If you’ve spent a bit of time on this blog you probably will have come to notice that multiphonics always involve a fundamental pitch — which is always the lowest pitch — plus 2-4 other pitch options, which are generally overblown from said fundamental and can be isolated more easily than they are played together. I think this was made particularly obvious by my recent post, a second look at Philip Reyfeldt’s chart.

However, recently, Scott McLaughlin and I found nine unique multiphonics. These multiphonics have a fundamental that hovers around a D#, plus a pitch in the second register (near the F). But, if you overblow to the multiphonic in the altissimo register, this pitch combines with the “F” in the second register, NOT the lowest fundamental. I could only find nine multiphonics that do this.

Quite a few of them use the low G# key. Strangely, using the same fingering but replacing the G# with either the F, F# or E keys almost always did not produce similar multiphonics, they all consistently overblow from the low fundamental.

They are quite difficult, especially the second overblow. It’s really hard to balance the sound (as you’ll hear in the examples), but I actually really like this fragile quality. It’s necessary to play them at very quiet dynamics. I’d say piano for the lower dyad and piannissimo for the top.

So I hope you enjoy these nine fascinating multiphonics as much as we do!

(Apologies, I didn’t have my Zoom with me, so these are just recorded on my laptop – but I think you get the idea…)

Pitches	Fingering	Sound