sound

[Tim Keenan & Rebecca Counts]

Ralph, Newton, et al:

ralph m martin wrote:
> 
> Hi Newton
> I'm very aware of the pipe organ thing, it being my instrument. I just
> can't imagine those two little chords sounding those notes. It's like a
> violin attempting to play the bass fiddle part. I'd love to hear the
> monks do this!

There is some actual data on this stuff--unfortunately, I am a long way 
from a University Library (if I have the time I'll try to see if I can 
somehow find it on the net) but I read an article about it in an 
anthropology journal--American Journal of Anthropology, perhaps?--and the 
date would have been sometime in the 1970's, I think.  Perhaps as late as 
1980.  I am a choral singer, and a former (still occasional) pipe organ 
technician, and so I found this overlap interesting.  I don't believe 
that the sounds produced by the monks are subsonic--what would be the 
point of practising for years to make a sound no human can hear?--but 
they are some kind of sub-harmonic.  I have heard the recordings, and the 
note is a good octave below the low C in the Rachmaninoff Vespers, which 
few basses can sing.  I must say it's an acquired taste, though--they 
don't produce any kind of melody, the way the overtone singers of Eurasia 
do--it is more of a monotone drone.

Many choral singers (at least in small choirs with good tuning) have 
experienced resultants when there is an open fifth at the bottom of a 
chord.  It helps to have a resonant building, too. I've heard it also 
happens not infrequently in brass ensembles.  It is harder to see how a 
single voice could produce a resultant of this type, however.

Tim Keenan
Terrace, BC