Overtone Voices
Voice, Resonance & Acoustic Space
I am Iannis Psallidakos. A voice practitioner, artist and architect working at the intersection of vocal acoustics, overtone singing, listening and space.
I think of the voice as a space you inhabit, somewhere between architecture and acoustics.
My work moves between research, performance and teaching. I investigate how the voice produces and filters sound, how we learn to hear resonance, and how a voice interacts with the spaces around it.
Overtone singing is one of my main tools: a way of making the harmonic structure of a single voice audible, visible and tangible.
But the deeper question is larger:
How can we inhabit the acoustic space of the voice?
Research
I investigate the physical and perceptual mechanisms of vocal resonance, with a particular focus on overtone singing, formant–harmonic interaction and the acoustics of the vocal tract.
My research develops from practice and moves towards testable questions, in dialogue with acoustics, medical imaging, auditory research and signal analysis.
Performance
Voice is architecture. It organises space, time, and attention.
My performance practice brings overtone singing into dialogue with live spectral visualization, extended vocal technique, archaeoacoustics, and physical space, from the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus to underground cisterns on the island of Aegina. I work at the boundary where acoustic science becomes experience.
Teaching
I teach overtone singing and vocal acoustics to singers, voice teachers and other professionals working with the voice.
My approach is built on acoustic science and over a decade of teaching. Every session starts with listening to where your voice is right now.
I also lead intensive retreats and workshops across Europe.
Voice & Place
A room is not neutral. Its dimensions, materials, reverberation and history change what a voice can become.
My architectural background has led me towards site-specific work exploring the relationship between voice, body and acoustic space, including research into the resonant properties of ancient and traditional structures. I trained as an architect at the National Technical University of Athens, where my diploma project Ombrodechtis is a subterranean complex on Aegina built around water, light and sound.
Current work
I am currently developing Raw Listening: The Sound Before the Name, a book exploring listening before language, alongside new performance and research-creation work using real-time spectral visualisation.
I am also developing collaborations around vocal-tract imaging and the neuroscience of vocal and auditory perception.
For institutions, researchers and artists
I am available for concerts, concert-lectures, masterclasses, site-specific commissions, residencies and interdisciplinary research collaborations.
Calendar 2026
Ahead
- Rouen, overtone singing workshop, France, September
- Morvan, overtone singing intensive retreat, France, September
- Belgrade, concert and workshop at Lozionica, Serbia, October
- Aegina, Résonances, voice retreat, Greece, October
- Sahara, Resonant S.E.L.F. vocal trek, November