Overtone Voices
Voice, Science & Deep Listening
I’m Iannis Psallidakos, overtone singing artist, vocal acoustics researcher, and voice teacher. My work lives at the crossing point of acoustic science, performance, and the ancient practice of listening to what a sound contains before we give it a name.
Sometimes called throat singing or harmonic singing, overtone singing is the art of making the hidden frequencies in your voice audible, a whistling melody drawn from a single sustained tone. I research how it works, I perform it, and I teach it. Everything begins from the same place: learning to hear what was always there.
Research
Why does an overtone emerge with such precision? What does the vocal tract actually do? And what happens in the brain when it hears, or produces, a harmonic?
I’ve published hypotheses on vortex-acoustic mechanisms in overtone singing and on theta-gamma neuromodulation, questions that sit at the frontier of vocal acoustics and neuroscience. This work is developed in ongoing dialogue with researchers in acoustic imaging, signal processing, and auditory biophysics.
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
Private overtone singing lessons via Zoom, from your first drone to controlled harmonic melodies. My approach is built on acoustic science and over a decade of teaching, but every session starts with listening to where your voice is right now.
I also lead intensive retreats and workshops across Europe, including an annual vocal exploration on the Greek island of Aegina, inside cisterns with extraordinary natural reverberation.
The listening comes first
Most overtone singing instruction begins with the mouth: copy this shape, repeat this exercise, aim for this harmonic. And that works, up to a point.
But in every tradition where overtone singing developed independently (Tuva, Mongolia, Sardinia, South Africa) the technique emerged from people who spent long stretches in close contact with their acoustic environment. Herders on the steppe, shepherds in stone valleys, women and men singing near rivers. They had no spectrograms or acoustic theory. No need to know where to put the tip of their tongue, how to shape their lips, nor to verify the “double resonance” inside their vocal tract. They had attention, motivation and time. The vocal technique didn’t come from a method. It came from a quality of listening so deep that the voice began to mirror what the ear had learned to perceive.
This is the root of everything I do, in teaching, in research, in performance. Before we shape the mouth, the pharynx or the lips, we open the ear. Before we amplify a harmonic, we learn to hear one: not as a vowel, but as a frequency.
I call this approach Resonant S.E.L.F. – Soundscape, Embodiment, Listening, Focus. We begin with what is already here.
Current work
I am currently writing Raw Listening: The Sound Before the Name – a book exploring what happens when we strip sound of its labels and return to hearing as an act of pure attention. Drawing on vocal acoustics, mythology, neuroscience, and the pre-linguistic roots of listening, it asks a question that sits at the heart of overtone singing: can an adult learn to hear again the way a child once did, before words took over?
In parallel, I am developing new performance work using real-time spectrographic display as both visual score and compositional tool, making the invisible architecture of overtone singing visible on stage. This research-creation project is in dialogue with ongoing collaborations in MRI vocal tract imaging and MEG brain research.
→ Published research: “Flute in the Throat” — vortex-acoustic lock-in hypothesis · “Overtone Singing as Theta–Gamma Neuromodulation”
Who comes here
Overtone singing isn’t reserved for ethnomusicologists, sound healers or meditation teachers.
You might be a singer who wants to understand resonance at a deeper level. A voice teacher looking for acoustic tools. A sound practitioner exploring the contemplative dimensions of voice. A researcher curious about formant-harmonic interaction. A curator interested in where sound art meets science. Or someone who heard overtone singing once, couldn’t stop thinking about it, and wants to learn.
Whatever brought you here, the principle is the same: listen first, understand why, then practice with precision.
“I completed a 12-session cycle with Iannis, what a result! He took me into unexplored areas of singing and adapted to my pace. Today I practice overtone singing daily with ease.”
– Frédéric M.
“A masterclass on vowels and vocal acoustics that was truly fascinating. Iannis is a genuine enthusiast who conveys precise, technical tools brilliantly. I’d sign up again in a heartbeat.”
– Myriam C.
“Iannis is always precise, committed to accuracy. His approach is as rigorous as it is original, and it raises the standard of voice teaching.”
– Arnaud M.
Upcoming
- Trib’Unity Festival — Belgium · June 2026
- Rouen — Vocal workshop — France · September 2026
- Morvan — Intensive retreat — France · September 2026
- Résonances — Vocal exploration on Aegina island, Greece — 22–25 October 2026 · 4 days · 7 participants max → Learn more
- Evia — Yoga & voice retreat — Greece · November 2026
- Sahara — Vocal trek — November 2026
I welcome contact from researchers, curators, festival programmers, and residency coordinators working at the intersection of voice, acoustics, science, and performance.
Vous parlez français ? Cours, stages et formations sur osersavoix.fr