Mongolian Tuvan Throat Singing

Tuvan Throat Singing is an ancient Mongolian musical tradition. Not for the faint of heart, seasoned throat singers sing several tones simultaneously! Using ancient techniques, singers sing a drone in their resonant, chest voice while manipulating their throat, mouth and lips to sound overtones above at the same time.

We listened to recordings of Tuvan throat singers, as well as images of the great open plains of Mongolia. Tuvan throat singers were able to project their songs over these great distances. While the Каргыраа (Kargyraa) technique of throat singing takes years to master, we practiced making drones deep in our resonant chest voices alongside recordings of throat singers. We talked about the harmonic series of overtones produced from the sounding of a single pitch, and how Tuvan throat singers manipulate this acoustic principle to produce multiple tones at the same time. We looked at the vibrations of a guitar string and its harmonic series to demonstrate this idea.