You should talk to Elizabeth Zharoff of The Charismatic Voice. I’m sure you guys could nerd out over vocal technique, and I know she’s a big proponent of getting scoped so you can see what your voice is actually doing, which as far as I know, hasn’t been done yet to analyze the anatomy of what’s happening in subharmonic singing.
I’m a monk, been chanting throat singing for years and I think I could share some of the secrets if you are interested. There is a whole technique based on pressure and air flow and helps you hit lower notes quicker and more reliably for example
I googled the name and skipped through sections but didn't see what David did. I know this style of vocal has been around for centuries in Mongolian throat singing, so I'm curious, what did David do?
@@ConnorHammond He literally played no role whatsoever. Only in the TH-cam zone of things. Bass singing is _not_ a niche. He just doesn't know. Heck, entire operas are sometimes very bass heavy. And subharmonics have been a thing in music for decades, not scratch that thousands of years... Just not necessarily main stream or for 'entire pop songs' so to speak. But come on...
I would say we need Elizabeth (Charismatic Voice) in on this discussion🤔 She likes sticking cameras in throats to actually see what the hell is goin on in there
It might also have to do with sympathetic resonance. The two vibrations "relax" into synchronization in certain ratios because the resonating vocal cords are acting on each other. I don't know if that made sense.
I got the honor of actually speaking to Geoff a few years ago in Grinnell Iowa and I was very briefly able to discuss subharmonics with him, and I asked him where he had seen the technique, and his response was something to the effect of, "I think his name was David Larson, I saw it in a youtube tutorial." and the amount of just sheer joy to see our little slice of bass singing reach someone I idolized felt so awesome. This was summer of 2019 as well so subs were a known technique but not as widely used as they are now.
Hi Thou, Can you verify what technique is my A0 attempt? I can’t tell if it is chest-fry or strohbass when I analyzed the waveform in Melodyne. th-cam.com/video/FfCDGgndJbI/w-d-xo.html
I'm a flutist and vocalist and this gives me MANY ideas for trying to get subharmonics to sound out of a flute. Flutists can use a number of techniques to produce overtones and multiphonics, but nobody really tries to get subharmonics out of them.
Interesting to see you lay all this out like this! You've done a great job of influencing the community in a positive way. I guess that's what putting out good content does! Also, it's interesting how the internet can make niche musical communities almost like a small town. Lots of familiar faces here... this takes me back.
The man that started it all -- great video my guy! I remember chatting with you on Instagram back in 2015 when I first saw your videos and got interested in subs -- crazy how long ago that was. One added bit of useful voice science re what you mentioned about subs being easier on closed vowels (or closed mouth position): based on how the physics of the voice works, and how the subglottal and supraglottal pressure systems work while singing, closed vowels and closed mouth position (also known as SOVTs (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract) actually help the vocal folds adduct (come together) easier. It's a great trick for young singers to train with these a lot to achieve good vocal fold closure, creating a pure, more efficient (and more powerful) sound.
Dude's talking like some guy he found on Facebook was the first one to ever do it when people have been doing this for like a thousand years all over the eastern world
@@alexgorron6470 Incorrect. While that IS a form of subharmonic singing, the technique David popularized is a completely different mechanism of the vocal folds. And by, "started it all," I simply mean that he brought it into the mainstream. This particular style of subharmonic singing started in choirs of the Russian Orthodoxy, I believe
@@alexgorron6470 Yes, but the two techniques are radically different, as I said. Techniques have to arise at some point (just meaning that they didn't always exist), and this particular style of subharmonic singing arose from a specific tradition in the Russian Orthodoxy, certainly at a much later date than the traditional style of subharmonics used in Mongolian throat singing
Your channel has been a huge inspiration to me, seeing various extended vocal techniques explained in detail and pointing out the commonalities between different vocal scenes using these techniques. It really encouraged me to experiment and take things from what different singers were doing and see how I might adapt it. It still seems like a lot of vocal communities are kind of floating along doing their own thing independently of each other. I hope more people see your videos and realize all the cool things going on everywhere and try to learn from and collaborate more with each other.
Definitely not just bass singers studying with your techniques- I'm a Mezzo-contralto, learning to expand my range in this way. (I'm working with tonal singing to expand my range upward, as well!) Brilliantly helpful!
Having watched Taddl 10 or so years ago before he changed his path, it was a real suprise to see him here again after watching your video about the topic years ago and now suddenly getting the updated version in my recommended. how small the internet can be
Hola David, absolutely loving your enthusiasm for this area of vocal technique. I remember lying in the bath when I was kid, accidentally finding these tones, just suddenly dropping down into them and trying to make them last as long as possible, it truly is a fascinating sound. Of course I had no "technique", so it would seemingly come and go as it pleased, and it felt special when I could do it for extended periods. I definitely think the reverberation of the bathroom and the relaxed state of the body both helped these sounds come about. I think one of the main things with these sounds is to surrender to them, and not try to control them - like you were saying, let the natural mechanisms of the voice and sound do their thing, it's almost like you just have to will these sounds into existence, the sideways thing is spot on..........................One thing that does surprise me is that in this discussion of subharmonic technique there is little or maybe no mention of Tuvan throat singing or the multi harmonic singing of the Tibetan monks, or the many other centuries old (or more) singing traditions. It's absolutely mind blowing what these singers can do, and there's so much to learn from them, with a traditional technique that has been developed over multiple generations. One of the most impressive techniques is the ability to not only sing the fundamental and a strong sub harmonic, but at the very same time also sing complex melodies with overtones. I must admit I have only watched this video and maybe you mention and explore these traditional techniques elsewhere on your channel, and if you do apologies in advance :-) Having said all that I do think there is a very important place for people like you to be "translators" of such age old traditional vocal techniques, to be able to express these techniques in familiar western terms. If you're interested in exploring this subharmonic world even further I'm sure you would find it rewarding to study or at least connect with some traditional singers of this technique, it could only deepen your enthusiasm and understanding of this style of singing. Congrats on doing what you're doing, love your relaxed and open style of presentation, you're obviously inspiring a ton of people all round the world to plumb new depths of vocal sonic booms, and that is surely a good thing :-)
WOW! I understood the concept of the clashing reverberations of the soundwaves creating a subharmonic, but actually seeing that clashing amplified using a harmonica is amazing!!
You can actually also create subharmonics with a stringed instrument using a bow, using a single string. I understand that subharmonics can be created by the interaction of two frequencies such as a 5th creating an underlying lower harmonic frequency. However, I honestly don’t think it would be possible for your vocal chords to create two different frequencies from each other, and my thoughts are that subharmonics can also be created by manipulating pressure and air speed, which is essentially how it is done on a stringed instrument such as violin or viola, using a single string. But, how does manipulation of speed and pressure create a subharmonic frequency? That part, I have yet to figure out. I would love to see a slow motion video of a stringed instrument playing a subharmonic. I really do think it is very similar to what is going on in the voice, and could possibly bring some answers
You forget to realize the voice is not a single frequency. It's a harmonic resolution of various frequencies. It's why subharmonics and overtones work.
I found you back in high school after watching the oogie boogie song. Using your tutorial, although it took like two or three years of trying, I eventually figured out the technique at two in the morning while laying in my dorm bed and singing myself to sleep. I immediately jumped up, ran into the basement to the dorm piano, and didn't sleep that night because I had to know I could replicate it in the morning. Since then, I've been singing subharmonics casually day to day, and have even managed a fleeting second sub once or twice. Similarly to you, I've just been completely fascinated by the technique and the science behind it. When I realized you could use two voices, I was amped out of my mind. I just wanted to say thank you for putting in the efforts that you have to not only learn and understand it but to make it known. It's totally changed how I look at singing and has on multiple occasions reignited my love of it.
Dude what a journey this has been for you. I don't know what to say. Just thank you for changing the lives of thousands of singers and beatboxers around the world. You have truly made this tequnique popularize and I could't be more grateful for it, and I know that many agree with that. Personally you have changed my life and approach to low singing. As a tenor singing low was always a bummer. The only time of the day when my voice would feel somewhat low and resonant was on the mornings and that was it, after two hours it was all gone. Then around November of 2019 I saw your first subharmonic video turorial and Iremember becoming obsessed with it because of how powerful it was and the possibilities it could give me. I literrally binge watched all of your subharmonic tutorials shortly after that. I can still vividly remember the first time I succesfully hit a subharmonic. I was aming for a C2, and then out of nowhere my voice flipped down there. I can still remember the feeling of power and accomplishment I got. I can still remember how werid and awesome was that for the first time I sang a low note lower than Gb2. And I remember that night I spent like one or two more hours trying pitches and I remember I sang the G1 from the ring of fire and felt invencible, even though it sounded very weak and unstable at this time. Fast forward Two years and you have opened a door for me to endless possibilities. Unfortunatly I am still recovering from vocal damage due to oversinging during quarantine, but once my voice is back I want to be back and stronger than ever and I have a few Voiceplay and acapella covers in mind to upload. I don't have muche else to say. Just thank you David. I will always admire you, you are my hero. Love, from Argentina
Man, that s really insane...so you were a tenor with the lowest note a gb2 and in 2 years reach a G1. I m a barritone with lowest note D2. Im aiming for a clear and strong C2. You give me hope with your story that i can reach more than a C2. I really need to hear this kind of superhappy storys. Thank you!
WHOA DUDE! I've been trying to hit lower notes for years and just stumbled on your vid. I'd never purposely tried to hit "fry" so after about 15 minutes of trying to hit it, I accidentally hit subharmonic. Now that I know what it feels like, I'm totally stoked to explore that realm! Once I'm consistently in control, I'll need to try for 2nd sub. Thank you!!!
It was so cool watching your video years ago and seeing the world of subharmonics open up with Geoff Castelucci and seeing more and more people know about the technique. I even mentioned it to my chorus teacher back in high school and she had no idea what subharmonics were and she has a masters. Crazy how almost no one knew about this technique until your videos
This is the best video on subharmonics on the internet for sure! I really hope this video will get a lot of views so more people know the ‚full‘ story about the subject. Btw, Geoff Castellucci is the reason why I found out about subharmonics but you are the reason why I understand how they work and why I am able to sing them. I‘ve been playing around with subs for about 2 years and 4 months. At this Point I am fairly consistent with it and I am able to hit 2nd subs as well. I actually used some 2nd subs in my music here on TH-cam. I am a Tenor so 2nd subs are the only way I can hit a solid 1st octave note while staying in subharmonics. Inhale is my go-to technique for 1st octave notes but 2nd subs are something special that I like to throw in once in a while and pronouncing words with subharmonics is easier than with inhale. Thank you for the video and for the insight, it‘s always fun to hear you nerd out about subharmonics. It‘s such a cool and interesting topic but I don’t really have any people around me to talk about it. I hope it‘ll gain even more popularity in the upcoming years.
Same for me, Geoff introduced me to subs but David taught me them. I've only been at them for like a month now but I can do them pretty reliably. Haven't found any 2nd subs yet but I've been having a ton of fun practicing the technique. I just started learning inhale too last week. Those are also really neat.
One of the things I’d love to learn from an anatomical perspective is the difference between various vocal basses. For example, being able to see the vocal folds vibrating when using regular subharmonics vs throat bass vs vibration bass vs vocalized chest bass vs inward bass. They’re all different sounds, but SEEING why would be incredible. You should contact an ENT doctor to see if they’d work with you in a video
I've been doing my own research into the mechanics of subharmonics for a while now! Read on if you want a stupid long explanation of what I've found: While the physics and math of beat frequencies (combination tones, whatever you want to call them) makes sense, I've always been suspicious of my two vocal folds actually vibrating at different frequencies. That would mean one chord is vibrating at a higher frequency than the fundamental you're singing, but you never hear or feel a higher 5th when you do subharmonics. It would also take more energy to raise one vocal chord to a higher pitch, but I never feel an increase in air pressure to get subharmonics out - in fact, I have to decrease my air pressure usually, and I can't push too hard on my subharmonics they go away. So it wouldn't make sense from an energy standpoint to have the vocal chords vibrating at different frequencies. And different frequencies would also mean that the vibration going on isn't symmetric in your throat - one side would be vibrating faster, and I'd bet you'd be able to feel that difference. I detect no such thing, subharmonics always feel symmetrical in my throat. Vocal chords can vibrate at different frequencies though - this is called dyplophonia, and it's usually caused by some disorder in the throat, like a paralysis of one of the vocal chords or the muscles that control it. There are entire medical specialties dedicated to this and related vocal disorders. I've read tons of fascinating stuff about this, but none of it comes close to describing the subharmonics I'm looking for. If people interested in subharmonics haven't heard of Leonardo Fuks, he's the place to start when looking for an actual answer here. He did a lot of research in the late 90's into what he called Vocal Ventricular Mode (VVM) phonation (using the false folds, aka kargyraa, throat bass, etc) and was one of the first to theorize the mechanism of how the false folds vibrate with the vocal folds. In the process he mastered subharmonics too - he called subharmonics "periodic pulse register", and he has audio clips on his website of him going down to a 5th subharmonic. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually talk about PPR much in his research papers. Instead whenever it comes up he just references other papers from the 80s for the a more detailed explanation of it, and then those papers just say that PPR is presumed to be a kind of vocal fry without explaining it. I've heard people explain subharmonics as vocal fry before, but it's never really sat well with me. Vocal Fry is when your vocal chords relax so much that they are touching, and when you push air into them, the air "bubbles" through at a controlled rate. This is why fry is seemingly bottomless, because you can use the muscles in your throat to make that bubbling as slow as you want, down to just letting individual bubbles out. I used to do that all the time as a kid. This is compared to normal "modal" speech, where the vocal folds only touch at their most extended point on the vibration cycle. I've heard Thou Yang describe this (what I'm calling vocal fry) as "unsupported fry" and subharmonics as "supported fry". However, this doesn't fit with the vocal-chords-vibrating-at-different-pitches theory of subharmonics, because that bubbling naturally requires the vocal chords to be relaxed, whereas having one chord vibrating at a higher frequency would require more tension, not less. What's more, I'm able to get subharmonics off of my vocal fry - when I go lower and lower on a 1st subharmonic, I can go a bit past the lower limit of my chest voice's bottom end, and when I jump out of the subharmonic I find myself in vocal fry. Don't believe me, try it for yourself! (for that matter, I can also get a subharmonic when in falsetto, not that it sounds any good.) So if subharmonics aren't vocal fry and aren't one chord vibrating a 5th higher than the other, what is it? The only hint I've been able to find has come from a 1994 paper titled "A subharmonic vibratory pattern in normal vocal folds". I haven't been able to read the full paper yet (paywalled), but the abstract says this: "measurements reveal two different open phases within a subharmonic cycle-the first shorter with a simple shape, the second longer with a shape containing a “ripple.”... The stroboscopic visualization reveals an unusual mucosal movement during the “ripple,” characterized by an opening movement of the upper margins, which interrupts the closing movement of the vocal folds... this vibratory pattern [may arise] as a consequence of detuning of the usually identical frequencies of the dominant modes of the vocal folds, with 3:2 entrainment replacing the normal 1:1 pattern." That's where I'm at now, trying to get access to read that whole paper, because I'm not sure exactly what the abstract is saying. If I'm right then the ripple they're mentioning would be a superposition - when two waves exist at once on a medium. Picture a sine wave, but the line of the sine wave is squiggly; a higher frequency "superimposed", or added, onto a lower frequency; or in this case a lower frequency being added onto a higher one.. This would make sense for your vocal chords - by relaxing them a bit, but not enough to make them touch like in vocal fry, you can introduce enough slack that a lower frequency could be superimposed onto the fundamental. But that line at the end also suggests a detuning that leads to a 3:2 vibrational pattern, which kinda sounds like the vocal folds vibrating at different frequencies, so I don't know. But even if that was the case, it wouldn't be so simple as one vocal fold just jumping up - this ripple that they're mentioning is doing something weird. This still doesn't quite explain why the undertone series pops so naturally into place and why this ripple wouldn't appear in arbitrary frequencies, so not sure on that one either. More research to be done. If you made it to the end of this, thanks for sticking with me! Hopefully this was interesting or informative, and sorry I don't have anything conclusive. Also feel free to correct me if you think I got something wrong. With subharmonics getting more and more popular, I think there's a real strong opportunity to do more legit academic research into this, and if anyone has more info on research past or present, I would love to hear about it! I have plans to reach out to some ENT doctors in my area soon to get a doctor's perspective on it as well, hopefully that is interesting.
Doing some great work here. Love it! In my experience, subharmonics can occur on any instrument and in many forms. When I say a "supported fry", I am actually referring to how it feels for me when I first discovered it, though I do understand that supported fry means something to someone else as well (where the vocal fry can be stabilized to produce a stable pitch). Also, vocal fry is not as "relaxed" as people think - it is actually fully addicted folds but with very low airflow/pressure which is why it feels relaxed. But the tension is quite high in terms of the activity of the TA muscle (thyroarytenoid). It's just that there is very little to no activity in the CT (cricothyroid) muscle. In essence, subharmonics require something else to interact and distort the normal waveform. You can do this on many instruments (cello with bow providing the asymmetrical interaction of the string and bow, with combination tones such as singing and playing the saxophone at the same time, or even something as simple as a tuning fork interacting with a piece of paper). You'll notice that there are different types of subharmonics going on; really, the term "subharmonic" probably should not be used to assume what is going on with the vocal folds because it is not as direct. Asymmetry of vocal folds (slightly offset) seems to be the case for "true vocal fold subharmonics". False fold (active) interaction seems to be the case for VVM and other forms of throat singing. I recall the epligottis having some involvement in throat bass as well, whether or not it is active I am not sure. You can do "subharmonics" with a lip buzz+singing a pitch as well. The list goes on. With all that said, research is evolving and I would love to see a newer sample of data as well. Some food for thought (presented to me by a colleague) - is it truly a subharmonic or simply rebuilding the same harmonics of a note that is half of its value? C3 normal pitch has the harmonics C3-C4-G4-C5-etc. A C2 sub goes C2-C3-G3-C4-E4. Shouldn't a subharmonic it just be C2 sub, C3-C4-G5? (Sort of like the absolute value system or the fact that we can't go into negative hertz, we can't go below the fundamental naturally - even with that said, it is measured as a difference from the starting point). Again, just food for thought. I would love to do more research in this area. For now, I'm working on the performance practice, stability, and longevity of this technique as well as its place in the singing world. 👍 you have my vote for your research - I'll be looking for you. Thanks!
is this the Jan G. Svec papers in the JOURNAL OS SPEECH AND HEANNG RESEARCH, volume 39, 135-143 february 1996 ? If yes, i have it, contact me so i can send it to you
@@bass2yang Thanks for the thoughtful reply! You're right that there are many mechanisms that can lead to a "subharmonic", some (but not all) of which boil down to creating some polyrhythmic interaction. I've been able to get subharmonics on brass and string instruments as well, and have observed the tuning fork effect you're mentioning. The "combination tone" is the most easily observable and understandable mechanism, as demonstrated by David with the harmonica and his stairwell videos and by you with your drum machine video. I don't believe it's the only mechanism though. VVM, while able to produce subharmonics, is not an interaction of a fundamental and a fifth, it's just the false folds vibrating a true octave/other interval below the vocal folds, at least as far as I understand. I should read more of Fuks work before I comment on this more, but I think this is a scenario where the "subharmonic" is physically present as the fundamental frequency of a set of folds. Another mechanism to create a subharmonic is what we could call "skipping", where only every second (or third or fourth, etc) oscillation from one source is picked up and amplified by another source. In the tuning fork example, the fork is only ever creating one tone, but when you hold it with just the right pressure on a surface, only every other vibration of the fork "hits" the table, so what is amplified through the table is a frequency half that of the fork. I think this skipping is what happens with string instruments when you put extra pressure on the bow to get a subharmonic - normal bow-driven string vibration is a "stick-slip" mechanism, but with extra pressure from the bow creating more friction, the string sticks for longer and is pulled farther, and only slips at half the frequency of the fundamental it "wants" to vibrate at. It's worth noting here too that this requires just the right amount of pressure - on both the fork and the string, any more or less pressure will cause a chaotic vibration with random knocking/slipping. This isn't dissimilar to vocal fry, which can display chaotic behavior as well. That's a great point about vocal fry - the folds are loose, but some muscles are very engaged. I'll have to read more on the muscle groups you mentioned, I haven't done any digging on the larynx musculature but that would probably help in understanding a lot. As you mentioned, it seems like asymmetry of the vocal folds might be what's causing the "subharmonics" we care about. I'm still skeptical that it's creating a polyrhythm between the folds though, for some reason it just doesn't feel right to me, but I'm open to my hunch being totally wrong. My hypothesis is that there's a third mechanism that can create subharmonics: superposition. I'm theorizing that that's what's going on in the throat, superposition of a lower frequency on the vocal folds, though I have no idea yet if it's correct. Whatever mechanism it is for the vocal folds, I believe it's the same mechanism in play when I've gotten subharmonics on brass instruments, where your two lips are the only things vibrating. Maybe I need to try and get subharmonics on a saxophone or clarinet using just air (no singing into it), where you only have one vibrating body, the reed. If that were possible, that would rule out the polyrhythm mechanism ,but it could still be either "skipping" or superposition, so it wouldn't prove my hypothesis on its own. Regarding the harmonic makeup: when I've messed around with singing subharmonics into a spectrograph app, the original fundamental and a fifth above it are the clearly dominant frequencies (which might refute what I said earlier about not feeling/hearing a fifth), but the subharmonic frequency also becomes clearly visible, albeit faint. Mathematically, the spectra of a fundamental and the note a fifth above it happen to add up to be the spectrum of the subharmonic, except they are missing the subharmonic pitch itself, but here we see it clearly form. So in a sense, yes, we are rebuilding the spectra of the subharmonic, and maybe that is why it forms rather than anything in our throats actually vibrating at that frequency. More research to be done! It would be interesting to compare this to the spectra of kargyraa/VVM, though I'll have to improve my skills there before I can test it myself.
I'm not a singer (pretty bad at it really) and not a beat boxer either! But I was very fascinated by you tutorials about Subharmonics! I found myself practicing Subharmonics while working, for no good reason at all! I guess this is how captivated I was about it! Keep doing it! If you can bring me, who has no use at all for it, to practice it! Imagine someone who sing!
I just came back after a year and it took me this long to realise that Taddl is part of your video. I remember him uploading German Minecraft videos a decade ago. This is so fascinating
The vocal fry tutorial was great :) it worked for me really quick. I think I've been doing this subconsciously for a while not realizing what it was LOL
My theory as to why human voices are so good at this particular thing would be that it's effectively a result of damped and driven oscillations. When anything is oscillating freely it will have a natural frequency, however if you add some kind of slowing force (damping) or accelerating force (driving) you can alter this frequency in subtle ways. The air coming out at the fundamental pitch you're singing could be acting as both of these through the negative and positive pressure gradients as it passes through your false chords, basically tuning them to a frequency which is very harmonious with the fundamental, i.e. forcing a clean ratio. This would explain why once you start to get it your voice kind of locks into it completely, without any beating from being out of tune
I think this is definitely on the right track! The air pressure (forcing term) is working against the stiffness of your vocal chords (damping term) to filter out anything that doesn't fit harmonically with the fundamental frequency of your vocal chords.
When the false folds are stimulated through excessive airflow, they will produce a non-regular turbulence, e.g. a distortion. I have seen this referred to as a "breath distortion" by one person, and incorrectly called a "false cord scream" by more people than I can recall. When the false folds are stimulated through muscular control, they can distort with much less airflow. This is what would more properly be called a "false fold distortion." When an undertone is achieved using both pairs of folds, it is by performing regular closures with the false folds at half the frequency of the pitch produced by the true folds. It is quite possible for the alignment of the pair of closures to not yield an undertone. The technique demonstrated by David does not, as far as I am aware, involve the false folds. It is a different technique.
I mean, subs have been observed as a characteristic of mammal vocalization for quite some time. In the early 1990s the theory of nonlinear dynamics was brought to the table as a way of describing mammal vocal fold oscillation. One hypothesis states, and I quote, "The sudden change of the vibration of the vocal folds can arise spontaneously without any necessary sudden change in adjustment of the laryngeal muscles. This hypothesis is based on the theory of nonlinear dynamics, which has been successfully applied to vocal fold vibration in this decade [the 1990s], showing that the voice is a nonlinear dynamic system (Titze _et. al.,_ 1993; Herzel _et. al.,_ 1994; Baken, 1995)." It refers to the chest-falsetto jump in particular, but it can be further extended and applied to other various vocal fold oscillations. The excerpt is from _Chapter 4 "On Pitch Jumps Between Chest and Falsetto Registers in Voice: Data from Living and Excised Human Larynges", Introduction_ of Jan Švec's paper of 133 pages titled "On Vibration Properties of Human Vocal Folds". There is some good material analyzed in there about the chest-falsetto jump (especially in males), as well as a deep and comprehensive analysis of the human vocal folds during a subharmonic phonation episode through a laryngostroboscope and a bunch of other devices (Electroglottograph and Photoglottograph). And bear in mind all this was done in the '90s! So if y'all are interested, 👇 research.rug.nl/files/3127422/thesis.pdf
You might know this but, since our vocal chords are basically a tube, open end air column harmonics apply to this. The harmonics that you're skipping through are the resonant frequencies based on the length of the tube.
@@robotdrawer insert a tube into your esophagus and vocalize. sound get any lower? no. it would if our voice production was a closed tube resonator here's an example of a closed tube resonator; clarinet. on clarinet you must change the length of the tube with holes to change pitch when between harmonics. take a clarinet and put a tube in the end of it, and hold down all the keys. The pitch gets lower in accordance with the added length. the fact that we can change the pitch of our voices without changing the length of the tube lets you know that the voice is not a closed tube resonator. Closed tube resonators cannot sound anything other than their harmonics without changing the length of the tube. The tube shape is a physical necessity. and our voice production uses it as a resonator for the sound in the same way a guitar soundbox does; incidentally, and through secondary resonances. The throat and vocal tract all serve the same purpose as head, nose, chest resonances, and so on. The voice production is difficult to model. It doesn't really line up terribly well with existing instruments. The best examples are instruments with reeds that are not coupled to a tube, but use physical space or tubes to enhance resonances of that sound without the driver being coupled to that tube in a way that forces the driver to take the frequency of the tube. There are ranks of organ pipes that use a reed that is coupled to a tube as a beating reed. These behave as a closed tube resonator and the reed takes the pitch of the tube. There are other ranks of organs that also use shalloted reeds which are not coupled to the tube, and simply vibrate as they would alone, like a harmonica reed. They are positioned near the tube. The tube is tuned to the frequency of the reed, which amplifies the sound acoustically but does not form a closed tube resonator. they are just friends who are next to each other. Similar to marimba. The bar is tuned to a certain note. The tube under it is tuned to that same note to increase sustain and volume. They do not form a coupled resonator. Interestingly as well, there are surgeries that exist to lower the pitch of someone's voice. This is done by cutting cartilage from the larynx, which allows the vocal cords to become less tight, less drawn, making them vibrate at a lower pitch when air is forced through. This surgery would not work if the voice production was a closed tube resonator; they would have to increase the length of the tube. It would work if the voice was a strange, membranous reed uncoupled from a tube. The surgery does work. Furthermore, the average vocal tract length is somewhere around 13-20cm. Assuming that this is acting as a closed tube resonator that is roughly cylindrical, this would give a very, very high theoretical pitch compared to what we observe in the human voice. Disregarding all the fun of subharmonics, this would never be long enough to sound our typical voice range. Using the high end of the tract length of 20 cm/7.8 inches would put the length of this tube shorter than the shortest clarinets. This would put the fundamental of such an instrument somewhere between G4 and C5. The subharmonics thing going on here is that david is able to initiate a mode of vibration where both his folds are vibrating at different rates. The two "reeds" beat together at different speeds to produce destructive interference. The end result is he gets an undertone series. This initiates a subtractive synthesis where your brain applies a fundamental that is actually not present. Some organ ranks (again, sorry!) use this same technology to create a different tone or to save space for low pitches. If you imagine a string instrument, like a cello, the string vibrates so many times per second to produce the frequency you normally hear. If there was a way to bow that string such that half of those vibrations were interrupted, or didn't happen, you would hear a note an octave lower. You can look up cello undertone series, or subtones and see videos where something similar to this subharmonic technique can be done with immense bow pressure.
@@davemcleed2491 the vocal tract moves up and down to change tube length changing pitch, formants are the harmonic peaks which are shaped in your mouth that produce your tone of voice.
@@robotdrawer this is true, and applies to overtones that can be heard by shaping your mouth, but the formants are secondary resonances. they are also partially based on the size of the oral cavity. hence why the closed tube resonator is an innacurate model. this is not the mechanism that subharmonics are produced from. that has everything to do with the vocal cords and the undertone series
Heyo! My name is Kaiden! And I am a 16 year old junior in high school and I wish I had found this sooner. I learned my subharmonic register from *listening* to Geoff Castellucci. I just kinda picked it up by ear and my mimicking his tone and pitches I've extended my sub range from A1-B0 and all in between. I am amazed what sub harmonics have done for my singing career and I am so happy Geoff Castellucci learned from you so I can learn from him. You are a true inspiration and it's because of your skill that I have adapted to it and have now been getting several job opportunities thanks to this skill. Thank you so much!
You? Sooner? Do it now; you have your whole life to perfect it. I have been a deep baritone (basso pretendo) for more than 50 years, and just now found this technique. I have to learn quickly and make the best of what time I have left.
Omg, I’m surprised at how easy this actually is, after like 20 min of practicing with your quick tutorial I’ve been able to maintain a subharmonic pretty well and I’m able to sing a few notes with it. But the lower I try to go the less volume I’m able to sing at. Oh and I’m not someone who talks with vocal fry at all, but I’ve had lots of experience, for some reason, to use it for fun.
It would be cool if you linked your videos that you referenced here in the description, would probably get more traffic there while this gets an algorithm boost
About the last question, from a mechanical engineer's perspective: If you take a steel rod and hit it with something, it will vibrate. Unless some specific conditions happen, it will vibrate in many different frequencies, but the most prominent will be it's first modal (or natural) frequency (frequency itself is dependant on the shape and material of the rod, like the pitch when singing is dependant on the shape of the oral cavity and whatever else is included). The second most prominent will be it's second natural (modal) frequency, and so on. First natural (or modal) frequency is always the lowest of all the natural frequencies of the object (or cavity) and it has the highest amplitude (carries most energy with it), with each following natural frequency being a higher pitch and having a lower amplitude. Some technicalities and specific scenarios aside, many of it's first natural frequencies will be equal to it's actual first natural frequency (probably analogous to the carrier pitch) multiplied by some whole number. Natural frequencies of things (works for air in cavities as well i guess) that vibrate very often have perfect intersecting points of the sinusoids of different frequencies (obviously not every single zero point of the sinusoids match, but rather for example every fourth zero value of the second sinusoid could match up with every zero value of the first sinusoid, for example). So, while i don't have any real knowledge what happens with the human voice in regards to subharmonics, I can draw some analogies that are basically educated guesses (educated in regards to engineering and metal rods, thou I do have a few years of music school behind me): when you set up the carrier frequency with the shape of your mouth instrument, all those following frequencies are just waiting to happen, but for a lack of technical term, with less chance/motivation/intention to happen. So, here's my guess: setting up the carrier frequency is basically just setting the mouth/throat shape to have the first natural frequency of that cavity the frequency for the tone you want, and then by some manipulation of muscles you disturb either one of the vocal folds or something else to not be in that first frequency, which just makes it fall straight into another natural frequency for that exact shape of your instrument (and since that other one is most likely to be the first one multiplied by a whole number, you now have both tones for a subharmonic). Again these are guesses, i would hope more experienced engineers, possibly of the audio-sort, step in and give their two cents.
The thing that instantly made me learn subharmonic was this : sustain softly a note mouth closed (sustain a note around your vocal range, not too high not too low) constrict it a bit so it’s kinda electric (almost like you want to go to vocal fry but you can’t since your singing a note, don’t add force though it shouldn’t be loud, the softer the easier) then move your jaw as far as possible forward/ open you mouth and pull you tongue forward as far as possible; the back of your tongue will slightly stretch your vocal cords and make you will likely fall into subharmonic, it should feel like a fall, like you let go your voice and it fall into subharmonic if it didn’t work, keep messing around with your voice and try sometimes the jaw /tongue technique, subharmonic are as sensitive as whistle, i do them since 2 years and still fail them often so don’t worry
Hmm, I shall try what you say. For me, all I know is vocal fry, from Kargyraa throat singing. My voice goes straight into a fry too easily as this is what is conditioned. Any advise on this, on learning to separate the difference?
@@darkraft1020 I have the same problem. Been fucking around with Kargyraa too much and I automatically jump into into a false vocal cord fry instead. Used to be impressed by it but can't produce subharmonics because of it lmao
I've been listening to your videos for a year or two now as a high tenor and have gained an octave plus learning to use distortion and extended vocal fry from your videos. Thank you dearly for your service to music, David!
This should be a mandatory element of vocal studies. As a counter-tenor, I found that working on my lower baritone range extended and enriched my alto range so that it was quite easy to sing in a mezzo-soprano tessitura- due, presumably to the freeing of upper harmonics generated from their low fundamentals. Thanks for all you do.
Bruh, your little tutorial got me doing it and then I started speaking and got so spooked I lost it, and now I have to rewatch the little tutorial because wtf just happened? So happy to have run across you! Edit: For what it's worth, as a kid I always played with vocal fry, so when you were like "Yeah, try to do it with a tone" it was like a key.
I didn’t know it had a name, but I’ve been using sub harmonics for years, but for an entirely different reason. I learned it from Mongolian throat singing. I’ve been able to do beats for a long time but singing lyrics has always been weird for me, so this vid is helpful to practice properly
I have found subharmonics myself, just by relaxing my voice. I have found it to be easy to train and improve, but I still struggle to hit the second subharmonic. I am 16, so maybe that impacts my vocal chords in a way that makes it easier to hit, but harder to make lower. I don’t know chords so I don’t know what my lowest note is, but I know someone who knows notes so maybe I’ll update this
Fantastic video David! Having been doing this technique ever since you released the original video back in 2015, it's really interesting to hear the feeling of doing subharmonics being put into words like this. Subharmonics are so intricate and mysterious, the way they manifest in the human voice is truly impossibly precise.
In the pipe organ world, this is called a Resultant. This would be the lowest (longest) stop (voice) for the pedals, the low bass of an organ. The length of a pipe determines the pitch so physical space limits the longest pipe that can be installed. Very few places have room for 32 foot or 64 foot pipes. Cost also comes into consideration as the materials needed to create a pipe twice as long more than doubles. Instead, a Resultant stop is programmed to use the existing longest stop but play both the fundamental note and its fifth at the same time. Pipe organs have had this for hundreds of years. Loved finding this video to explain how to access this with my voice. I only discovered the capability after a major surgery several years ago. After recovery, I lost access. It returned recently when I had the latest CoVID that resulted in a sore throat and lots of coughing. Thanks to tuner apps on my phone, I was able to see that I could reach as low as F1 but solidly G1. Once my voice recovers, I want to try your techniques so that I can access that sub-octave at will regularly.
I feel like I've been doing this for years without realizing it. I've been a bass in a few choirs for 6 years now and as you were explaining this as I tried to do it it just felt like I was switching into a different register. Similar too moving from a chest voice to a falsetto but the other way around.
Early morning driving to the gym in Cardiff, South Wales listen to this. I am burn only impressed but genuinely overcome by your gentle, humble nature. Thank you, sir!!!
I guess the reason it feels like the intervals are magically "locking in" is because of resonance, if ratios are too obscure they cancel each other out and the tone cannot be sustained (so it stops or slips into an interval that resonates better)
About the final question, I don't think that it's really about why things tend to lock into these subharmonics. It's a bit like asking why large masses are attracted to eachother, or why heat evens out between masses. It's just a part of how the world functions. Nikola Tesla is famously quoted: "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration". You can see that subharmonics are a direct result of the mathematical relations between frequencies. And math is really just a means of describing how quantifiable aspects of the universe interact. Harmonics are a result of resonance and subharmonics are the reciprocal result, in the most literal sense. A reciprocal is just a flipped fraction or 1 divided by a given quantity, subarmonic ratios are just harmonic ratios flipped. Even basic perception of pitch and harmony ties back to the same principles of frequency relationships. Simpler ratios tend to sound stronger and more consonant, few people will ask why because it's often taught that it is the way it is because it is. When you look closer though, it's a matter of waves meshing together into a unified pattern more when at a simpler frequency ratio. The answer is in the math. This is all to say that the existence of and ability to create subharmonics are just basic principles of the universe and the way it works. What I would call the principle of inverse resonance. Edit: typos
It's super cool to be here as a counter tenor (light tenor) saying that I can sing down to a G1 and once I get a bigger microphone I'll record a few covers with it. In the start I did hurt my voice a little bit in the start, but it seems to me that the only thing that hurts is doing it wrong. So basically like singing normally but harder and riskier! Edit: My range has grown to be G1 to E6, so it has also gone higher.
Subharmonics are amazing! Are you getting that with 2st subs or 2nd? The counter tenor range is really high, so I would be very impressed if you could hit first octave notes without needing to go down to 2nd subs
13 minutes into the video and triyng that change from regular voice into vocal fry and after 5 minutes subharmonic "magically" happened. I struggeled for months to lower my voice but never got near that sound. Not even with my morning voice. Thanks for that tip. Helped instantly.
Greetings David. I have an educated guess on why it seems the ratios seem to be built into our voices. And I say "seem to", because I don't believe they are. I believe what's going on is a phenomenon called synchronization. If you have multiple oscillators in a closed system, such that they can influence each other, they tend to synchronize. The easiest example is if the two oscillators have the same frequency, if one tries to go faster than the other, due to it being in a closed system it transfers some of it's speed to the slower oscillator speeding it up, and simultaneously slowing the faster oscillator down. Eventually the two oscillators become paired, to break out of this coupling the difference in desired oscillation speed much be large enough that it exceeds this synchronization. Most of the time when this happens it means that a more optimal ratio is found, one that requires the oscillators to change their frequency less. To deviate from this synchronized speed would require a continuous addition of energy to the oscillators. The two oscillators cause enough interference to each other that they deviate from their intended frequency. Rather than contently trying to correct this frequency by very carefully controlling the forces at play, allowing the oscillators to deviate and become coupled is actually the more energy efficient state. There's a famous experiment you can do placing metronomes on a surface that's on wheels, and setting them going at different times. Even if the metronomes are not exactly the same frequency, they will after a few cycles become perfectly in sync (Veritasium has a great video on this). Less known however is that this works for other ratios as well. If you have two metronomes that are far apart from each other, they will still synchronize, but at some ratio. The exact ratio is the ratio that requires the least deviation from the generated frequency from both oscillators. I believe this is what's occurring in the voice during subharmonics. The ratio is more or less fluid between the vocal folds, but due to synchronization in a coupled system they'll end up falling into the most energy efficient state, which is synchronization. To change ratios you need to simple cause the intended oscillation to pass the threshold where the current ratio is no longer the most efficient way to synchronize.
I should also note that regardless of the mechanism (whether subharmonics are caused by turbulence in the air past the vocal folds, or caused by the vocal folds themselves, or etc). Any oscillating system in which at least two oscillators can exert some force on the other(s), will tend towards synchronicity, because again, it it the most energy efficient state, forcing the oscillators to be out of sync requires more energy to be added to the system in addition to the energy already used to generate the desired frequencies, while synchronization effectively shares the energy already put into the two oscillators, giving energy to or taking energy from other oscillators in the system in order to optimize the efficiency of the system.
Good to hear, I love writing paragraphs in comment sections. Lol. Years and years ago someone told me I don’t sing very well. I recorded myself on a cassette tape (told you it was years ago) and I found no errors in that statement. I then quit singing in church, around other people and quit thinking one day I may be good at singing. This was not an emotional response as I have been told that I do not have all of the emotions an average person would have. This was a purely logical decision. I can’t sing, people don’t like to hear bad singers, don’t sing where people can hear you. I have recently figured out it isn’t about natural talent but a mastery of muscles. Over the years I taught myself to wiggle my nose, my ears, one ear at a time and move just my pinky toe away from the others. The first two are a great ice breaker with nervous little kids that I meet for the first time. The third is 100% useless. But again, logically I have come to the conclusion that since my work commit is 2 1/2 hrs per day so I WILL learn to sing. As a bonus I will only irritate my steering wheel as I learn. Great video! I plan to brows your channel in search of any “singing for dummies” videos you may have. Geoff is great. One commenter said he doesn’t have vocal cords, he has tectonic plates. Lol
The Book of Jasher tells how Jacob’s sons could scream as a combat technique that was so loud it could be heard, and felt for miles. Legend perhaps, but maybe in the early stages of humanity, before our present genetic diversification, we possessed vocal abilities that were lost but the programming remains. The potential for what we could relearn is incredible.
This video, along with one of Geoff's, helped me a lot. After like an hour I got the hang of finding the lower note, (inconsistently) and now I'm working on eliminating some extra vibration. Looking forward to using this throughout my life. Edit: Also emptied an entire water bottle lol
I think I just got it from the little cut-in-tutorial, damn that's crazy. It's very not clean and I can hear the voice cracks / fry come through many times Still very fun to do, sat the whole video there doing it lol. Thanks!
So what really helped me from the original videos, and what accelerated my grasp on control was when you mentioned the positioning of the vocal folds in relation to each other. Helped me better understand the muscle groups i needed to focus on were actually located higher than our normal folds.
This is amazing, I saw this and started yesterday, and I immediately got the feeling and my first subharmonic notes. I found, I can pretty consistantly hit a B1 (actually B2 and B1 :D) with decent loudness and support. But I'm not sure, how to efficiently practice from now on. Could you maybe provide us with a quick routine, for daily practice, of some exercises you found helpful to really improve the range you can use subharmonics in? Also: I think my goal would not be to get extremely low, but to be able to connect the subharmonic register to my lowest comfortable singing voice. I found it pretty hard, to do the subharmonics in higher ranges, I think I already get it but the actual main note is very present, so that it doesn't really sound like the clean low note... Can you maybe show yourself singing a scale while switching registers? In general I noticed it can be controlled, how present the actual note is over the subharmonic note (e.g. Taddl preserves it very hearable). Do you have tips on controlling that? I think, the answer to most of my questions is practice, feeling and time, as I started yesterday :D But maybe you still have some tips, to help us not wasting effort in wrong directions :)
I was one of those people that watched your video from 7 years ago!!! I’m still getting there!😊 took breaks here and there but still making progress!😊❤️ thanks brotha!
Similar to the subject of these subharmonics being in a way naturally built into the human voice just waiting to be unlocked with proper technique, there is an even more fundamental element of the human voice as we use it that is often overlooked that I find absolutely fascinating; vowel sounds, or formants! We don't even think about it for most of our lives, but each vowel sound we make is actually an incredibly specific combination of overtone frequency clusters called "formants" that we instinctually manipulate with our mouths, and that we can freely manipulate independent of pitch. Audio science, and especially the science of the human voice is such an incredibly fascinating subject. Great video, man!
@8:55 I had been trying to find a note to get my voice to go into the subharmonic / fry you were describing and hit it for a brief moment, and then - swear to God - you gave this example pitch @8:55 and it was the EXACT note I was singing 🎶 haha we were suddenly in unison. I thought... Damn he's good he predicted the note I'd be singing at the exact moment I was singing it. On TH-cam haha Wild.
I watched taddl when I was like.. 12 maybe and he was basically a german youtube comedian. Then my interests shifted, I forgot about him and now he appears in your video, tattoed and beatboxing and singing like a legend. What a trip
I genuinely thought you were a tenor this whole time! Now I'm curious, where does your head voice stop? I'm almost certain I know why having a closed mouth helps with subharmonics. I suspect most people have trouble introducing the level of breath pressure needed for subharmonics while keeping their throat relaxed, since for most singing breath pressure and tension are directly related. Closing the mouth and forcing the air through the nose is a way of forcing more pressure while simultaneously discouraging tension.
There seems to be a lot of similarities between metal vocals and subharmonics, even more than what was discussed in the video. The fry based subharmonics could definitely be compared to a fry scream and the throat bass seems very similar to a false chord scream. In both of these cases I think the base sound of the metal vocal is actually coming from the same mechanics that sub harmonics are based in. From my limited understanding of subharmonics and mediocre understanding of metal vocals, I think subharmonics are a much more melodic, gentle, less restricted take on these mechanics, whereas metal vocals lean more into the distortion by creating a more constricted passageway for air, removing the true voice (in a lot of cases), and occasionally adding multiple layers such as combining fry, false chords, and or the aritnoids (I think that’s what they are called they are little cartilage above the false chords I believe). It could be cool to see someone do a deep dive comparing the two vocal styles to see how much overlap there really is
When David Kahn was standing in the stairwell singing, I thought that would wake up everyone in the building, but then again, it would be quite pleasant waking up to it. Kind of soothing.
My dad had a beautiful deep baritone voice. So cool to listen to all of your subharmonic vocals. Awesome that you can share & teach via TH-cam etc. If you think you may have injured your vocal chords, you may want to see a specialist.
Would you be able to expand on 1st vs 2nd subharmonics? I can do subharmonics well, but I don't really know if I'm doing 1st or 2nd. I tried to do what you talked about in your "2nd subharmonics" video, but most of the time I feel I'm just moving to a lower note while remaining in the 1st subharmonic when attempting to go to the 2nd.
The mic didn’t pick up the lower subharmonics on the harmonica but you could still hear that they were there. It’s very impressive and I definitely want to try it
in the crack between falsetto i noticed a falsetto subharmonic, have you noticed it too? I can do poly which is the crack between mix/chest and falsetto, so im not sure if it’s really a falsetto subharmonic or a constricted poly, but i have to say it really feels like falsetto subharmonic even though i saw any falsetto fry
There are also the reverse, too. That is, at the edge of head and falsetto voice, there is a place where you can jump an exact octave higher. I learned it by accident and have hit C6 with ease... and I am a low bass. Using the double subharmonic technique and upper harmonics, I have extended my range to B -1 to A#6.
i actually notice a lot of anatomy changes trying to hit high notes with falsetto, so from A2 to A5 is pretty much my standard falsetto (sometimes it activate falsetto subharmonic), from A5 to A6 is this weird transition to extreme high falsetto but not yet on the flageolet register, and from A6 to A#8 (and probably even higher) is pretty much my flageolet register. also with subharmonic i barely use it to extend my lows i have been blasting full voice sounding notes at 50-65 dB way down to G-1, my fam always complainin about how loud the notes i'm blasting even though i'm in another floor lol
As someone whose voice has decided to dip down in the last 2-or-so years as I approach 40, deeper than it ever could before, this whole world of sub-harmonics is new and exciting and a little scary. Thank you so very much for appearing randomly in my suggested videos - I learnt heaps, and now have a new channel to sub to and learn from! :3
so, I'm pretty young, still in high school. Like you said "young fresh voices [often] have a hard[er] time finding this technique", this was not the case for me. I had NEVER wanted to sing, I avoided choir like it was the most disgusting rat I'd ever seen. However I had always had a interest in music. Last year I heard Geoff's sixteen tons cover, and thought it was awesome. So, just for the fun of it, I tried to emulate it and hit almost every note to my surprise. I realized "well damn I can go pretty low" and then got caught in the voiceplay rabbit hole, ...eveentually finding the oogie boogie song and being blown away of course. This got me interested and I was looking up a whole bunch of tutorials. Yeah, kinda an awkward introduction to singing but it works eh? I "mastered" this technique 11/04/ last year (mastered meaning being able to hit it basically whenever ) and from there I learned a few variations like indicators alien bass[by the way I feel like it's not just the 3rd subharmonic as you described in your reaction but I dunno]. I believe I had looked at Geoff's tutorial, then he credited you and I found your tutorial; I tried it first at around 3 months before I mastered it, and I hit it for the first time within a week of trying. I got really lucky to say the least. To be honest, I didn't ever have the click you described, it was sortof just something I could do on and off and it was really discouraging because your tutorials... sadly didn't help much after the first time getting it. For me, bass2yangs tutorial is where it clicked, the *day* I watched it, I mastered it. In fact, it was within a few *hours* of watching his tutorial that I was consistently getting a powerful first sub. Even this video actually better explained to me what's going on with the different pitches. Alot of people say they've never heard subharmonics be louder than normal singing, maybe I'm the counter example, it has actually helped me speak louder, I often slip into subs in casual conversation whenever I fry at the end of a sentence and my voice ticks up in volume just a teeny bit. Also I have a new technique for subharmonic singing (this is why I mentioned variations) singing with an "r" attached to the vowel you are using seems to turn the volume up from a 5 to a 8/9 (on a **relative** scale up to 10 in relation to my normal voice loudness[and it's only a guess cuz it's actually from a 12 to 20 in relation to *my* voice]). So for an "a" you would use the "are" mouth position, "o" is "or", "oo/u" is "ure" as in (l)ure, "e" is "er/ear", and "i" is sorta wierd for me, but "ire" as in fire is the best sound for me. Let me know if you get any results or if it's just placebo :P (even if it's not real, I know for a fact that it makes the 2nd (maybe 3rd) sub way easier) Anyways around the same time I learned subharmonics you actually brought me into the beatboxing community, and I just wanted to thank you for all that I've learned from this :) and for introducing me to a new world of discovery edit: I am sure you understand the fact that even though throat bass and vibration bass are a form of subharmonic, they do not sound the same as the lighter version me and you use. I have found that adding the "r" gives you a much clearer sound, and it almost sounds like vibration bass to me. you can even do the air filter thing that remix does(explained in his vibration bass tutorial). th-cam.com/video/XO6bfPl2T1M/w-d-xo.html example of "r vowels" for those who want it.
This was awesome! I have been practicing for the last few months after coming across your original video and it’s been so freaking fun to make progress ! Thank you so much for sharing this!
I remember randomly stumbling upon one of your videos a few years back. Back then it was just curiosity. Since then I've tried myself as a metal band frontwoman. I always could sing with some degree of stability, but only learned screaming after I've started fronting. You describing that the right kind of vocal fry is basically subharmonics makes so much sense as to why I'm able to make low-ish screams comfortably, despite my natural voice being soprano... Now... You've got me curious about using subharmonics more actively 😉
I stumbled across subharmonics years ago when I was learning how to do throat singing…to me, throat singing (Kargyraa specifically) is subharmonics with overtones added on top…super fun to mess around with all these different techniques!
yo this is so crazy i remember wating your first video on this 7 years ago and beingone of like the first 20 people commenting ansking questions. i love to see the amount of outreach you have had. Love you david keep killing it!
This was such a cool video David! I think I watched your first tutorial back in 2016 and have been developing my subharmonic register ever since. It was amazing to see it being slowly integrated more into commercial singing! Thank you so much for making that video!
I greatly appreciated this video, I've been trying off an on a way to practice sub-harmonics throughout the day, just couldn't find a way to do it without bothering the people around me, until now. Love your videos David, you and Geoff are what got me back into bass singing after 6 years.
David!!!!! Thanks for the call out to camp! Hope you are doing well!!!!!! (I am the old guy Rick) I so remember that year!!!! I love seeing the clips of you and Kahn in the stairwells at Wright State! Come back to Dayton!
Beginner bass singer here, started a bit when I was 19, but started to get into it more now that I am 20 years old. So this video is greatly appreciated
I didn't even know you existed before this video. But you are the reason I am able to pull of some subharmonics! I saw Geoffs tutorial and it clicked pretty quickly for me. (And I didn't remember anyone being credited^^) Thank you!
I think the reason you can only "lock into" the perfect ratios without the required intentional precision you would need if you were truly a polyphonic instrument is because of resonance. Take the first sub harmonic for instance, if you're singing two notes in a ratio of 3:2, they share a bunch of harmonics on their overtone series. The fifths second harmonic (the octave) is the fundamentals third harmonic, the fifths fourth harmonic is the fundamental's sixth, and so on. When something vibrates at a certain frequency, it becomes easier, sometimes even automatic, for other things to vibrate at that frequency, that's why if you play guitar, if you don't intentionally mute the strings you're not playing, their upper harmonics sound when you play something that resonates with them. I believe these shared harmonics make the harmonics of the fifth, and therefore the fifth itself, easier to happen. This would also explain why lower subharmonics are harder to produce, since closer pitches share progressively fewer and fewer overtones.
just did the rabbit hole run through your tutorial videos (again) and finally found the range 🤯 right before immediately losing it 😅 legend, no one has ever explained it more thoroughly and with as much clarity as you have over the years
Awesome video man! Can't thank you enough for really breaking this topic down. I run a creepypasta narration channel and I've been really trying to get this technique down to work on doing creepy characters/villians or just deep bassy bad guy voices haha
this was my hearing about subharmonics and just following your instructions here I was able to hear the fringes of it start to happen already. truly amazing stuff
![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](/img/n.gif)
You should talk to Elizabeth Zharoff of The Charismatic Voice. I’m sure you guys could nerd out over vocal technique, and I know she’s a big proponent of getting scoped so you can see what your voice is actually doing, which as far as I know, hasn’t been done yet to analyze the anatomy of what’s happening in subharmonic singing.
I said the same thang! She loves puttin ceras in throats🤣
We gonna have to start calling her the throat Dr.😎
Isn't that the white bearded dwarf woman with the kneedeep voice, the LOTR creators swapped for a beardless black one?
@@Michel-7.7.7 wtf
I second this
@@Michel-7.7.7 what HAHAHA
No! She is an opera singer with a (mostly) music reaction channel on TH-cam!
I’m a monk, been chanting throat singing for years and I think I could share some of the secrets if you are interested. There is a whole technique based on pressure and air flow and helps you hit lower notes quicker and more reliably for example
yes, please!!!!
That would be awesome! If you don’t end up making a video, could you send me some tips and tricks?
I'll try do get some examples on video to share them
that would be amazing!
Yes please send them to me as well
Your impact on the bass singing world can't be overstated... and at such a young age !
Really proud of you 👍🏻
.
I googled the name and skipped through sections but didn't see what David did. I know this style of vocal has been around for centuries in Mongolian throat singing, so I'm curious, what did David do?
I think what he mostly did was teach it, spread it and perhaps change it up a bit to make it usable in regular singing.
@@terrafinosix6130 Sweet, what an incredible accomplishment for an individual! Actually nuts.
@@ConnorHammond He literally played no role whatsoever. Only in the TH-cam zone of things. Bass singing is _not_ a niche. He just doesn't know. Heck, entire operas are sometimes very bass heavy. And subharmonics have been a thing in music for decades, not scratch that thousands of years... Just not necessarily main stream or for 'entire pop songs' so to speak. But come on...
I’ve been wrestling with that last question for years, great video man!!!
Ayyy thanks Bobby! Hope to catch up again this summer! 🙏
I would say we need Elizabeth (Charismatic Voice) in on this discussion🤔
She likes sticking cameras in throats to actually see what the hell is goin on in there
@@thecapturban I agree 👍.
It might also have to do with sympathetic resonance. The two vibrations "relax" into synchronization in certain ratios because the resonating vocal cords are acting on each other. I don't know if that made sense.
I think its just like the overtones in flutes, they appear naturally just by over blowing, and the throat is a "tube"
I'm a big fan of taddl, and hearing him interact with the guy that taught me subharmonics was pretty sweet!
love him to, I'm german too😊😂🤝
I got the honor of actually speaking to Geoff a few years ago in Grinnell Iowa and I was very briefly able to discuss subharmonics with him, and I asked him where he had seen the technique, and his response was something to the effect of, "I think his name was David Larson, I saw it in a youtube tutorial." and the amount of just sheer joy to see our little slice of bass singing reach someone I idolized felt so awesome. This was summer of 2019 as well so subs were a known technique but not as widely used as they are now.
🧢
@@jonathanfried08:(
Awesome. Great work, brother!
Hi Thou,
Can you verify what technique is my A0 attempt? I can’t tell if it is chest-fry or strohbass when I analyzed the waveform in Melodyne.
th-cam.com/video/FfCDGgndJbI/w-d-xo.html
I'm a flutist and vocalist and this gives me MANY ideas for trying to get subharmonics to sound out of a flute. Flutists can use a number of techniques to produce overtones and multiphonics, but nobody really tries to get subharmonics out of them.
Any progress on these ideas?
Interesting to see you lay all this out like this! You've done a great job of influencing the community in a positive way. I guess that's what putting out good content does! Also, it's interesting how the internet can make niche musical communities almost like a small town. Lots of familiar faces here... this takes me back.
His influence is bigger than a lot of people know. I was stuck at an E1 (full chest voice) for over 30 years... now, A0 is easy and Eb0 is common.
The man that started it all -- great video my guy! I remember chatting with you on Instagram back in 2015 when I first saw your videos and got interested in subs -- crazy how long ago that was. One added bit of useful voice science re what you mentioned about subs being easier on closed vowels (or closed mouth position): based on how the physics of the voice works, and how the subglottal and supraglottal pressure systems work while singing, closed vowels and closed mouth position (also known as SOVTs (Semi-Occluded Vocal Tract) actually help the vocal folds adduct (come together) easier. It's a great trick for young singers to train with these a lot to achieve good vocal fold closure, creating a pure, more efficient (and more powerful) sound.
No,he did not. This is Mongolian throat singing.
Dude's talking like some guy he found on Facebook was the first one to ever do it when people have been doing this for like a thousand years all over the eastern world
@@alexgorron6470 Incorrect. While that IS a form of subharmonic singing, the technique David popularized is a completely different mechanism of the vocal folds. And by, "started it all," I simply mean that he brought it into the mainstream. This particular style of subharmonic singing started in choirs of the Russian Orthodoxy, I believe
@@PeterBarber Which came from...MONGOLIANS. They exist with each other. 😉
@@alexgorron6470 Yes, but the two techniques are radically different, as I said. Techniques have to arise at some point (just meaning that they didn't always exist), and this particular style of subharmonic singing arose from a specific tradition in the Russian Orthodoxy, certainly at a much later date than the traditional style of subharmonics used in Mongolian throat singing
Your channel has been a huge inspiration to me, seeing various extended vocal techniques explained in detail and pointing out the commonalities between different vocal scenes using these techniques. It really encouraged me to experiment and take things from what different singers were doing and see how I might adapt it. It still seems like a lot of vocal communities are kind of floating along doing their own thing independently of each other. I hope more people see your videos and realize all the cool things going on everywhere and try to learn from and collaborate more with each other.
Definitely not just bass singers studying with your techniques- I'm a Mezzo-contralto, learning to expand my range in this way. (I'm working with tonal singing to expand my range upward, as well!)
Brilliantly helpful!
Having watched Taddl 10 or so years ago before he changed his path, it was a real suprise to see him here again after watching your video about the topic years ago and now suddenly getting the updated version in my recommended. how small the internet can be
Hola David, absolutely loving your enthusiasm for this area of vocal technique. I remember lying in the bath when I was kid, accidentally finding these tones, just suddenly dropping down into them and trying to make them last as long as possible, it truly is a fascinating sound. Of course I had no "technique", so it would seemingly come and go as it pleased, and it felt special when I could do it for extended periods. I definitely think the reverberation of the bathroom and the relaxed state of the body both helped these sounds come about. I think one of the main things with these sounds is to surrender to them, and not try to control them - like you were saying, let the natural mechanisms of the voice and sound do their thing, it's almost like you just have to will these sounds into existence, the sideways thing is spot on..........................One thing that does surprise me is that in this discussion of subharmonic technique there is little or maybe no mention of Tuvan throat singing or the multi harmonic singing of the Tibetan monks, or the many other centuries old (or more) singing traditions. It's absolutely mind blowing what these singers can do, and there's so much to learn from them, with a traditional technique that has been developed over multiple generations. One of the most impressive techniques is the ability to not only sing the fundamental and a strong sub harmonic, but at the very same time also sing complex melodies with overtones. I must admit I have only watched this video and maybe you mention and explore these traditional techniques elsewhere on your channel, and if you do apologies in advance :-) Having said all that I do think there is a very important place for people like you to be "translators" of such age old traditional vocal techniques, to be able to express these techniques in familiar western terms. If you're interested in exploring this subharmonic world even further I'm sure you would find it rewarding to study or at least connect with some traditional singers of this technique, it could only deepen your enthusiasm and understanding of this style of singing. Congrats on doing what you're doing, love your relaxed and open style of presentation, you're obviously inspiring a ton of people all round the world to plumb new depths of vocal sonic booms, and that is surely a good thing :-)
WOW! I understood the concept of the clashing reverberations of the soundwaves creating a subharmonic, but actually seeing that clashing amplified using a harmonica is amazing!!
You can actually also create subharmonics with a stringed instrument using a bow, using a single string. I understand that subharmonics can be created by the interaction of two frequencies such as a 5th creating an underlying lower harmonic frequency. However, I honestly don’t think it would be possible for your vocal chords to create two different frequencies from each other, and my thoughts are that subharmonics can also be created by manipulating pressure and air speed, which is essentially how it is done on a stringed instrument such as violin or viola, using a single string. But, how does manipulation of speed and pressure create a subharmonic frequency? That part, I have yet to figure out. I would love to see a slow motion video of a stringed instrument playing a subharmonic. I really do think it is very similar to what is going on in the voice, and could possibly bring some answers
You forget to realize the voice is not a single frequency. It's a harmonic resolution of various frequencies. It's why subharmonics and overtones work.
I found you back in high school after watching the oogie boogie song. Using your tutorial, although it took like two or three years of trying, I eventually figured out the technique at two in the morning while laying in my dorm bed and singing myself to sleep. I immediately jumped up, ran into the basement to the dorm piano, and didn't sleep that night because I had to know I could replicate it in the morning. Since then, I've been singing subharmonics casually day to day, and have even managed a fleeting second sub once or twice. Similarly to you, I've just been completely fascinated by the technique and the science behind it. When I realized you could use two voices, I was amped out of my mind. I just wanted to say thank you for putting in the efforts that you have to not only learn and understand it but to make it known. It's totally changed how I look at singing and has on multiple occasions reignited my love of it.
Dude what a journey this has been for you. I don't know what to say. Just thank you for changing the lives of thousands of singers and beatboxers around the world. You have truly made this tequnique popularize and I could't be more grateful for it, and I know that many agree with that. Personally you have changed my life and approach to low singing. As a tenor singing low was always a bummer. The only time of the day when my voice would feel somewhat low and resonant was on the mornings and that was it, after two hours it was all gone. Then around November of 2019 I saw your first subharmonic video turorial and Iremember becoming obsessed with it because of how powerful it was and the possibilities it could give me. I literrally binge watched all of your subharmonic tutorials shortly after that. I can still vividly remember the first time I succesfully hit a subharmonic. I was aming for a C2, and then out of nowhere my voice flipped down there. I can still remember the feeling of power and accomplishment I got. I can still remember how werid and awesome was that for the first time I sang a low note lower than Gb2. And I remember that night I spent like one or two more hours trying pitches and I remember I sang the G1 from the ring of fire and felt invencible, even though it sounded very weak and unstable at this time. Fast forward Two years and you have opened a door for me to endless possibilities. Unfortunatly I am still recovering from vocal damage due to oversinging during quarantine, but once my voice is back I want to be back and stronger than ever and I have a few Voiceplay and acapella covers in mind to upload. I don't have muche else to say. Just thank you David. I will always admire you, you are my hero. Love, from Argentina
Man, that s really insane...so you were a tenor with the lowest note a gb2 and in 2 years reach a G1. I m a barritone with lowest note D2. Im aiming for a clear and strong C2. You give me hope with your story that i can reach more than a C2. I really need to hear this kind of superhappy storys. Thank you!
@@IonpaisiebosiocHe was talking about using subharmonics to get a G1. So this actual lowest note would be an octave higher.
WHOA DUDE! I've been trying to hit lower notes for years and just stumbled on your vid. I'd never purposely tried to hit "fry" so after about 15 minutes of trying to hit it, I accidentally hit subharmonic. Now that I know what it feels like, I'm totally stoked to explore that realm! Once I'm consistently in control, I'll need to try for 2nd sub. Thank you!!!
It was so cool watching your video years ago and seeing the world of subharmonics open up with Geoff Castelucci and seeing more and more people know about the technique. I even mentioned it to my chorus teacher back in high school and she had no idea what subharmonics were and she has a masters. Crazy how almost no one knew about this technique until your videos
This is the best video on subharmonics on the internet for sure! I really hope this video will get a lot of views so more people know the ‚full‘ story about the subject.
Btw, Geoff Castellucci is the reason why I found out about subharmonics but you are the reason why I understand how they work and why I am able to sing them. I‘ve been playing around with subs for about 2 years and 4 months. At this Point I am fairly consistent with it and I am able to hit 2nd subs as well. I actually used some 2nd subs in my music here on TH-cam. I am a Tenor so 2nd subs are the only way I can hit a solid 1st octave note while staying in subharmonics. Inhale is my go-to technique for 1st octave notes but 2nd subs are something special that I like to throw in once in a while and pronouncing words with subharmonics is easier than with inhale.
Thank you for the video and for the insight, it‘s always fun to hear you nerd out about subharmonics. It‘s such a cool and interesting topic but I don’t really have any people around me to talk about it. I hope it‘ll gain even more popularity in the upcoming years.
Same for me, Geoff introduced me to subs but David taught me them. I've only been at them for like a month now but I can do them pretty reliably. Haven't found any 2nd subs yet but I've been having a ton of fun practicing the technique. I just started learning inhale too last week. Those are also really neat.
One of the things I’d love to learn from an anatomical perspective is the difference between various vocal basses. For example, being able to see the vocal folds vibrating when using regular subharmonics vs throat bass vs vibration bass vs vocalized chest bass vs inward bass. They’re all different sounds, but SEEING why would be incredible. You should contact an ENT doctor to see if they’d work with you in a video
Yes Taddl... Nice letting him show of... Thanks for your informative/educative video
Congratulations on the Geoff Castelucci shout-out!
I've been doing my own research into the mechanics of subharmonics for a while now! Read on if you want a stupid long explanation of what I've found:
While the physics and math of beat frequencies (combination tones, whatever you want to call them) makes sense, I've always been suspicious of my two vocal folds actually vibrating at different frequencies. That would mean one chord is vibrating at a higher frequency than the fundamental you're singing, but you never hear or feel a higher 5th when you do subharmonics. It would also take more energy to raise one vocal chord to a higher pitch, but I never feel an increase in air pressure to get subharmonics out - in fact, I have to decrease my air pressure usually, and I can't push too hard on my subharmonics they go away. So it wouldn't make sense from an energy standpoint to have the vocal chords vibrating at different frequencies. And different frequencies would also mean that the vibration going on isn't symmetric in your throat - one side would be vibrating faster, and I'd bet you'd be able to feel that difference. I detect no such thing, subharmonics always feel symmetrical in my throat.
Vocal chords can vibrate at different frequencies though - this is called dyplophonia, and it's usually caused by some disorder in the throat, like a paralysis of one of the vocal chords or the muscles that control it. There are entire medical specialties dedicated to this and related vocal disorders. I've read tons of fascinating stuff about this, but none of it comes close to describing the subharmonics I'm looking for.
If people interested in subharmonics haven't heard of Leonardo Fuks, he's the place to start when looking for an actual answer here. He did a lot of research in the late 90's into what he called Vocal Ventricular Mode (VVM) phonation (using the false folds, aka kargyraa, throat bass, etc) and was one of the first to theorize the mechanism of how the false folds vibrate with the vocal folds. In the process he mastered subharmonics too - he called subharmonics "periodic pulse register", and he has audio clips on his website of him going down to a 5th subharmonic. Unfortunately, he doesn't actually talk about PPR much in his research papers. Instead whenever it comes up he just references other papers from the 80s for the a more detailed explanation of it, and then those papers just say that PPR is presumed to be a kind of vocal fry without explaining it.
I've heard people explain subharmonics as vocal fry before, but it's never really sat well with me. Vocal Fry is when your vocal chords relax so much that they are touching, and when you push air into them, the air "bubbles" through at a controlled rate. This is why fry is seemingly bottomless, because you can use the muscles in your throat to make that bubbling as slow as you want, down to just letting individual bubbles out. I used to do that all the time as a kid. This is compared to normal "modal" speech, where the vocal folds only touch at their most extended point on the vibration cycle. I've heard Thou Yang describe this (what I'm calling vocal fry) as "unsupported fry" and subharmonics as "supported fry". However, this doesn't fit with the vocal-chords-vibrating-at-different-pitches theory of subharmonics, because that bubbling naturally requires the vocal chords to be relaxed, whereas having one chord vibrating at a higher frequency would require more tension, not less. What's more, I'm able to get subharmonics off of my vocal fry - when I go lower and lower on a 1st subharmonic, I can go a bit past the lower limit of my chest voice's bottom end, and when I jump out of the subharmonic I find myself in vocal fry. Don't believe me, try it for yourself! (for that matter, I can also get a subharmonic when in falsetto, not that it sounds any good.)
So if subharmonics aren't vocal fry and aren't one chord vibrating a 5th higher than the other, what is it? The only hint I've been able to find has come from a 1994 paper titled "A subharmonic vibratory pattern in normal vocal folds". I haven't been able to read the full paper yet (paywalled), but the abstract says this: "measurements reveal two different open phases within a subharmonic cycle-the first shorter with a simple shape, the second longer with a shape containing a “ripple.”... The stroboscopic visualization reveals an unusual mucosal movement during the “ripple,” characterized by an opening movement of the upper margins, which interrupts the closing movement of the vocal folds... this vibratory pattern [may arise] as a consequence of detuning of the usually identical frequencies of the dominant modes of the vocal folds, with 3:2 entrainment replacing the normal 1:1 pattern."
That's where I'm at now, trying to get access to read that whole paper, because I'm not sure exactly what the abstract is saying. If I'm right then the ripple they're mentioning would be a superposition - when two waves exist at once on a medium. Picture a sine wave, but the line of the sine wave is squiggly; a higher frequency "superimposed", or added, onto a lower frequency; or in this case a lower frequency being added onto a higher one.. This would make sense for your vocal chords - by relaxing them a bit, but not enough to make them touch like in vocal fry, you can introduce enough slack that a lower frequency could be superimposed onto the fundamental. But that line at the end also suggests a detuning that leads to a 3:2 vibrational pattern, which kinda sounds like the vocal folds vibrating at different frequencies, so I don't know. But even if that was the case, it wouldn't be so simple as one vocal fold just jumping up - this ripple that they're mentioning is doing something weird. This still doesn't quite explain why the undertone series pops so naturally into place and why this ripple wouldn't appear in arbitrary frequencies, so not sure on that one either. More research to be done.
If you made it to the end of this, thanks for sticking with me! Hopefully this was interesting or informative, and sorry I don't have anything conclusive. Also feel free to correct me if you think I got something wrong. With subharmonics getting more and more popular, I think there's a real strong opportunity to do more legit academic research into this, and if anyone has more info on research past or present, I would love to hear about it! I have plans to reach out to some ENT doctors in my area soon to get a doctor's perspective on it as well, hopefully that is interesting.
Doing some great work here. Love it!
In my experience, subharmonics can occur on any instrument and in many forms. When I say a "supported fry", I am actually referring to how it feels for me when I first discovered it, though I do understand that supported fry means something to someone else as well (where the vocal fry can be stabilized to produce a stable pitch). Also, vocal fry is not as "relaxed" as people think - it is actually fully addicted folds but with very low airflow/pressure which is why it feels relaxed. But the tension is quite high in terms of the activity of the TA muscle (thyroarytenoid). It's just that there is very little to no activity in the CT (cricothyroid) muscle.
In essence, subharmonics require something else to interact and distort the normal waveform. You can do this on many instruments (cello with bow providing the asymmetrical interaction of the string and bow, with combination tones such as singing and playing the saxophone at the same time, or even something as simple as a tuning fork interacting with a piece of paper).
You'll notice that there are different types of subharmonics going on; really, the term "subharmonic" probably should not be used to assume what is going on with the vocal folds because it is not as direct.
Asymmetry of vocal folds (slightly offset) seems to be the case for "true vocal fold subharmonics". False fold (active) interaction seems to be the case for VVM and other forms of throat singing. I recall the epligottis having some involvement in throat bass as well, whether or not it is active I am not sure.
You can do "subharmonics" with a lip buzz+singing a pitch as well. The list goes on.
With all that said, research is evolving and I would love to see a newer sample of data as well.
Some food for thought (presented to me by a colleague) - is it truly a subharmonic or simply rebuilding the same harmonics of a note that is half of its value? C3 normal pitch has the harmonics C3-C4-G4-C5-etc. A C2 sub goes C2-C3-G3-C4-E4. Shouldn't a subharmonic it just be C2 sub, C3-C4-G5? (Sort of like the absolute value system or the fact that we can't go into negative hertz, we can't go below the fundamental naturally - even with that said, it is measured as a difference from the starting point).
Again, just food for thought. I would love to do more research in this area. For now, I'm working on the performance practice, stability, and longevity of this technique as well as its place in the singing world. 👍 you have my vote for your research - I'll be looking for you. Thanks!
That was deep. And great. Thanks!
I have this article if you want !
is this the Jan G. Svec papers in the JOURNAL OS SPEECH AND HEANNG RESEARCH, volume 39, 135-143 february 1996 ?
If yes, i have it, contact me so i can send it to you
@@bass2yang Thanks for the thoughtful reply!
You're right that there are many mechanisms that can lead to a "subharmonic", some (but not all) of which boil down to creating some polyrhythmic interaction. I've been able to get subharmonics on brass and string instruments as well, and have observed the tuning fork effect you're mentioning.
The "combination tone" is the most easily observable and understandable mechanism, as demonstrated by David with the harmonica and his stairwell videos and by you with your drum machine video. I don't believe it's the only mechanism though.
VVM, while able to produce subharmonics, is not an interaction of a fundamental and a fifth, it's just the false folds vibrating a true octave/other interval below the vocal folds, at least as far as I understand. I should read more of Fuks work before I comment on this more, but I think this is a scenario where the "subharmonic" is physically present as the fundamental frequency of a set of folds.
Another mechanism to create a subharmonic is what we could call "skipping", where only every second (or third or fourth, etc) oscillation from one source is picked up and amplified by another source. In the tuning fork example, the fork is only ever creating one tone, but when you hold it with just the right pressure on a surface, only every other vibration of the fork "hits" the table, so what is amplified through the table is a frequency half that of the fork. I think this skipping is what happens with string instruments when you put extra pressure on the bow to get a subharmonic - normal bow-driven string vibration is a "stick-slip" mechanism, but with extra pressure from the bow creating more friction, the string sticks for longer and is pulled farther, and only slips at half the frequency of the fundamental it "wants" to vibrate at. It's worth noting here too that this requires just the right amount of pressure - on both the fork and the string, any more or less pressure will cause a chaotic vibration with random knocking/slipping. This isn't dissimilar to vocal fry, which can display chaotic behavior as well.
That's a great point about vocal fry - the folds are loose, but some muscles are very engaged. I'll have to read more on the muscle groups you mentioned, I haven't done any digging on the larynx musculature but that would probably help in understanding a lot.
As you mentioned, it seems like asymmetry of the vocal folds might be what's causing the "subharmonics" we care about. I'm still skeptical that it's creating a polyrhythm between the folds though, for some reason it just doesn't feel right to me, but I'm open to my hunch being totally wrong.
My hypothesis is that there's a third mechanism that can create subharmonics: superposition. I'm theorizing that that's what's going on in the throat, superposition of a lower frequency on the vocal folds, though I have no idea yet if it's correct. Whatever mechanism it is for the vocal folds, I believe it's the same mechanism in play when I've gotten subharmonics on brass instruments, where your two lips are the only things vibrating.
Maybe I need to try and get subharmonics on a saxophone or clarinet using just air (no singing into it), where you only have one vibrating body, the reed. If that were possible, that would rule out the polyrhythm mechanism ,but it could still be either "skipping" or superposition, so it wouldn't prove my hypothesis on its own.
Regarding the harmonic makeup: when I've messed around with singing subharmonics into a spectrograph app, the original fundamental and a fifth above it are the clearly dominant frequencies (which might refute what I said earlier about not feeling/hearing a fifth), but the subharmonic frequency also becomes clearly visible, albeit faint. Mathematically, the spectra of a fundamental and the note a fifth above it happen to add up to be the spectrum of the subharmonic, except they are missing the subharmonic pitch itself, but here we see it clearly form. So in a sense, yes, we are rebuilding the spectra of the subharmonic, and maybe that is why it forms rather than anything in our throats actually vibrating at that frequency. More research to be done! It would be interesting to compare this to the spectra of kargyraa/VVM, though I'll have to improve my skills there before I can test it myself.
I'm not a singer (pretty bad at it really) and not a beat boxer either!
But I was very fascinated by you tutorials about Subharmonics!
I found myself practicing Subharmonics while working, for no good reason at all! I guess this is how captivated I was about it!
Keep doing it! If you can bring me, who has no use at all for it, to practice it! Imagine someone who sing!
I will forever scream from the rooftops that I was the reason David Kahn made that halo video ❤️ he gave me the shout out at the end #blessed
I just came back after a year and it took me this long to realise that Taddl is part of your video. I remember him uploading German Minecraft videos a decade ago. This is so fascinating
The vocal fry tutorial was great :) it worked for me really quick. I think I've been doing this subconsciously for a while not realizing what it was LOL
Fancy seeing you here
Wow you would be able to go low with sub harmonics, also, didn't expect to see you here at all
My theory as to why human voices are so good at this particular thing would be that it's effectively a result of damped and driven oscillations. When anything is oscillating freely it will have a natural frequency, however if you add some kind of slowing force (damping) or accelerating force (driving) you can alter this frequency in subtle ways. The air coming out at the fundamental pitch you're singing could be acting as both of these through the negative and positive pressure gradients as it passes through your false chords, basically tuning them to a frequency which is very harmonious with the fundamental, i.e. forcing a clean ratio. This would explain why once you start to get it your voice kind of locks into it completely, without any beating from being out of tune
I think this is definitely on the right track! The air pressure (forcing term) is working against the stiffness of your vocal chords (damping term) to filter out anything that doesn't fit harmonically with the fundamental frequency of your vocal chords.
When the false folds are stimulated through excessive airflow, they will produce a non-regular turbulence, e.g. a distortion. I have seen this referred to as a "breath distortion" by one person, and incorrectly called a "false cord scream" by more people than I can recall. When the false folds are stimulated through muscular control, they can distort with much less airflow. This is what would more properly be called a "false fold distortion."
When an undertone is achieved using both pairs of folds, it is by performing regular closures with the false folds at half the frequency of the pitch produced by the true folds. It is quite possible for the alignment of the pair of closures to not yield an undertone.
The technique demonstrated by David does not, as far as I am aware, involve the false folds. It is a different technique.
I mean, subs have been observed as a characteristic of mammal vocalization for quite some time. In the early 1990s the theory of nonlinear dynamics was brought to the table as a way of describing mammal vocal fold oscillation. One hypothesis states, and I quote, "The sudden change of the vibration of the vocal folds can arise spontaneously without any necessary sudden change in adjustment of the laryngeal muscles. This hypothesis is based on the theory of nonlinear dynamics, which has been successfully applied to vocal fold vibration in this decade [the 1990s], showing that the voice is a nonlinear dynamic system (Titze _et. al.,_ 1993; Herzel _et. al.,_ 1994; Baken, 1995)."
It refers to the chest-falsetto jump in particular, but it can be further extended and applied to other various vocal fold oscillations.
The excerpt is from _Chapter 4 "On Pitch Jumps Between Chest and Falsetto Registers in Voice: Data from Living and Excised Human Larynges", Introduction_ of Jan Švec's paper of 133 pages titled "On Vibration Properties of Human Vocal Folds". There is some good material analyzed in there about the chest-falsetto jump (especially in males), as well as a deep and comprehensive analysis of the human vocal folds during a subharmonic phonation episode through a laryngostroboscope and a bunch of other devices (Electroglottograph and Photoglottograph). And bear in mind all this was done in the '90s! So if y'all are interested,
👇
research.rug.nl/files/3127422/thesis.pdf
You might know this but, since our vocal chords are basically a tube, open end air column harmonics apply to this. The harmonics that you're skipping through are the resonant frequencies based on the length of the tube.
our vocal chords are not basically a tube. put a tube in your mouth and sing. lower? no. the behavior is more like a free reed
@@davemcleed2491 it's a closed tube resonator
@@robotdrawer insert a tube into your esophagus and vocalize. sound get any lower? no. it would if our voice production was a closed tube resonator
here's an example of a closed tube resonator; clarinet. on clarinet you must change the length of the tube with holes to change pitch when between harmonics. take a clarinet and put a tube in the end of it, and hold down all the keys. The pitch gets lower in accordance with the added length.
the fact that we can change the pitch of our voices without changing the length of the tube lets you know that the voice is not a closed tube resonator. Closed tube resonators cannot sound anything other than their harmonics without changing the length of the tube. The tube shape is a physical necessity. and our voice production uses it as a resonator for the sound in the same way a guitar soundbox does; incidentally, and through secondary resonances. The throat and vocal tract all serve the same purpose as head, nose, chest resonances, and so on.
The voice production is difficult to model. It doesn't really line up terribly well with existing instruments. The best examples are instruments with reeds that are not coupled to a tube, but use physical space or tubes to enhance resonances of that sound without the driver being coupled to that tube in a way that forces the driver to take the frequency of the tube. There are ranks of organ pipes that use a reed that is coupled to a tube as a beating reed. These behave as a closed tube resonator and the reed takes the pitch of the tube. There are other ranks of organs that also use shalloted reeds which are not coupled to the tube, and simply vibrate as they would alone, like a harmonica reed. They are positioned near the tube. The tube is tuned to the frequency of the reed, which amplifies the sound acoustically but does not form a closed tube resonator. they are just friends who are next to each other. Similar to marimba. The bar is tuned to a certain note. The tube under it is tuned to that same note to increase sustain and volume. They do not form a coupled resonator.
Interestingly as well, there are surgeries that exist to lower the pitch of someone's voice. This is done by cutting cartilage from the larynx, which allows the vocal cords to become less tight, less drawn, making them vibrate at a lower pitch when air is forced through. This surgery would not work if the voice production was a closed tube resonator; they would have to increase the length of the tube. It would work if the voice was a strange, membranous reed uncoupled from a tube. The surgery does work.
Furthermore, the average vocal tract length is somewhere around 13-20cm. Assuming that this is acting as a closed tube resonator that is roughly cylindrical, this would give a very, very high theoretical pitch compared to what we observe in the human voice. Disregarding all the fun of subharmonics, this would never be long enough to sound our typical voice range. Using the high end of the tract length of 20 cm/7.8 inches would put the length of this tube shorter than the shortest clarinets. This would put the fundamental of such an instrument somewhere between G4 and C5.
The subharmonics thing going on here is that david is able to initiate a mode of vibration where both his folds are vibrating at different rates. The two "reeds" beat together at different speeds to produce destructive interference. The end result is he gets an undertone series. This initiates a subtractive synthesis where your brain applies a fundamental that is actually not present. Some organ ranks (again, sorry!) use this same technology to create a different tone or to save space for low pitches. If you imagine a string instrument, like a cello, the string vibrates so many times per second to produce the frequency you normally hear. If there was a way to bow that string such that half of those vibrations were interrupted, or didn't happen, you would hear a note an octave lower. You can look up cello undertone series, or subtones and see videos where something similar to this subharmonic technique can be done with immense bow pressure.
@@davemcleed2491 the vocal tract moves up and down to change tube length changing pitch, formants are the harmonic peaks which are shaped in your mouth that produce your tone of voice.
@@robotdrawer this is true, and applies to overtones that can be heard by shaping your mouth, but the formants are secondary resonances. they are also partially based on the size of the oral cavity. hence why the closed tube resonator is an innacurate model.
this is not the mechanism that subharmonics are produced from. that has everything to do with the vocal cords and the undertone series
Heyo! My name is Kaiden! And I am a 16 year old junior in high school and I wish I had found this sooner. I learned my subharmonic register from *listening* to Geoff Castellucci. I just kinda picked it up by ear and my mimicking his tone and pitches I've extended my sub range from A1-B0 and all in between. I am amazed what sub harmonics have done for my singing career and I am so happy Geoff Castellucci learned from you so I can learn from him. You are a true inspiration and it's because of your skill that I have adapted to it and have now been getting several job opportunities thanks to this skill. Thank you so much!
You? Sooner? Do it now; you have your whole life to perfect it. I have been a deep baritone (basso pretendo) for more than 50 years, and just now found this technique. I have to learn quickly and make the best of what time I have left.
Omg, I’m surprised at how easy this actually is, after like 20 min of practicing with your quick tutorial I’ve been able to maintain a subharmonic pretty well and I’m able to sing a few notes with it.
But the lower I try to go the less volume I’m able to sing at. Oh and I’m not someone who talks with vocal fry at all, but I’ve had lots of experience, for some reason, to use it for fun.
I don't talk with vocal fry either but I can imitate it
It would be cool if you linked your videos that you referenced here in the description, would probably get more traffic there while this gets an algorithm boost
About the last question, from a mechanical engineer's perspective: If you take a steel rod and hit it with something, it will vibrate. Unless some specific conditions happen, it will vibrate in many different frequencies, but the most prominent will be it's first modal (or natural) frequency (frequency itself is dependant on the shape and material of the rod, like the pitch when singing is dependant on the shape of the oral cavity and whatever else is included). The second most prominent will be it's second natural (modal) frequency, and so on. First natural (or modal) frequency is always the lowest of all the natural frequencies of the object (or cavity) and it has the highest amplitude (carries most energy with it), with each following natural frequency being a higher pitch and having a lower amplitude. Some technicalities and specific scenarios aside, many of it's first natural frequencies will be equal to it's actual first natural frequency (probably analogous to the carrier pitch) multiplied by some whole number. Natural frequencies of things (works for air in cavities as well i guess) that vibrate very often have perfect intersecting points of the sinusoids of different frequencies (obviously not every single zero point of the sinusoids match, but rather for example every fourth zero value of the second sinusoid could match up with every zero value of the first sinusoid, for example). So, while i don't have any real knowledge what happens with the human voice in regards to subharmonics, I can draw some analogies that are basically educated guesses (educated in regards to engineering and metal rods, thou I do have a few years of music school behind me): when you set up the carrier frequency with the shape of your mouth instrument, all those following frequencies are just waiting to happen, but for a lack of technical term, with less chance/motivation/intention to happen. So, here's my guess: setting up the carrier frequency is basically just setting the mouth/throat shape to have the first natural frequency of that cavity the frequency for the tone you want, and then by some manipulation of muscles you disturb either one of the vocal folds or something else to not be in that first frequency, which just makes it fall straight into another natural frequency for that exact shape of your instrument (and since that other one is most likely to be the first one multiplied by a whole number, you now have both tones for a subharmonic). Again these are guesses, i would hope more experienced engineers, possibly of the audio-sort, step in and give their two cents.
My favorite example of subharmonics being used was in "Far Over The Misty Mountains" from the hobbit.
The thing that instantly made me learn subharmonic was this :
sustain softly a note mouth closed (sustain a note around your vocal range, not too high not too low)
constrict it a bit so it’s kinda electric (almost like you want to go to vocal fry but you can’t since your singing a note, don’t add force though it shouldn’t be loud, the softer the easier)
then move your jaw as far as possible forward/ open you mouth and pull you tongue forward as far as possible; the back of your tongue will slightly stretch your vocal cords and make you will likely fall into subharmonic, it should feel like a fall, like you let go your voice and it fall into subharmonic
if it didn’t work, keep messing around with your voice and try sometimes the jaw /tongue technique, subharmonic are as sensitive as whistle, i do them since 2 years and still fail them often so don’t worry
Hmm, I shall try what you say. For me, all I know is vocal fry, from Kargyraa throat singing. My voice goes straight into a fry too easily as this is what is conditioned. Any advise on this, on learning to separate the difference?
@@darkraft1020 I have the same problem. Been fucking around with Kargyraa too much and I automatically jump into into a false vocal cord fry instead. Used to be impressed by it but can't produce subharmonics because of it lmao
I've been listening to your videos for a year or two now as a high tenor and have gained an octave plus learning to use distortion and extended vocal fry from your videos. Thank you dearly for your service to music, David!
12:25 " Squats? *Yea* "
This should be a mandatory element of vocal studies. As a counter-tenor, I found that working on my lower baritone range extended and enriched my alto range so that it was quite easy to sing in a mezzo-soprano tessitura- due, presumably to the freeing of upper harmonics generated from their low fundamentals.
Thanks for all you do.
Bruh, your little tutorial got me doing it and then I started speaking and got so spooked I lost it, and now I have to rewatch the little tutorial because wtf just happened?
So happy to have run across you!
Edit: For what it's worth, as a kid I always played with vocal fry, so when you were like "Yeah, try to do it with a tone" it was like a key.
I didn’t know it had a name, but I’ve been using sub harmonics for years, but for an entirely different reason. I learned it from Mongolian throat singing. I’ve been able to do beats for a long time but singing lyrics has always been weird for me, so this vid is helpful to practice properly
I have found subharmonics myself, just by relaxing my voice. I have found it to be easy to train and improve, but I still struggle to hit the second subharmonic. I am 16, so maybe that impacts my vocal chords in a way that makes it easier to hit, but harder to make lower. I don’t know chords so I don’t know what my lowest note is, but I know someone who knows notes so maybe I’ll update this
Fantastic video David! Having been doing this technique ever since you released the original video back in 2015, it's really interesting to hear the feeling of doing subharmonics being put into words like this. Subharmonics are so intricate and mysterious, the way they manifest in the human voice is truly impossibly precise.
all of you guys need to go listen to David’s music, it’s so good
In the pipe organ world, this is called a Resultant. This would be the lowest (longest) stop (voice) for the pedals, the low bass of an organ. The length of a pipe determines the pitch so physical space limits the longest pipe that can be installed. Very few places have room for 32 foot or 64 foot pipes. Cost also comes into consideration as the materials needed to create a pipe twice as long more than doubles. Instead, a Resultant stop is programmed to use the existing longest stop but play both the fundamental note and its fifth at the same time. Pipe organs have had this for hundreds of years.
Loved finding this video to explain how to access this with my voice. I only discovered the capability after a major surgery several years ago. After recovery, I lost access. It returned recently when I had the latest CoVID that resulted in a sore throat and lots of coughing. Thanks to tuner apps on my phone, I was able to see that I could reach as low as F1 but solidly G1. Once my voice recovers, I want to try your techniques so that I can access that sub-octave at will regularly.
I feel like I've been doing this for years without realizing it. I've been a bass in a few choirs for 6 years now and as you were explaining this as I tried to do it it just felt like I was switching into a different register. Similar too moving from a chest voice to a falsetto but the other way around.
Early morning driving to the gym in Cardiff, South Wales listen to this. I am burn only impressed but genuinely overcome by your gentle, humble nature. Thank you, sir!!!
I guess the reason it feels like the intervals are magically "locking in" is because of resonance, if ratios are too obscure they cancel each other out and the tone cannot be sustained (so it stops or slips into an interval that resonates better)
About the final question, I don't think that it's really about why things tend to lock into these subharmonics. It's a bit like asking why large masses are attracted to eachother, or why heat evens out between masses. It's just a part of how the world functions. Nikola Tesla is famously quoted: "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration". You can see that subharmonics are a direct result of the mathematical relations between frequencies. And math is really just a means of describing how quantifiable aspects of the universe interact. Harmonics are a result of resonance and subharmonics are the reciprocal result, in the most literal sense. A reciprocal is just a flipped fraction or 1 divided by a given quantity, subarmonic ratios are just harmonic ratios flipped.
Even basic perception of pitch and harmony ties back to the same principles of frequency relationships. Simpler ratios tend to sound stronger and more consonant, few people will ask why because it's often taught that it is the way it is because it is. When you look closer though, it's a matter of waves meshing together into a unified pattern more when at a simpler frequency ratio. The answer is in the math.
This is all to say that the existence of and ability to create subharmonics are just basic principles of the universe and the way it works. What I would call the principle of inverse resonance.
Edit: typos
It's super cool to be here as a counter tenor (light tenor) saying that I can sing down to a G1 and once I get a bigger microphone I'll record a few covers with it.
In the start I did hurt my voice a little bit in the start, but it seems to me that the only thing that hurts is doing it wrong.
So basically like singing normally but harder and riskier!
Edit: My range has grown to be G1 to E6, so it has also gone higher.
Subharmonics are amazing! Are you getting that with 2st subs or 2nd? The counter tenor range is really high, so I would be very impressed if you could hit first octave notes without needing to go down to 2nd subs
13 minutes into the video and triyng that change from regular voice into vocal fry and after 5 minutes subharmonic "magically" happened. I struggeled for months to lower my voice but never got near that sound. Not even with my morning voice. Thanks for that tip. Helped instantly.
Greetings David. I have an educated guess on why it seems the ratios seem to be built into our voices. And I say "seem to", because I don't believe they are. I believe what's going on is a phenomenon called synchronization. If you have multiple oscillators in a closed system, such that they can influence each other, they tend to synchronize. The easiest example is if the two oscillators have the same frequency, if one tries to go faster than the other, due to it being in a closed system it transfers some of it's speed to the slower oscillator speeding it up, and simultaneously slowing the faster oscillator down. Eventually the two oscillators become paired, to break out of this coupling the difference in desired oscillation speed much be large enough that it exceeds this synchronization. Most of the time when this happens it means that a more optimal ratio is found, one that requires the oscillators to change their frequency less. To deviate from this synchronized speed would require a continuous addition of energy to the oscillators. The two oscillators cause enough interference to each other that they deviate from their intended frequency. Rather than contently trying to correct this frequency by very carefully controlling the forces at play, allowing the oscillators to deviate and become coupled is actually the more energy efficient state.
There's a famous experiment you can do placing metronomes on a surface that's on wheels, and setting them going at different times. Even if the metronomes are not exactly the same frequency, they will after a few cycles become perfectly in sync (Veritasium has a great video on this). Less known however is that this works for other ratios as well. If you have two metronomes that are far apart from each other, they will still synchronize, but at some ratio. The exact ratio is the ratio that requires the least deviation from the generated frequency from both oscillators.
I believe this is what's occurring in the voice during subharmonics. The ratio is more or less fluid between the vocal folds, but due to synchronization in a coupled system they'll end up falling into the most energy efficient state, which is synchronization. To change ratios you need to simple cause the intended oscillation to pass the threshold where the current ratio is no longer the most efficient way to synchronize.
I should also note that regardless of the mechanism (whether subharmonics are caused by turbulence in the air past the vocal folds, or caused by the vocal folds themselves, or etc). Any oscillating system in which at least two oscillators can exert some force on the other(s), will tend towards synchronicity, because again, it it the most energy efficient state, forcing the oscillators to be out of sync requires more energy to be added to the system in addition to the energy already used to generate the desired frequencies, while synchronization effectively shares the energy already put into the two oscillators, giving energy to or taking energy from other oscillators in the system in order to optimize the efficiency of the system.
Good to hear, I love writing paragraphs in comment sections. Lol.
Years and years ago someone told me I don’t sing very well. I recorded myself on a cassette tape (told you it was years ago) and I found no errors in that statement. I then quit singing in church, around other people and quit thinking one day I may be good at singing. This was not an emotional response as I have been told that I do not have all of the emotions an average person would have. This was a purely logical decision. I can’t sing, people don’t like to hear bad singers, don’t sing where people can hear you. I have recently figured out it isn’t about natural talent but a mastery of muscles. Over the years I taught myself to wiggle my nose, my ears, one ear at a time and move just my pinky toe away from the others. The first two are a great ice breaker with nervous little kids that I meet for the first time. The third is 100% useless. But again, logically I have come to the conclusion that since my work commit is 2 1/2 hrs per day so I WILL learn to sing. As a bonus I will only irritate my steering wheel as I learn. Great video! I plan to brows your channel in search of any “singing for dummies” videos you may have. Geoff is great. One commenter said he doesn’t have vocal cords, he has tectonic plates. Lol
The Book of Jasher tells how Jacob’s sons could scream as a combat technique that was so loud it could be heard, and felt for miles. Legend perhaps, but maybe in the early stages of humanity, before our present genetic diversification, we possessed vocal abilities that were lost but the programming remains. The potential for what we could relearn is incredible.
This video, along with one of Geoff's, helped me a lot. After like an hour I got the hang of finding the lower note, (inconsistently) and now I'm working on eliminating some extra vibration. Looking forward to using this throughout my life.
Edit: Also emptied an entire water bottle lol
I think I just got it from the little cut-in-tutorial, damn that's crazy.
It's very not clean and I can hear the voice cracks / fry come through many times
Still very fun to do, sat the whole video there doing it lol. Thanks!
So what really helped me from the original videos, and what accelerated my grasp on control was when you mentioned the positioning of the vocal folds in relation to each other. Helped me better understand the muscle groups i needed to focus on were actually located higher than our normal folds.
This is amazing, I saw this and started yesterday, and I immediately got the feeling and my first subharmonic notes. I found, I can pretty consistantly hit a B1 (actually B2 and B1 :D) with decent loudness and support. But I'm not sure, how to efficiently practice from now on. Could you maybe provide us with a quick routine, for daily practice, of some exercises you found helpful to really improve the range you can use subharmonics in?
Also: I think my goal would not be to get extremely low, but to be able to connect the subharmonic register to my lowest comfortable singing voice. I found it pretty hard, to do the subharmonics in higher ranges, I think I already get it but the actual main note is very present, so that it doesn't really sound like the clean low note... Can you maybe show yourself singing a scale while switching registers? In general I noticed it can be controlled, how present the actual note is over the subharmonic note (e.g. Taddl preserves it very hearable). Do you have tips on controlling that?
I think, the answer to most of my questions is practice, feeling and time, as I started yesterday :D But maybe you still have some tips, to help us not wasting effort in wrong directions :)
Wow! Gratitude for taking the time to make this video! I hit my first semi-controlled sub harmonics ever! Going down to a F#1
Wear both headphones, and hum the note he's creating with the harmonica even with a different octave.... It's fun :>
I was one of those people that watched your video from 7 years ago!!! I’m still getting there!😊 took breaks here and there but still making progress!😊❤️ thanks brotha!
Legit question. Is this different than Mongolian throat singing?
Rock on bro! Thanks for all that you do-amazing as always!
I'm always amazed when I learn of a new way that things can line up or mirror perfectly. How awesome 🙂
Similar to the subject of these subharmonics being in a way naturally built into the human voice just waiting to be unlocked with proper technique, there is an even more fundamental element of the human voice as we use it that is often overlooked that I find absolutely fascinating; vowel sounds, or formants! We don't even think about it for most of our lives, but each vowel sound we make is actually an incredibly specific combination of overtone frequency clusters called "formants" that we instinctually manipulate with our mouths, and that we can freely manipulate independent of pitch.
Audio science, and especially the science of the human voice is such an incredibly fascinating subject. Great video, man!
@8:55 I had been trying to find a note to get my voice to go into the subharmonic / fry you were describing and hit it for a brief moment, and then - swear to God - you gave this example pitch @8:55 and it was the EXACT note I was singing 🎶 haha we were suddenly in unison.
I thought... Damn he's good he predicted the note I'd be singing at the exact moment I was singing it. On TH-cam haha Wild.
You should do a TED talk about this stuff, it's truly remarkable. I learned this technique a couple of years ago by watching your tutorials.
I'm expanding this technique to metal with my band 👌 thanks for doing what you do!
I watched taddl when I was like.. 12 maybe and he was basically a german youtube comedian. Then my interests shifted, I forgot about him and now he appears in your video, tattoed and beatboxing and singing like a legend. What a trip
I genuinely thought you were a tenor this whole time! Now I'm curious, where does your head voice stop?
I'm almost certain I know why having a closed mouth helps with subharmonics. I suspect most people have trouble introducing the level of breath pressure needed for subharmonics while keeping their throat relaxed, since for most singing breath pressure and tension are directly related. Closing the mouth and forcing the air through the nose is a way of forcing more pressure while simultaneously discouraging tension.
I think you can kinda hear the bass in his speaking voice, his “oh” sounds are really really low
I learned subharmonics in 1 week! (And I’m 16 btw) And you partially helped with that. Thank you for your contribution to the bass world.
There seems to be a lot of similarities between metal vocals and subharmonics, even more than what was discussed in the video. The fry based subharmonics could definitely be compared to a fry scream and the throat bass seems very similar to a false chord scream. In both of these cases I think the base sound of the metal vocal is actually coming from the same mechanics that sub harmonics are based in. From my limited understanding of subharmonics and mediocre understanding of metal vocals, I think subharmonics are a much more melodic, gentle, less restricted take on these mechanics, whereas metal vocals lean more into the distortion by creating a more constricted passageway for air, removing the true voice (in a lot of cases), and occasionally adding multiple layers such as combining fry, false chords, and or the aritnoids (I think that’s what they are called they are little cartilage above the false chords I believe). It could be cool to see someone do a deep dive comparing the two vocal styles to see how much overlap there really is
When David Kahn was standing in the stairwell singing, I thought that would wake up everyone in the building, but then again, it would be quite pleasant waking up to it. Kind of soothing.
So cool, I would love to see more about 2nd sub harmonic. How consistent are you with it? How can you achieve 2nd and 3rd harmonics?
My dad had a beautiful deep baritone voice.
So cool to listen to all of your subharmonic vocals.
Awesome that you can share & teach via TH-cam etc.
If you think you may have injured your vocal chords, you may want to see a specialist.
Would you be able to expand on 1st vs 2nd subharmonics? I can do subharmonics well, but I don't really know if I'm doing 1st or 2nd. I tried to do what you talked about in your "2nd subharmonics" video, but most of the time I feel I'm just moving to a lower note while remaining in the 1st subharmonic when attempting to go to the 2nd.
Same feeling
Sometimes I think I am doing first then I pop up an octave into first.
The mic didn’t pick up the lower subharmonics on the harmonica but you could still hear that they were there. It’s very impressive and I definitely want to try it
in the crack between falsetto i noticed a falsetto subharmonic, have you noticed it too?
I can do poly which is the crack between mix/chest and falsetto, so im not sure if it’s really a falsetto subharmonic or a constricted poly, but i have to say it really feels like falsetto subharmonic even though i saw any falsetto fry
There are also the reverse, too. That is, at the edge of head and falsetto voice, there is a place where you can jump an exact octave higher. I learned it by accident and have hit C6 with ease... and I am a low bass. Using the double subharmonic technique and upper harmonics, I have extended my range to B -1 to A#6.
i actually notice a lot of anatomy changes trying to hit high notes with falsetto, so from A2 to A5 is pretty much my standard falsetto (sometimes it activate falsetto subharmonic), from A5 to A6 is this weird transition to extreme high falsetto but not yet on the flageolet register, and from A6 to A#8 (and probably even higher) is pretty much my flageolet register.
also with subharmonic i barely use it to extend my lows i have been blasting full voice sounding notes at 50-65 dB way down to G-1, my fam always complainin about how loud the notes i'm blasting even though i'm in another floor lol
As someone whose voice has decided to dip down in the last 2-or-so years as I approach 40, deeper than it ever could before, this whole world of sub-harmonics is new and exciting and a little scary. Thank you so very much for appearing randomly in my suggested videos - I learnt heaps, and now have a new channel to sub to and learn from! :3
so, I'm pretty young, still in high school. Like you said "young fresh voices [often] have a hard[er] time finding this technique", this was not the case for me.
I had NEVER wanted to sing, I avoided choir like it was the most disgusting rat I'd ever seen. However I had always had a interest in music. Last year I heard Geoff's sixteen tons cover, and thought it was awesome. So, just for the fun of it, I tried to emulate it and hit almost every note to my surprise. I realized "well damn I can go pretty low" and then got caught in the voiceplay rabbit hole, ...eveentually finding the oogie boogie song and being blown away of course. This got me interested and I was looking up a whole bunch of tutorials. Yeah, kinda an awkward introduction to singing but it works eh?
I "mastered" this technique 11/04/ last year (mastered meaning being able to hit it basically whenever ) and from there I learned a few variations like indicators alien bass[by the way I feel like it's not just the 3rd subharmonic as you described in your reaction but I dunno]. I believe I had looked at Geoff's tutorial, then he credited you and I found your tutorial; I tried it first at around 3 months before I mastered it, and I hit it for the first time within a week of trying. I got really lucky to say the least. To be honest, I didn't ever have the click you described, it was sortof just something I could do on and off and it was really discouraging because your tutorials... sadly didn't help much after the first time getting it. For me, bass2yangs tutorial is where it clicked, the *day* I watched it, I mastered it. In fact, it was within a few *hours* of watching his tutorial that I was consistently getting a powerful first sub. Even this video actually better explained to me what's going on with the different pitches.
Alot of people say they've never heard subharmonics be louder than normal singing, maybe I'm the counter example, it has actually helped me speak louder, I often slip into subs in casual conversation whenever I fry at the end of a sentence and my voice ticks up in volume just a teeny bit. Also I have a new technique for subharmonic singing (this is why I mentioned variations) singing with an "r" attached to the vowel you are using seems to turn the volume up from a 5 to a 8/9 (on a **relative** scale up to 10 in relation to my normal voice loudness[and it's only a guess cuz it's actually from a 12 to 20 in relation to *my* voice]). So for an "a" you would use the "are" mouth position, "o" is "or", "oo/u" is "ure" as in (l)ure, "e" is "er/ear", and "i" is sorta wierd for me, but "ire" as in fire is the best sound for me. Let me know if you get any results or if it's just placebo :P (even if it's not real, I know for a fact that it makes the 2nd (maybe 3rd) sub way easier)
Anyways around the same time I learned subharmonics you actually brought me into the beatboxing community, and I just wanted to thank you for all that I've learned from this :) and for introducing me to a new world of discovery
edit: I am sure you understand the fact that even though throat bass and vibration bass are a form of subharmonic, they do not sound the same as the lighter version me and you use. I have found that adding the "r" gives you a much clearer sound, and it almost sounds like vibration bass to me. you can even do the air filter thing that remix does(explained in his vibration bass tutorial). th-cam.com/video/XO6bfPl2T1M/w-d-xo.html example of "r vowels" for those who want it.
This was awesome! I have been practicing for the last few months after coming across your original video and it’s been so freaking fun to make progress ! Thank you so much for sharing this!
maybe humans evolved it to scare the shit out of predators by screaming at them in subharmonics :D
I remember randomly stumbling upon one of your videos a few years back. Back then it was just curiosity. Since then I've tried myself as a metal band frontwoman. I always could sing with some degree of stability, but only learned screaming after I've started fronting. You describing that the right kind of vocal fry is basically subharmonics makes so much sense as to why I'm able to make low-ish screams comfortably, despite my natural voice being soprano... Now... You've got me curious about using subharmonics more actively 😉
Wouldn’t we know from tibetan throat singers if subharmonics are harmful?
I stumbled across subharmonics years ago when I was learning how to do throat singing…to me, throat singing (Kargyraa specifically) is subharmonics with overtones added on top…super fun to mess around with all these different techniques!
yo this is so crazy i remember wating your first video on this 7 years ago and beingone of like the first 20 people commenting ansking questions. i love to see the amount of outreach you have had. Love you david keep killing it!
@David Larson -- Have a brief look into Helmholtz resonators. To a point, closing the aperture of the resonator alters it's pitch downward.
This was such a cool video David! I think I watched your first tutorial back in 2016 and have been developing my subharmonic register ever since. It was amazing to see it being slowly integrated more into commercial singing! Thank you so much for making that video!
This is incredible, I never knew my voice could do this! Thank you🙏
Proud to have been here since the start! Congrats on all the impact you've had David :)
I greatly appreciated this video, I've been trying off an on a way to practice sub-harmonics throughout the day, just couldn't find a way to do it without bothering the people around me, until now. Love your videos David, you and Geoff are what got me back into bass singing after 6 years.
David!!!!! Thanks for the call out to camp! Hope you are doing well!!!!!! (I am the old guy Rick) I so remember that year!!!! I love seeing the clips of you and Kahn in the stairwells at Wright State! Come back to Dayton!
I enjoyed this vid very much. I did a subharmonic for a second yay! Gonna work on that.
Beginner bass singer here, started a bit when I was 19, but started to get into it more now that I am 20 years old. So this video is greatly appreciated
I didn't even know you existed before this video. But you are the reason I am able to pull of some subharmonics!
I saw Geoffs tutorial and it clicked pretty quickly for me. (And I didn't remember anyone being credited^^)
Thank you!
I think the reason you can only "lock into" the perfect ratios without the required intentional precision you would need if you were truly a polyphonic instrument is because of resonance. Take the first sub harmonic for instance, if you're singing two notes in a ratio of 3:2, they share a bunch of harmonics on their overtone series. The fifths second harmonic (the octave) is the fundamentals third harmonic, the fifths fourth harmonic is the fundamental's sixth, and so on. When something vibrates at a certain frequency, it becomes easier, sometimes even automatic, for other things to vibrate at that frequency, that's why if you play guitar, if you don't intentionally mute the strings you're not playing, their upper harmonics sound when you play something that resonates with them. I believe these shared harmonics make the harmonics of the fifth, and therefore the fifth itself, easier to happen. This would also explain why lower subharmonics are harder to produce, since closer pitches share progressively fewer and fewer overtones.
just did the rabbit hole run through your tutorial videos (again) and finally found the range 🤯
right before immediately losing it 😅
legend, no one has ever explained it more thoroughly and with as much clarity as you have over the years
Awesome video man! Can't thank you enough for really breaking this topic down. I run a creepypasta narration channel and I've been really trying to get this technique down to work on doing creepy characters/villians or just deep bassy bad guy voices haha
this was my hearing about subharmonics and just following your instructions here I was able to hear the fringes of it start to happen already. truly amazing stuff
That’s just freaking amazing ! Didn’t thought adding control to vocal fries would result in a so specific and amazing vocal skill !