Matt Chilton ’16 is a man of many words, but singing doesn’t involve any of them. Among his many musical talents, Chilton has been throat singing for over three years. The skill, also known as overtone singing, involves manipulating resonances in the air that emerge from the lungs in order to produce the sound of two musical pitches at once from one human voice. The Argus sat down with Chilton to learn more about his unique hobby and how we may be able to make some of these awesome sounds.

The Argus: How did you get into throat singing?
Matt Chilton: I heard a recording of the band Huun-Huur-Tu, which is probably the most internationally known ensemble from Tuva. I heard the way that people could use the human voice in ways that sounded completely unusual and that I’d just never ever heard before. And I just had the urge to do it and to work on it. And yeah, that was my introduction.

A: How long have you been throat singing, and when did you start?
MC: Around three and a half years. I started over spring break during high school by just kind of making growls and weird throat noises in the shower, because the shower could help me hear the overtones that I was making rather than just when I was out doing stuff in more open spaces.

A: Were you completely self-taught?
MC: Yeah. I was self-taught until I came here and started studying with Andrew Colwell, who was teaching a class called Overtone Singing and Cross-Cultural Perspective last semester. When I started studying with him, he helped me learn more about the harmonic series—where [my voice was tonally] when I was singing certain things—and helped me get a lot more control over it as well.

A: Any impressions from the class? What more did you learn?
MC: I learned a lot more. I learned about how to be critical of ways that overtone singing is appropriated in different contexts but also about its original roles and its developments in the sort of cultural landscape of Tuva and Mongolia, and that was very interesting. But also, it taught me many things about listening, that we can’t really make the sounds of throat singing and overtone singing until we can hear them, and so there’s a sort of constant circle that’s being formed by listening and creating the sounds. So you have to be able to hear them to make them, but you have to make them to be able to hear them at the same time. So it’s kind of an interesting, two-part thing.

A: Do you have any favorite throat singers or groups?
MC: Yeah, I’m a big fan of Huun-Huur-Tu of course because they’re just the best. Also, one that’s a bit less known is called Chirgilchin, also from Tuva, and they do some very, very interesting things that aren’t necessarily traditional but use overtone singing to create really cool harmonies. And then there are a bunch of European people who are doing it as well, who are using it to sing sort of counterpoint lines which are just unbelievable, like Jan Heinke.

A: Describe throat singing in one word, if you can.
MC: One word? That’s so hard. Um…yeah, I don’t think I can do it, honestly.

A: No worries. Can you describe it in a couple words or a phrase or sentence, if you had to?
MC: I’d say it’s like peeling back the veil of sounds to hear things that were always there but experiencing them in a new way.

A: Why do you throat sing?
MC: I do it because I think it’s just a really amazing sound to experience and create, and I like to introduce others to it the way that I was introduced to it and inspire them and get them to listen differently. But also, it’s a very meditative thing, because there are ways that you can focus on your own sound and sound-making in a very, very disciplined and deep way. That’s the best I can say it. But really, it makes you focus on something, so you can almost achieve meditative states through it if you put that intention into it.

A: What instruments do you play?
MC: It’s a long list, but mostly strings and woodwinds.

A: Favorite genre of music?
MC: It changes a lot. But I like everything from jazz and experimental jazz to kind of a Persian classical music, Indian classical music, and most often things that combine all sorts of things like that.