First khoomei lessons

I'm now taking khoomei lessons with Zhenya Saryglar (who actually taught the last Watson fellow to pass through Tuva as well). He began by undoing what I'd figured out on my own before I got here-- there are different ways of getting overtones in your singing, and the easiest to find is not proper khoomei form.

Monday, in our second lesson, we worked on controlling my still erratic overtones and walking up and down pentatonic scales with them. I'm struggling mightily and am by no means consistent. Sometimes I can get all the way up and down a scale with fairly clear overtones. Sometimes, my fundamental tone fails to produce any distinct overtones at all. And at the end of an hour lesson, my voice is definitely not performing as well as at the beginning. Zhenya says I need to work to get rid of tension in my singing, which will tire you out fast and can lead to injury. He also says practice will improve my throat's stamina and I'll be able to sustain good khoomei sound longer.

Lots more to say, but it's far too late, so I'll abbreviate. Tomorrow, I'm going to Chadaana for the annual Ustuu-Khuree festival. It starts Tuesday night and we'll get back to Kyzyl midday on Saturday. Sean has a friend who's driving a group of Spaniards up to Chadaana and secured me a place in his car. Apparently, they speak no Russian and rudimentary English, so it should be a fun 2-hour car trip.

I think I'm going to learn to play the igil, a Tuvan two-stringed, bowed instrument that's probably an ancestor of the cello. The igil has strong connections to khoomei singing-- I'm not sure whether it was designed to mimic khoomei, or whether certain khoomei articulations mimic the igil. However, it's an excellent focus for my Watson theme of vocal techniques that imitate instruments. I'm hoping to speak with igil masters and makers about the instrument and how their singing relates to it. It also helps that Zhenya himself is, according to Sean, the best igil player of his generation. While we were sitting around his house after my voice had had enough, he showed me two awards he won at a previous khoomei symposium-- best igil player and best singer in khoomei style.