Harmonic Chant is another popular name for Overtone Singing. By using the word ‘Chant’ it appeals to a slightly different audience associating it to Gregorian Chant and giving it a more spiritual context. However, this is mostly just marketing. Personally I see Overtone Singing as the generic overarching term for all such vocalisations that seperate the Fundamental from the Overtones audibly. Harmonic Chant is a subset preferred by certain artists such as David Hykes.
There is a technical difference as well which is that all harmonics are Overtones but not all overtones are harmonics. Harmonics are by definition perfect whole number ratios of the fundamental frequency. Overtones can be distorted by physical anomalies such as tightness and thickness of a string.
The Partial Series is another name for the overtone series except that technically the partial series considers the fundamental as the first partial whereas the overtone series considers the fundamental separate and starts counting from Partial number 2 as the first overtone. This creates much confusion because many practitioners using the numbers to name the overtones will actually use number 1 as the fundamental but call it the overtone series instead of the partial series.
The reason is one of convenience as the powers of 2(2 squared, 2 cubed, etc) always elicit an octave above the previous power of 2. This means that a number 8 (Technically the 7th overtone) is an octave (More specifically the 3rd octave above the fundamental).
I also use number 1 as the Fundamental and encourage everyone to do the same. All the maths fit together when adding and multiplying ratios.
Example a perfect 4th (4/3 ratio) plus a perfect 5th (3/2 Ratio) is an Octave (4/2 after cancelling the 3s).
A form of singing where a person uses the mouth cavity as a filter to seperate and amplify the individual overtones from the fundamental and rendering them audible as separate tones. There are many different traditional styles of overtone singing coming from different cultural groups such as the peoples of Tuva, Mongolia, South Africa, Inuit, as well as modern Western styles.
The common factor is that the singers can isolate the overtones and make separate melodies from the note(s) of the Fundamental.
The overtone series is the infinite set of notes that originate from and are in whole number mathematical proportion to the fundamental. Usually we are busy with the first 16 and more rarely with the first 32 as the notes get more and more micro-tonal as we get higher into the overtone series.
In the context of overtones, it is the tone from which all the overtones originate. So, if the fundamental ‘X’ is 100HZ (Cycles per second) then the overtones will be whole number multiples of that tone.
Examples 1x= 100HZ (Fundamental)
2x= 200HZ (Octave above the fundamental)
16x=1600HZ (4 octaves above the fundamental)
The number times the fundamental frequency will be the number assigned to that particular overtone that has an equally particular sound that can be recognised. See Overtone Series.
Overtone singing is a vocal technique where one person sings two voices at the same time; One is the normal voice and the other is a flute-like sound that eminates from the mouth cavity.
