The Song of Harmonics

This documentary is not an ethnography filmed in location. It is partly an illustration of the results of former research, partly the very actual investigation on overtone singing carried out in Paris, in the Ethnomusicology Department of the Musée de l'Homme, during a workshop, during a concert of the Mongolian National Ensemble, and in the medical visualization department of a hospital. The central figure is Tran Quang Hai, a well-known musician specialized in Vietnamese music, a performer and researcher in overtone singing, who is there working with the filmmaker in the same research group. 

The initial idea was to explore new technologies allowing the visualization of music structure and performance. The film shows for the first time in real time and with synchronous sound how bi-phonic singing operates from the physiological as well as the acoustical point of view. While shooting the x-ray pictures of tongue movements and the spectral views of overtones, the filmmaker and his collaborators discovered for the first time — like the viewer of the film — how this unique vocal technique operates.