Georgian vocal polyphonic music: a seismological approach

Abstract:

For many years, Frank Scherbaum, geophysicist and hobby musicologist, has been working at the interface of seismology, musical acoustics and music science. In 1999, his collaboration with the composer Wolfgang Loos led to the CD Inner Earth (Kookoon) which exploits the sonic beauty of overtone rich signals in natural processes such as volcanic tremors. A turning point in his research interests occurred a couple of years ago, when he started to collaborate with the voice teacher Frank Kane, who uses body vibrations as means for teaching traditional Georgian polyphonic songs. This led to a still ongoing endeavor, in which he started to investigate the singing process from the perspective of a seismologist. In his talk, Frank Scherbaum, will share the story of this „journey“ which forced him to cross several disciplinary boundaries. He will illustrate the harmonic structure of sounds produced within the Earth, discuss the character of body vibrations during singing and demonstrate how they can be used to improve the documentation and analysis of oral tradition vocal music. He will also discuss how the analysis of body vibrations can help to shed light on a long standing ethnomusicological riddle regarding the tuning of traditional Georgian vocal music.

More info: http://www.geo.uni-potsdam.de/member-details/show/96.html

Frank Scherbaum is a Professor of Seismology at the University of Potsdam/Germany where he held the chair of geophysics until 2016. Besides his formal education in physics and geology, he studied musicology informally for two years. His geophysical research has led to numerous publications and several textbooks in the field of seismology, seismic hazard analysis, digital signal processing and machine learning. In addition, some of his research interests have always been devoted to the interface of seismology, musical acoustics and music science. After having become infected by the beauty of Georgian vocal polyphony a few years ago, a large part of his recent research activities have been devoted to the investigation of Georgian vocal music from a natural- and computer sciences perspective, which has also included extensive ethnomusicological fieldwork.