Research: voice, resonance and place

I work on the acoustics of the singing voice, archaeoacoustics, and the ways landscapes carry knowledge through sound, memory and material. I am not a scientist by training. I start from practice (singing, listening, building) and shape questions that can be measured or tested. I work with acousticians, medical imaging researchers, archaeologists and philologists, and I distinguish carefully between measured findings, established literature and working hypotheses.

As an architect, I was trained to read proportion, material and space before drawing a line. As a voice teacher and overtone singer, I learned to listen to those same properties from inside the body. My research grows from that overlap.

Three Ways of Inquiry

Through my work, I apply three scientific lenses.

The first is evidence-based science: acoustic measurements, spectrographic analysis, the source-filter model, published research. This is the science of “what can be measured and replicated.” It gives us formant frequencies, harmonic ratios, airflow dynamics. It’s rigorous, testable, and essential. Wolfgang Saus’s MEG research on the listener’s brain response to overtone singing is a beautiful example measuring something that practitioners have intuited for centuries, and giving it a neurophysiological foundation.

The second is experience-based science: the knowledge that comes from sustained, attentive practice. This is the science of “what a trained ear and body can perceive that instruments haven’t yet captured.” Experienced overtone singers (across all traditions) describe sensations, internal feedback loops, and perceptual states that acoustic models don’t yet fully explain. The “Flute in the Throat” hypothesis itself was born from this gap: something I consistently felt and heard in my own practice that the standard models didn’t account for.

The third is integrative science: the systematic bridging of measurement and embodied experience through structured phenomenological inquiry. This is the science of “what emerges when we rigorously describe and validate lived perceptions against data.” It uses protocols like empirical phenomenology to map internal sensation, such as laryngeal resonances or perceptual feedback in diphonic singing, making them shareable, testable, and integral to research, as seen in studies of vocal embodiment and expertise.

No single kind replaces the others. Evidence-based science without embodied experience produces descriptions that don’t help you sing. Experience-based science without measurement produces claims that can’t be verified. Integrative science without both remains abstract.

The approach I teach, and the research I pursue, lives at their intersection. I measure what I can, practice what I feel, integrate what validates both, and remain honest about which is which.

Vocal Acoustics and Overtone Singing

What does the voice actually do when a single harmonic becomes clearly audible?

Overtone singing is an unusually direct way to study the relationship between the vocal tract, source-filter model and hearing. A single tone contains a complex harmonic spectrum. By reshaping the vocal tract, a singer can selectively amplify particular harmonics until one emerges as an audible overtone. Spectral analysis and spectrograms make it possible to observe interactions between formant trajectories and individual harmonics that are difficult to catch by ear alone.

My current research includes two testable hypotheses arising from practice:

a proposed vortex-acoustic lock-in mechanism in sygyt (Tuvan throat singing), described in Flute in the Throat, as a possible additional mechanism in some forms of overtone production;
a hypothesis that active overtone singing may enhance theta–gamma cross-frequency coupling in the brain, exploring whether its particular acoustic and attentional demands are relevant to neural activity.

These are hypotheses, not established mechanisms. The aim is to make them precise enough to be tested, refined or rejected.

→ The Science of Overtone Singing

Vowel Sequences, Sacred Chant and Resonant Space

I study chanted vowel sequences in Greek, Japanese and Vedic ritual. Analysed acoustically, these sequences produce patterns that are not reducible to melody alone. Changes in vowel articulation alter the formant structure of the sound, while the surrounding space can reinforce, colour or transform what is heard.

This leads to a question in archaeoacoustics: why have certain caves, chambers and enclosed spaces repeatedly been chosen for ritual and voice? I am interested in what can actually be learned by bringing together archaeology, architecture, acoustics, vocal practice and historical sources.

The work of Iégor Reznikoff has been important here, particularly his approach to the relationship between voice, resonance and ancient spaces.

Water, Drought and the Souvales of Aegina

My architectural research has brought another landscape into this: Aegina, and its traditional underground water systems.

For generations, islanders carved volcanic rock to collect and store rainwater. What interests me is the knowledge embodied in this landscape: how people observed rainfall, geology, vegetation and seasonal change, and built systems around what they learned.

A landscape is never acoustically neutral. Drought, vegetation, wind, water and human activity continuously alter what a place sounds like. Listening becomes one way of observing environmental change, not as a substitute for hydrology or ecology, but as another form of attention.

My architectural project Ombrodechtis (Raincatcher) explores the relationships between water, geology, memory, subterranean space and sensory experience on Aegina.

Collaboration

I am glad to hear from researchers in vocal acoustics, acoustic imaging, spectral analysis, archaeoacoustics, archaeology, classical philology and auditory perception. My trained voice can also serve as a practical instrument for exploring acoustic environments, following the tradition of embodied acoustic investigation associated with Iégor Reznikoff.

→ Get in touch: ORCID: 0009-0004-2234-0476 · Academia.edu · Zenodo