are obliged to learn vocal music, because voice is necessary for all ceremonies and rituals. The Four Great Religious Traditions are: Nyingmapa (Rnying ma pa), Sakyapa (Sa skya pa), Kargyudpa (Bka' brgyud pa), and Gelugpa (Dge lugs pa). Each religious tradition developed its own special musical traditions. A priest of the Tsharpa branch of the Saskyapa method divides chant into three categories:don, rta, dbyangs. Don or sung recitation is a stylized recitation using reiterating pitch and rhythmic patterns with constant melodic variations after the recited words . Rta or melodic chant, is a strophic chant sung to tunes with distinct, consciously patterned melodies. Dbyangs or tone contour chant, is a special composition with vocal coloration due to different vowels sung in the sacred texts. It is the most hightly valued, slowest paced, lowest pitched, most complex and most beautiful chant in Tibetan Buddhist chanting. The melodies of dbyangs are preserved and transmitted by written notations graphically representing intonational features A ritual may be performed only with don. Most performances include both don and rta. Dbyangs, associated with instrumental music, can be used to enhance the beauty of performance of these crucial moments of the ritual There are different uses of singing in the monastery: child's voice waking up monks in the morning on the roof of the monastery, recitation of poetic verses as prayers, and prayers in Dbyangs style.
Dbyangs means VOWEL and the Dbyangs prayer uses vowels as means of modifying overtones, in particular the creation of overtone H10 which is 3 octaves and a major third above the fundamental. The monks start with a mantra with HUM, then go to OM, AH, or another mantra. There are two styles of overtone chanting in Tibet, especially by monks of Gyütö and Gyüme Tantric Universities. The Dbyangs style is the astonishing form of voice production employed at the great Gelugpa monastery, considered by Europeans as the "one voice chording". The voice is unusually rich in harmonics. The monks try to make the overtone H10 louder than other overtones which are the picture of monks' voices.
According to Rakra Tethong, the basic principles of dbyangs were described many centuries ago by Saskya Pandita (1182-1251), the great scholar of the Sakya tradition, in his Treatise on Music. He divides Dbyangs into 'dren pa, bkug pa, bsgyur ba, and ldeng nyid, and each of these has further subdivision. For example, 'dren pa means to start a note. He lists different things you can do when starting such as: bstod pa, raise up; smad pa, lower; bkug pa, make a little pause; rgyang pa, go flat, and so forth. Bkug pa is a stop, usually with a vowel and pitch change. For example, if you sing on the G pith level, and there comes a word with a vowel (i:) ending, then the pitch just goes up naturally, maybe a step or so, and the sound stops. Bsgyur ba are changes in the tune, slight fluctuations, with changes in the vowel, surch as from (i: ) to (u) or (i) to (o). And ldeng nyid or ldeng pa: when your are singing on, for example, the pitch G, and you make the sound go up an octave, this is a ldeng pa. But of course, the practice of dbyangs has changed in the centuries since he wrote his book.
The Sakyapas and some other levels classify dbyangs as either pho dbyangs, male, or mod dbyangs, female. This is also a classification of voice levels used in leader (dbu mdzad) and sing on the same pitch level as he does; the yound children have to sing at high level, while old monks with very keen voices sing at a high level, level in between. So you have three levels: male, female and neuter. But in some kinds of dbyangs, or in certain monasteries, the practice is more restricted. For example, in the notation books of Gomang college or the tantric colleges, the dbyangs are written with two in three parallel octaves. You cannot sing a different interval, a fifth or something. Of course, if someone has a very poor voice, or is too old, he may have to sing on his own level, and there's no objection to that. But if he were able, and had a good voice, he could sing one of the octaves where the others were singing. Everyone must offer the best that he can.
Dbyangs are the most highly valued, slowest paced, lowest pitched, most complex and most beautiful chants and melodies used in Tibetan Buddhist music. The melodies of dbyangs are "intoned" in a drawn-out and complex manner which makes use of almost infinite varieties and combinations of the components of melody. In Western terms, their melodies consist of sequences of smoothly and continuously varying intonational contours, including changes of pitch, loudness, and/or configurations of resonance (overtone) mixtures. There is no simple way to describe the flowing subtlety and complexity of Dbyangs melody.
Some Dbyangs styles make prominent use of pitch variations. Others seem to base their melodic development primarily on alterations in quality or "colour" of vocal intonation, alterations which are produced mainly through interpolation of "alloy" (lhad) syllables among the syllables of the text. Still, other styles utilise special vocal techniques to produce such extreme intonational effects as the sounding of two or more pitches simultaneously by a single performer.
Probably, this kind of chordal chanting was at the first time heard in Tibetan monasteries in the 15th century, when the important Gelugpa institutions learn how to produce overtone.
Shamanism has always been a national religion in Tuva. Men and women can become shamans. The ritual Kham has the monotonous chant, accompanied by a large drum dungur hanged with rattles. The art of playing the drum is special. Shamanism is the term to designate a larger group of apparently closely related to tribal religions spread throughout Inner and Northern Asia. Most of these peoples are pastoralists, ranging from the reindeer cultures of Northern Siberia through the Mongol horse and camel nomads, the Tibetan yak herders, and the sheep and goat pastoralists further West and South. Many are nomadic. Hunting is still important for several groups; and for Siberians (Evenks in Siberia, the Japanese Ainu, and Siberian Inuits),hunting was until modern times the principal or exclusive means of subsistence.
It is presented from a perspective that highlights the similarities between the various shamanism and the Tibetan Bon religion and that explains each in terms of the other.
First, although Bon is historically of shamanic origin and retains many typically shamanic elements of belief and practice, it is no longer shamanic in the form found among other Inner Asian groups. By the time of the introduction of Buddhism into Tibet around the 7th century A.D., it had already become a state religion with a class of sacrified priests (although sacrifice is a part of other shamanism,such as in Mongolia, and may well be an archaic feature). And Bon has since been deeply influenced and changed by Buddhism. The second thing to bear in mind is that most of the Tibetan evidence comes from a Buddhist context, and that most of the practices which seem to exhibit shamanic features also have good, solid Buddhist reasons for being ther. This would only be a problem if we assumed that each element in a culture can only be the result of a single isolated causal chain. However, both Buddhism and the indigenous Tibetan culture seem to have been rich and complex enough to admit coexistence and combination with outside elements. The most common distortion in Tibetan studies is the widespread impression that Buddhist culture is only a thin façade covering a dark, primitive, magical reality.
The central technique of shamanism, found also in Tibetan Bon, is the use of a religious "flight" to the world beyond, which is induced by means of music: drumming and singing. But although this technique seems consistent with shamanic ideology, it seems possible that the more basic and historically earlier practice is simply the use of music to call spirits to the shaman, the idea of flight being a later elaboration. The technique of musical flight practised by shamans and the Tibetan Bon po is actually a symbolic recapitulation of the most important cultural advances made during the histories of the Tibetan and the Innner and North Asian peoples.
This paper will throw the light on the perception of overtones in Tibetan Buddhist chanting and Tuvin Shamanism.

Bibliography
ASIAN MUSIC Journal 1977:Tibet - East Asian Issue, 8/2: 64-81, New York.
ASIAN MUSIC Journal 1979: Tibet Issue, 10/2, 180p., New York.
KAUFMANN, Walter. 1975: Tibetan Buddhist Chant : Musical notations and interpretation of a song book by the Bkah brgyud pa and Sa skya pa sect. Translations from the Tibetan by Thubten Jigme Norbu, Indiana University Press, 566p, Bloomington.
VANDOR, Ivan. 1976: Bouddhisme Tibétain, Buchet/Chastel (ed), Paris.

Discography
TUVA
1992: Tuva - Echoes from the Spirit World, PAN Records PAN 21013, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
MONGOLIA
1993: Musiques de Mongolie, Buda Records 9259-2, Paris, France
TIBET
1989: Tibetan Tantric Chants, Buda Records 9259-2, Paris, France
1990: Buddhist Chant (II), Gyuto Monastery, Bomdile, JVC World Sounds VICG-5040, Tokyo, Japan.
1990: Musiques sacrées du Tibet, Dewatshang C.DEWA 3, Paris, France.
1996: Tibet: The Heart of Dharma, Ellipsis Arts 4050, booklet in English (64pages), New York, USA.