How To THROAT-SING

STEP 0: Introduction
There are two important things you must master to be able to throat-
sing:

Firstly, the correct shape of your mouth, including your tongue

and lips.

Secondly, vocalization.

STEP 1: The shape of the mouth

Relax the muscles of your jaw and lips. Keep your mouth open with
about one centimeter between your upper and lower teeth.
(Dan Bennett adds: you may need to stiffen the muscles in your lips and
tongue later on when you're working on the quality and pitch of the
resonance.)

STEP 2: The location of the tip of the tongue

Place the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, as if
pronouncing the letter "L". Slide the point of contact slightly away
from the roots of your top teeth. Press the tip of your tongue quite
firmly against the roof of your mouth.
In Japanese, we don't use the "L"-sound at all. (The closest sound we
have is like ["L" + "R"]/2. That's why we can't tell "L" and "R" apart.) If
you have "L" in your native language, at least this part of the
instructions is well understood!.
STEP 3: The mouth as a resonator

The characteristic sound of throat-singing actually comes from strong

harmonic resonance in the mouth, which is achieved by establishing a
resonant chamber.
This resonator is made up of the roof of your mouth and your tongue.
Keep the tip of your tongue against the roof of your mouth as
 described in the previous step. Then drop the main body of your
tongue to increase the volume above it. The sides of your tongue
should touch your side teeth (molars), forming a seal. Make the
capsule round and airtight so that you can't breath through your
mouth.

STEP 4: A small vent-hole

Make a small vent-hole between one (or both) side(s) of the root of your tongue
and the roof of your mouth (or your side-teeth). In other words, a small portion
of the contact zone between the tongue and the roof of the mouth (or side-teeth)
is now opened. The air goes through the vent and passes by some of your
grinding teeth. If you hold your nose now, you'll be able to breathe through this
vent only.
Keep this vent hole as small as possible. If you breathe now, you will hear a
sound like "hu" of the English word "human", with "pink noise" instead of your
voice.
Your oral cavity has just become an "instrument" for throat-singing.

STEP 5: The volume of the resonator

The melody part of throat-singing is produced by changing the volume of the

resonant chamber. To do this, move the central part of your tongue up and
down without detaching the side parts of your tongue from the roof of the
mouth (or side-teeth), except of course for the vent hole you made in the
previous step. Don't collapse the chamber completely: you just make it flatter or
rounder.
Try to change the volume as mentioned above while making the "hu"- noise
(pink noise) constantly. You will hear the pitch of the noise changing.
(Dan Bennett adds: the volume of air in front of the tongue is also involved in resonance. This
means that some styles of throat-singing rely on the position of the lips for adjusting the pitch of
the melody.)

STEP 6: Vocalization
 THIS WILL BE YOUR FIRST STEP AS A THROAT-SINGER!

While maintaining the shape of the mouth as described in the

previous steps, try to vocalize the sound "oooo" (the vowel in "cool").
If all's well, you'll hear a flute-like sound. The waveform of this sound
is close to a sine curve which is produced at the resonant frequency
of the chamber in your mouth. A voice consists of many kinds of pure
sine-wave at different, but related frequencies. These are the
harmonics of your voice. The aim of throat-singing is to emphasize
chosen harmonics by tuning the resonance in your mouth. In this
case, the sound should have a tone more than one octave higher than
your "oooo".
You must be very careful not to miss the flute-like sound you made
beyond the "oooo" voice. On your first attempt, the flute-like sound
will be heard very weakly. Most people actually succeed in making
this sound on their first attempt, but cannot discern if it appears or
not!
Try to change the volume of the resonant chamber and the shape of
your lips very carefuly to seek the proper resonance point. You will
find several resonances at different musical pitches. You can play
music using these sound.

DON'T WORRY IF YOU CAN'T DO IT!

There are some helpful hints in the next step.

STEP 7: Hints and tips

If you couldn't make the flute-like sound, there are two possible causes. They are
very important because they are directly connected with the way to improve
your throat-singing.
Firstly, your mouth chamber may not have a proper shape or volume for
resonance. Change them carefully according to the instructions in STEP 5. Slow
and careful changing of the chamber will help you to find the resonance. Try to
change the shape of the front of your mouth too.
Secondly, it's quite possible that your vocal "oooo" doesn't contain sufficiently
strong harmonics that can resonate in your mouth. (Is your "oooo" very soft and
calm?) Beginners sometimes give up before getting the hang of this.
The sound wave which resonates in your mouth has quite a high frequency. Thus
all you have to do is vocalize an "oooo"-sound which contains sufficient high-
frequency sound energy. I don't mean that you vocalize "oooo" one octave
higher! I mean that you should vocalize with as bright a throat-sound as
possible. (If Louis Armstrong had tried throat-singing, he'd have been
successful!)
To get the proper "oooo" sound, imagine the following situation: when you're
practising throat-singing, some one comes up to you angrily shouting "Be quiet,
man!" and strangles you. Naturally, you keep practising. This would result in a
strong, bright tone from your throat. You got it! You are "oooo"-ing with an ideal
voice sound.
Once you've got this voice with rich high-frequency components, the volume of
the "oooo" itself may be reduced. This helps the flute-like sound to be heard
more clearly. In this case, the voice which is kept while throat-singing sounds
like a drawn-out "we" in English, or "oui" in French, which is written in Japanse
as the letters shown in the background of our pages.