There is a voice within the voice.
A hidden spectrum of vibration, waiting to be heard, felt, and understood.
This is the world of overtones—an ancient technique and natural phenomenon that reveals the multidimensional nature of sound and the soul.
🔊 What Are Overtones?
When you sing or play a note, you’re not just hearing a single frequency.
You’re hearing a layered chord of invisible harmonics, called overtones.
- The fundamental tone is the base frequency (e.g. 100 Hz).
- Overtones are its natural multiples: 200 Hz, 300 Hz, 400 Hz, etc.
- Together, they create the rich texture of sound.
Just as a prism reveals the spectrum of light within white light, overtones reveal the spectrum of vibration within a single note.
Overtones are what allow us to distinguish one instrument from another, even if they’re playing the same note. Without overtones, a violin and a flute would sound identical. Our human voice, in fact, contains the richest overtone palette of all—capable of nuanced, precise manipulation.
🌍 Ancient Origins and Cultural Roots
The ability to produce overtones intentionally—singing two pitches at once—is an ancient art developed across multiple continents and spiritual traditions.
✨ Where it originated:
- Mongolia, Tuva, Siberia – known as Khoomei or throat singing
- Tibet and Central Asia – used by monks for spiritual alignment
- South Africa – Xhosa women’s overtone chants in traditional ceremonies
In these traditions, overtone singing was not merely artistic—it was spiritual technology. The voice became a tool for:
- Journeying between worlds
- Balancing energy
- Communing with the divine
- Healing body and spirit through resonance
🕊️ Overtones in Spiritual Practices
Beyond Asia and Africa, overtone work also appeared in:
- Kabbalistic ceremonies, where vocal resonance was seen as a means to connect with divine names
- Sufi rituals, where breath, sound, and rhythm were used to reach states of ecstasy
- Masonic lodges, where harmonics were believed to carry esoteric knowledge and power
These traditions understood something modern science is only beginning to rediscover:
Sound doesn’t just move air—it moves consciousness.
📐 Pythagoras and the Discovery of Harmonics
In the West, Pythagoras of Samos (2,600 years ago) was among the first to formally explore overtones.
He used a simple tool: the monochord—a single string stretched over a wooden box.
By dividing the string into ratios, Pythagoras discovered that every note contains multiple vibrations, creating intervals of harmony. His conclusion:
All of reality is composed of vibrational ratios.
Sound is the key to understanding the structure of the universe.
This insight laid the foundation for music theory, architecture, and even modern physics.
🔺 Plato and the Primordial Forms
Following Pythagoras, the philosopher Plato described the five Platonic solids—geometric forms that he believed made up both the animate and inanimate universe.
When we tone overtones with awareness, we begin to resonate with these primal patterns—echoing the vibrational blueprints of atoms, molecules, and stars.
Disease, in this view, is disharmony—something out of tune with the whole.
Like a 100-piece orchestra where one instrument is off-key, a single disharmonic frequency can disturb the harmony of the whole system. Toning helps retune us—body, mind, and soul.
🧬 The Voice as Resonance Chamber
A skilled overtone singer transforms the upper body into a resonant instrument—a full-spectrum sound chamber:
- Cranium, nasal passages, pharynx, chest, abdomen, diaphragm
- Tongue, lips, soft/hard palate, glottis, epiglottis, cheeks, and jaw
With subtle shifts in the shape of the mouth and throat, singers isolate and amplify specific harmonics—up to 16 or more.
Interestingly, many people don’t initially hear the overtones—until they begin to sing them. As your awareness sharpens, you start to feel and hear the layers within your own voice.
🎵 Learning the Overtone Scale
The overtone scale is theoretically infinite—but the human ear generally perceives about 5 octaves of it.
The key to unlocking it lies in:
- A strong, steady hum
- A specific set of mouth and tongue movements
- Deep embodiment and listening
Most people can begin to produce overtones in a few hours. For others, it may take days or weeks.
The first step is learning to glide up and down the overtone ladder.
The next step is to select and hold specific overtones with precision.
🎼 A Note on Modern Tuning Systems
Over the last 350 years, Western music adopted the “equal temperament” scale—where all notes are spaced evenly. While practical for instruments, this system sacrifices natural harmonic purity.
In nature, true harmony is not equal distance—it is proportional resonance. Straight lines and perfectly spaced notes are not natural; curves and ratios are.
Overtone singing, in contrast, brings us back to natural resonance—sound as it exists in the body, in nature, and in the cosmos.
🌌 Final Reflection: Tuning Back to the Source
To sing overtones is to remember where you came from—
To return to vibration as origin, as teacher, as medicine.
It is to recognize that your voice is not just a sound—it is a portal.
When you sing in harmony with the overtones,
you’re not just making sound—
you’re becoming harmony itself.