iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub

Hi all

To get a "real" trad' sound, one must use his voice along with the drone and the tongue and diaphragm techniques.
This Passive Voice (PV)'s pitch is linked to the Mago/Yidaki's pitch.
I made this post to try to understand this technique and discuss about it.

I've first heard that PV's pitch should be at the 10th of the Mago/yidaki's pitch.

Also heard that Milk*y pitched his PV to the 12th.

And I'm now hearing that the perfect 5th can also be used. (to my mind, that 5th is an octave+5th, hence giving a 12th)

From what I've experienced, there are some PV pitches that come out loud on a given stick, and others which are muffled on the same stick.
I've tried to draw diagrams of this phenomenon with all of my didjs but finally got mixed up
Anyway, I guess that the "right" PV pitch should produce the loud sound, and there seem to be more than one way to fetch it.

I'm not expecting a definitive clear answer as I know there aren't any, but just to open a discussion.
Any thoughts to share ?
Any video or sound clips to illustrate ?

Ah, and something else :
It's quite easy to tune your voice to a given pitch : just sing in front of a tuner and then reproduce that key in the didj.
But it's harder to do it the other way round, that is to pick up the PV's key on a given sample, as it is mixed up with the drone and harmonics.
Hence the tuner cannot help you anymore... Do you pick that up only with your well trained ears ?

I reckon different players use their voice differently. I've found that the players I best like to emulate in terms of sound quality tend to use the fifth (or whatever it is you want to call what I use) so this is what I employ. I also use accents and pulses in different pitches - like the tenth which I use quite a bit to accent WAL style playing.

At the end of the day use your voice the way you want to - if it sounds the way you want it to then it doesn't matter what you call it, fifth, tenth, twelfth, etc.

Ciao Ahaw,
After having listened and experimented and listened and experimented some more,
and also having listened to and played for Kyle one dark night in a car park in Devon.((a truly memorable occasion as being the first
time that I met Kyle and Paul, and Kyle immediately started pulling instruments from the back of his car, playing them and listening to me and Paul playing them.. comparing soudsn and particular voice combinations)).

My conclusion
is that the voice goes where it goes best for the player and the instrument and the sound that you are looking
for. If you listen carefully even amongst Yolngu the placement changes. As far as my ear goes, in the playing of Larry
for example, sometimes you hear the 10th and others the perfect 5th (which is a fifth and not a 12th..) even within the same piece.

Obviously for some intstruments that have lower notes the perfect 5th is too deep for most voices and so the 12th is the obvious choice.
For really nice mago, with a pitch around an f or g the famous 10th is really a bit high for it to mix nicely with the note of the
mago and in those cases the 5th comes out beautifully.

So, in the end, go with what feels right without forcing yourself too much..

One day I was feeling more analytic and actually played and extracted the spectrum singing the 5th and the 10th with
the same didge, maybe i even posted it somewhere. the result is that the differences in the resulting spectrum are not so great
but still quite distinct from the sound of the didge without voice.

cheers, M

Nicely stated Martin - I quite agree.

That was indeed a memorable evening and I look forward to duplicating it on the Isle of Wight this summer!

Kyle

good thread!

i think it's quite interesting...
it does matter to know what the interval is when using PV, at least in the beginning and of course to explain others what we're doing... it's limited, indeed, but as limited as language, and this is the language of music...

however, when you've done it many, many, many times, the thruth is that you forget about words and start focusing on feeling... and there is a big difference in vibration, and therefore feeling, from one interval to another... different texture, different color, different mood... it has a lot to do with minor and major chords and the quality of mood we culturally attach to them... it has to do with what we feel from playing but also what we feel from listening to others...

good musicians, with best hearing, are able to know when something is very slightly out of tune just by the way it vibrates... when key/tunes match perfectly, the vibration is lesser... dunno how to explain this, but it happens and it is possible for them to feel it... it's possible for me too, but only when it's much more evident...

anyhow, in didjeridu, this same issue happens in a very evident way, to our luck... you'll know when your voice is matching the pitch because it clearly stops vibrating in the same way as it does in any other pitch... the 5th doesn't vibrate as much as other intervals neither, but it's only the fundamental that has a very evident effect... your chest will feel somehow wider too, as if it was expanding, and suddenly it will seem that someone turned the volume up... no need to use much strength...

in bunggul style, I've heard many times people using a 2nd below the fundamental at the end of phrases... the effect or color it gives is a darker one, more misterious... it's a dissonance, because they are two consecutive tones (one is one tone lower than the other)... in our culture, this kind of interval has usually been related with intrigue, mistery, tension, darkness... there is a very curious example to show this at the Mamba CD, i think in track #1: the songman starts singing alone, in the same pitch of that of the didjeridu that will start playing right after... but the songman then goes down one tone at the end of his calling and remains there, and beautifully, the yidaki player uses his PV to accentuate the end of his sentences with that same interval, one tone below his fundamental... The song goes on with the songman keeping his singing one tone below the yidaki, mantaining the effect of tension, and only going up to the fundamental to call Mamba, which is what the song is about, the main subject, generating a very resolutive feeling...

Contrary, if u check many wongga songs, and specially those of the Rak Badjalarr series, you'll notice that they're using both the third and the fifth, alternating from one to the other and reaching a totally different effect than the one before... the third and fifth of the fundamental generate a major chord, which in our culture has always been related with light, resolution, open space, happiness, relaxation... It is exactly the same chord they use at the airport to call attention before making an announcement (#tan-tin-tan# "passenger Mr. bla, bla, please go to bla, bla...)... u guess why this one and not any other one...? and same, ambulances usually use intervals that tend to provoke state of alert...

Well, my point is that what really matters is that unconsciously we get to know and to match mechanics with feelings, i mean, we don't think that much whether we're doing fifths or fourths or twelveths, but we relate the feeling we want to get or provoke with the mechanics we need to generate the sounds that provoke those feelings, and the phisical sense of their vibration in us... And besides music styles or genres, It will then depend on the musician and his/her mood, in that very second or in his/her whole career to prefer certain intervals above others...

gee, excuse me, too long!
cheers!

Hey, great post here Marcuz !!

Indeed, these intervals' designations are purely Occidental !
And the didj' is an instrument that strongly deals with emotions & feelings.
Hence calculating the Drone/PV interval is more of a westerner musicological analysis rather than a training to play good trad' style.

I'll check your examples on my Mamba and Rak Badjalarr CDs.
Thanks for giving precise songs for checking and learning !

As for the "slightly out of tune vibration", it's a well known musical phenomenon which I totally forgot the name
It is used for precise instrument tuning "by ear".
While the shaky vibration is still there, it means that you're close but not perfectly on the right key.
I think it is the phenomenon I tried to explain in the 1st post of this thread : "loud or muffled PV"
Just try singing without the drone in your didj.
Make the sound of a car that you "push up" without changing the gear : iiiiiiiiIIIIIAAAAAAWWWWWRRRRRR !
That sound seems to smoothly climb the musical scale (including #s).
You'll notice that the average sound volume will sometimes decrease (muffled sound) then suddenly increase (loud sound) then get back normal again.
And that several times (2 or 3) along your vocal "scale climbing".
Please try and tell me if that "loud sound" correspond to the "right" intervals to sing PV on.
And if the "muffled sound" correspond to the "close but not right", or to the "intrigue, mistery, tension, darkness" feelings ?

Cheers.

Hi

Could someone post some examples of the 10th 12th, etc as I have no understanding of these terms or what they actually sound like in the real world and in my limited musical knowledge. I know what I like when I listen to instruments being played but couldn't for the life of me determine what n'th is being added as a passive voice. I'm sure there are others on this forum who are just as confused with these musical terminologies?

Thanks

hi Ahaw,

dunno if i dig it well... but as i said, there is no right or wrong for this (i'm always sheltering in this ambiguities, ha!)... it always comes to personal appreciation, and certainly it has a lot to do with the instrument in particular: the key of it but also its resonance, response, etc... for instance, not all F's respond to PV sung in a particular interval in the same way... some might respond more evidently to, for instance, tenths, whereas some others do so in fifths... mago don't react to PV in the same way as yidaki, or at least I have that feeling... and again, not all the mago I have respond equally to the same interval sung...

as important as the interval in which we sing the PV is the way we sing it, I mean, are we pushing our voice tightly or are we just letting it come out right before breathing... are we focusing on the tip of our mouth or on the back of our throat... are we having our chicks in or out... once again, one particular pitch doesn't sound the same when played in a certain way or another, or from one place or another... attention, I'm not talking about trad here, I'm just talking about mechanics of playing, regardless they're trad or nontrad...

yes, when doing the "scale" thing, if i understood well, one should feel that difference between intervals... at least in the phisical feeling i do notice a difference... and that's exactly how i teach it... we use the "scale" to find, first of all, the feeling of the fundamental when sung along the drone... it stops vibrating and the sound, to me, seems to expand, maybe not increase the volume much, but it feels the same as when a good singer is using or projecting the voice from the belly, in a way that no matter he/she is singing in a low volume, the sound fills the whole of the room...
once we've found the fundamental, that's going to be the reference point from which to sing, upper or lower, but always having in mind that reference... and yeah, thirds (10ths) or fifths (12ths) or seconds below (7ths) do feel phisically different when played/sung...

gee, it's a bit difficult to explain all this with written words and not having a didge with us... i'll try to tape myself (how do yas usually do it, MD?), but i think the most important here is to try yourselves... no matter what I or the other says, the feeling of things is what matters, and that is personal and untransferrable and the only way to recognise what we do when we do it... Do it a lot and pay a lot of attention to the response of what you're doing, in sound and in the vibration it provokes in you (I'm not talking about "new agey vibration", I mean if something is ticklish or not, for instance, and if it is, where is it focusing the tickles, etc, how often or fast is the vibration (frequency), all that stuff...)...

listening, that's the real playing, as seeing is the real painting... in aboriginal or western world... I tell you there won't ever be an aboriginal player having the discussion we're having now, or at least not the ones I know, many of which are the ones we put our eyes and ears on... which doesn't mean we shouldn't have it, but I just think sometimes we try to go much further than what we actually want or need...
play it, feel it, the feeling is yours... if you don't feel anything, u don't need anybody to tell u what you should be feeling... what you need is to play more!!

Ozmadman, I think this answers your question too, but I'll try to tape something, although dunno when I'll be able to do it and upload it, sounds like a mission right now...

ok, too long again,
cheers!!
M

Well just let them go out and I'll catch'em !

Joke asides, great post again Marcus.
Of course "personnal feeling" is the key, and of course Occidentals like myself are too curious.
But can't help it
And don't worry > I'm feeling and experimenting a lot too ! Not just calculating my pitch on a guitar tuner...

Anyway, thanks for your bright answer again and looking forward to hear your soundclips.
Cheers !