Saturday, May 22, 2004

What's your name again? Schkrzphthlczch? Is that Polish?

I'll give you a little context, but only a little.

I'm a senior in EE at the University of Washington, graduating in June. I need a job with which to pay loans and other things. Wednesday I flew down to San Jose, CA to interview for a position at Lockheed Martin.Thursday was the interview. I'm not really sure how it went because it hardly felt like an interview: it was incredibly laid-back. They asked me a few interview sort of questions but mostly talked about their field, which I was cool with. I did get a chance to go to lunch with the guys I met with and see their office area. The job sounds fascinating, challenging, and important, as well as being in a growing discipline. I guess I'll find out what they thought of me in a week or so. It's all God's will from here out so we'll see what He has in mind for me. It's tough to rely on Him even when there's nothing I can do about things, which is most of the time.

I'll add more context as necessary, but the majority of you already know me.

My latest pursuit is called undertone singing. It's basically the opposite of overtone, or harmonic singing. In overtone singing, you sing a fundamental then modulate your oral cavity to produce resonating harmonics. I'm fairly adept at that, although I haven't really put it to focused use. Undertone, or subharmonic singing, requires the exact opposite though: one must produce a resonance at frequences which are fractions of the fundamental. This seems to be accomplished by causing a fold of tissue which resides just above the larynx to begin oscillating. The oscillation happens by the pressure waves created by the vocal folds themselves only this other tissue fold has very few controlling muscles so it relies primarily on the vacuum produced when the vocal folds slap together. Anyway, Joel and I have heard it demonstrated down to f/5, which sounds incredibly trippy, but darn cool! If I can get that going then there's a chance I'll be able to sing three notes at once. Nifty eh?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home