How to Sing Two Notes At Once (aka Polyphonic Overtone Singing): Lessons from Singer Anna-Maria Hefele

in How to Learn for Free, Music | October 15th, 2015

Last year we drew your atten­tion to the video above from Munich-based singer Anna-Maria Hefele in which she gives us a stun­ning demon­stra­tion of poly­phon­ic over­tone singing. It’s a tech­nique com­mon to Tuva, Inu­it, and Xhosa cul­tures but large­ly unfa­mil­iar to us in West­ern music.

Many read­ers point­ed out that Hefele’s fine exam­ple of her tech­nique did not in fact show us how to do it, only that it could be done in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent, all equal­ly impres­sive, ways. Well, today, we bring you a series of lessons Hefele has post­ed as a response to her first video’s pop­u­lar­i­ty. In each of these videos, she offers detailed instruc­tions on how to har­ness the pow­er of your voice to sing two notes at once.

Before begin­ning Hefele’s course, you may wish to get a more the­o­ret­i­cal overview of how poly­phon­ic singing works. For that pur­pose, the video above gives us a visu­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the over­tones in Hefele’s voice. As she demon­strates via spec­tro­gram, her nor­mal singing voice con­tains sev­er­al tones at once already, which we typ­i­cal­ly hear as only one note. Sim­i­lar­ly, eth­no­mu­si­col­o­gist and stu­dent of throat singing Mark van Ton­geren explains at Smith­son­ian Folk­ways, “every­one con­tin­u­ous­ly when you’re speak­ing [or singing] pro­duces a whole spec­trum of sound.” The throat singing method involves alter­ing the voice to enhance over­tones. Hefele uses some slight­ly dif­fer­ent tech­niques to “fil­ter,” as she puts it, spe­cif­ic tones in her voice.

The first intro­duc­tion to the over­tone fil­ter­ing tech­nique comes to us in Les­son 1 above. Hefele demon­strates how to move from tone to tone by grad­u­al­ly tran­si­tion­ing to dif­fer­ent vow­el sounds. She also teas­es the sec­ond and third lessons, below, which show how to ampli­fy spe­cif­ic tones once you have iso­lat­ed them. Hefele is a per­son­able and engag­ing instructor—she would, I imag­ine, make an excel­lent lan­guage teacher as well—and her cheeky pre­sen­ta­tion takes us into the show­er with her in Les­son 2, the best place, unsur­pris­ing­ly, to prac­tice your poly­phon­ic over­tone singing. And to hear how Hefele uses her vocal tech­niques in beau­ti­ful­ly haunt­ing, almost oth­er­world­ly music, make sure to watch this solo per­for­mance from 2012 or hear this Hilde­gard von Bin­gen choral com­po­si­tion adapt­ed to Hefele’s poly­phon­ic solo voice.

H/T Natal­ie in the UK

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Stephen Sond­heim Teach a Kid How to Sing “Send In the Clowns”

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Dutch­man Mas­ters the Art of Singing Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Back­wards

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Learn to Play Guitar for Free: Intro Courses Take You From The Very Basics to Playing Songs In No Time

in Education, How to Learn for Free, Music | May 8th, 2015

Like many peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion, I got my first elec­tric gui­tar as a teenage birth­day gift, took a few lessons and learned a few chords, and imme­di­ate­ly start­ed a band that bashed out angry punk rock at break­neck speeds. Some of my favorite bands made it seem acces­si­ble, and I didn’t have much patience for real musi­cal train­ing on the instru­ment any­way. Though I’d played brass and strings in school, the gui­tar had an entire­ly dif­fer­ent mojo. It stood alone, even in a group—primal, wild, and uncom­pli­cat­ed; as Radio­head once observed, any­one can play it.

Well, any­one can play it bad­ly. There wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly any­thing wrong with the way I learned—it was great fun. But as my musi­cal tastes broad­ened, so did my desire to play dif­fer­ent styles, and years of play­ing with lit­tle for­mal train­ing meant I had to un- and re-learn a lot of tech­nique, no easy feat with­out access to a good teacher. Pri­vate instruc­tion, how­ev­er, can be cost­ly and good teach­ers dif­fi­cult to come by. Pre-Youtube, that is. These days, any­one can learn to play gui­tar, from scratch, the right (fun) way, and the wrong (also fun) way, with great teach­ers, innu­mer­able online mini-tuto­ri­als, and some very thor­ough begin­ner lessons.

We’ve high­light­ed a few celebri­ty lessons here and there, and as far as they go, they’re great ways to pick up some tricks from your favorite musi­cians. But while peo­ple like Paul McCart­ney and Bri­an May don’t have a whole lot of time on their hands to make free gui­tar videos, a num­ber of high qual­i­ty teach­ers do, at least as pro­mo­tion­al tools for pay­ing gigs. At the top of the post, an instruc­tor named Ravi presents the first ten lessons of his 21-day begin­ner course, offered on True­fire, an online gui­tar course ser­vice fea­tur­ing for-pay lessons from such greats as Frank Vig­no­la, David Gris­som, and Dweezil Zap­pa.

This hour-long video func­tions in and of itself as a com­plete intro­duc­to­ry course that’ll def­i­nite­ly get you start­ed on the instru­ment. To fur­ther help you get the basics down, you can spend hours work­ing through the oth­er free videos here, a “quick start” series offered by Guitarlessons.com and taught by an instruc­tor named Nate Sav­age. These short videos take you from rudi­ments like “How to Strum on a Gui­tar” and “8 Gui­tar Chords You Must Know” to the slight­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed but still begin­ner-wor­thy “Dom­i­nant 7th Blues Chords.” You’ll learn scales and pow­er chords, the bricks and mor­tar of lead and rhythm play­ing. You’ll even get a cor­rec­tive like “7 Mis­takes Gui­tar Play­ers Make,” if, like me, you learned a few things the wrong way, on pur­pose or oth­er­wise.

Of course mis­takes are a nec­es­sary part of learn­ing, and often the keys to inno­va­tion, so don’t be afraid to make ‘em. But with so much qual­i­ty, free gui­tar instruc­tion online, you can also learn tech­niques that will set you up for suc­cess in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent styles. Above, you can watch Justin­Gui­tar’s much-praised videos, which will give you a mul­ti­part intro­duc­tion to play­ing blues gui­tar. The key, as with any skill, is prac­tice.

And per the sug­ges­tion of our edi­tor, we’re also giv­ing a men­tion to Gui­tar Jamz, which fea­tures tons of instruc­tion­al videos that will show you how to play clas­sic songs. In fact, you can find a playlist of 182 easy acoustic songs for begin­ners right above.

As anoth­er, very patient instructor—the host of series “Met­al Method”—explains, “learn­ing gui­tar doesn’t need to be com­pli­cat­ed. You don’t need to under­stand how an inter­nal com­bus­tion engine works to dri­ve a car, and you don’t need to under­stand com­plex music the­o­ry to become an incred­i­ble gui­tarist.” So get to work, gui­tarists out there, begin­ners and life­long stu­dents. And please share with us your favorite free online gui­tar resources in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of the Gui­tar: The Com­plete Three-Part Doc­u­men­tary

Oxford Sci­en­tist Explains the Physics of Play­ing Elec­tric Gui­tar Solos

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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53 New York Times Videos Teach Essential Cooking Techniques: From Poaching Eggs to Shucking Oysters

in Food & Drink, How to Learn for Free | November 7th, 2014

I was blessed to grow up around a grand­moth­er who cooked every meal like she was feed­ing a dozen fam­ished farmhands. She nev­er spelled out all her var­i­ous tricks and short cuts … let’s not call them hacks. She just did what she did, and I picked it up by osmo­sis, using a juice glass for a bis­cuit cut­ter and watch­ing for pock­marks in the pan­cake bat­ter. End­less hours in her kitchen made me a con­fi­dent chef long before I was in a posi­tion to buy my own gro­ceries.

Not every­one is so for­tu­nate, I know.

They get their infor­ma­tion from Julia Child, Martha Stew­art, some pseu­do­ny­mous food blog­ger or pos­si­bly my friend, Jesse, whose exper­tise as a builder extends to things culi­nary. He once insist­ed on show­ing me a more effi­cient way to cut up man­go. My grandmother’s trop­i­cal fruit expe­ri­ence maxed out at oranges, so I was on my own in the sep­a­rat­ing man­go flesh from man­go bone depart­ment. I tried it his way a cou­ple of times, before revert­ing to my non-way.

There’s unde­ni­able com­pet­i­tive­ness amongst those of us who pride our­selves on our cook­ing abil­i­ties. Our skills are our hon­or. So help me if I went on Top Chef, and some guest judge decreed I was doing some­thing wrong!

For the record, The New York Times endors­es Jesse’s man­go tech­nique above, in their short instruc­tion­al video series, Cook­ing Tech­niques. There are 53 videos in total.

I can see how such a col­lec­tion would come in handy for those who didn’t grow up around my grand­moth­er, Jesse, or me.

And speak­ing of handy, all fledg­ling chefs are advised to get a firm han­dle on knife tech­niques before pick­ing up a noto­ri­ous­ly slip­pery-fleshed fruit and cut­ting toward their own fin­gers! Such reck­less­ness would nev­er have passed muster with the edi­tors of the Bet­ty Crock­er New Boys and Girls Cook­book. The Times is liv­ing on the edge!

Some of the con­tent has a dopey wash-rinse-repeat vibe, abet­ted by an odd­ly fla­vor­less nar­ra­tive voice. (Not every­one has Thug Kitchen’s nar­ra­tive sparkle. I should be grate­ful for the per­son­al­i­ty shin­ing through oth­er Times videos, notably Bill Cunningham’s “On The Street.”)

I’ll eat those words should I ever need to shuck an oys­ter, anoth­er one of those culi­nary duties that had no place on my Mid­west­ern grandmother’s agen­da. Not to say that my kitchen abil­i­ties are limned by the culi­nary stan­dards of 1970s Indi­ana. I fling around fish sauce and coconuts with Siamese aban­don, but oys­ters always seem so damn daunt­ing. Could owe to ear­ly read­ings of Lewis Car­roll.

I don’t know what I was so afraid of. Appar­ent­ly all it takes is 30 sec­onds and a dish­tow­el. (And an oys­ter knife, but we’ve got draw­er­fuls of those, the trick­le down effect of my husband’s Cape Cod boy­hood.)

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s sol­id stuff, but though with apolo­gies to our veg­e­tar­i­an read­ers, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. You can poach eggs a la the Times, or do it my way by adding a table­spoon of vine­gar to the poach­ing water. No fussy pre-poach. Boom! Done!

Sim­i­lar­ly stem­ming greens. My way, gleaned, not from my gran, but a hand­writ­ten, illus­trat­ed zine ear­li­er this mil­len­ni­um, doesn’t even require a knife! Hold that kale stem side up, using your oth­er hand as an ersatz prong, tear­ing the leaf from stem to stern.

Good heav­ens. Is that where that expres­sion came from? Per­haps some­one at the Times would know…. See all 53 of their cook­ing tech­nique videos here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Harvard’s Free Course on Mak­ing Cakes, Pael­la & Oth­er Deli­cious Food

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, for­mer food blog­ger and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Harvard’s Free Computer Science Course Teaches You to Code in 12 Weeks

in Harvard, How to Learn for Free, MOOCs, Technology | March 27th, 2014

At the begin­ning of last year, we wrote about CS50, Harvard’s Intro­duc­to­ry Com­put­er Sci­ence course, taught by Pro­fes­sor David Malan. Today, we bring you the updat­ed ver­sion of the class, filmed through­out the past semes­ter at Har­vard. Why revis­it an updat­ed ver­sion of the same class a year lat­er? For one thing, the mate­r­i­al has been updat­ed. And, as you can tell by the rous­ing recep­tion Malan receives from the audi­ence at the start of the first lec­ture (above), Malan is kind of a big deal. From his open­ing boom of “This is CS50,” Malan imme­di­ate­ly comes off as an unusu­al­ly charis­mat­ic pro­fes­sor. He offers what might just be the most engag­ing online class you’ve ever seen.

So what does this charis­mat­ic com­put­er sci­en­tist cov­er over three months? An impres­sive­ly large amount of infor­ma­tion about cod­ing. Malan builds the course from the ground up, and begins by describ­ing how tran­sis­tors are employed to trans­mit infor­ma­tion with­in com­put­ers. From then on, he out­lines a vast amount of com­put­er sci­ence in high­ly acces­si­ble lan­guage. This will almost undoubt­ed­ly be the clear­est pre­sen­ta­tion of top­ics like “com­mand-line argu­ments,” “cryp­tog­ra­phy,” and “dynam­ic mem­o­ry allo­ca­tion” that you’re like­ly to hear.

The class videos are avail­able on iTune­sU, YouTube, and in audio, 1080p HD video, and text tran­script form on a crisp course web­site. The course may also be accessed through edX, Har­vard and MIT’s MOOC plat­form, which allows users to receive a cer­tifi­cate upon com­ple­tion. It’s easy to tell that Malan and his team have gone above and beyond the require­ments of cre­at­ing a help­ful intro­duc­tion to com­put­er sci­ence. They deliv­er an astound­ing­ly easy-to-grasp primer on a daunt­ing top­ic.

For oth­er Comp­Sci class­es taught by David Malan, check out our list of Free Com­put­er Sci­ence cours­es, part of our larg­er list, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Com­put­er Sci­ence: Free Cours­es

Codecademy’s Free Cours­es Democ­ra­tize Com­put­er Pro­gram­ming

Learn to Build iPhone & iPad Apps with Stanford’s Free Course, Cod­ing Togeth­er

 

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Free Guided Meditations From UCLA: Boost Your Awareness & Ease Your Stress

in Creativity, Health, How to Learn for Free, Psychology | February 11th, 2014

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we’ve writ­ten about a grow­ing num­ber of cul­tur­al fig­ures who prac­tice tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, with Paul McCart­ney, David Lynch, Leonard Cohen, Ellen Degeneres, and Sheryl Crow being ardent sup­port­ers. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, while less known, has also steadi­ly increased in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past half-decade. In part, there’s its inher­ent appeal: mind­ful­ness cul­ti­vates an all-accept­ing aware­ness of the present moment, there­by dis­solv­ing anx­i­eties about the future or pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with thoughts of the past. There’s also the grow­ing momen­tum of mind­ful­ness research in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, with stud­ies sug­gest­ing that mind­ful­ness-based ther­a­peu­tic approach­es may ben­e­fit a host of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues. Its use to alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and stress is par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing.

“Sounds tempt­ing,” you say, “but where does one try this mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion busi­ness, any­way? Can I try it with­out going any­where?” You’re in luck, my friend! UCLA’s Mind­ful Aware­ness Research Cen­ter (MARC) has uploaded a set of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions to iTune­sU, where the series is present­ly the #1 down­load. “I’m too busy,” you say, open­ing a Face­book tab. Not so fast! Most of the med­i­ta­tions are under 10 min­utes long, with the com­plete series clock­ing in at two hours.

We’ve had trou­ble lis­ten­ing to the lec­tures on the UCLA site, so if you’re inter­est­ed, head over to iTune­sU to down­load Mind­ful Med­i­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise, if you live with­in a rea­son­able dis­tance of UCLA’s Ham­mer Muse­um, drop in for free week­ly med­i­ta­tion ses­sions (record­ings for most of these are avail­able here).

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

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MIT Teaches You How to Speak Italian & Cook Italian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

in How to Learn for Free, Language Lessons, MIT | December 2nd, 2013

At MIT, Dr. Pao­la Rebus­co usu­al­ly teach­es physics to fresh­men. But, on behalf of the MIT Exper­i­men­tal Study Group, Rebus­co has devised an appeal­ing course — Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full — where she com­bines teach­ing two things many peo­ple love: learn­ing to speak Ital­ian and cook­ing Ital­ian food. The course sum­ma­ry reads:

The par­tic­i­pants in this sem­i­nar will dive into learn­ing basic con­ver­sa­tion­al Ital­ian, Ital­ian cul­ture, and the Mediter­ranean diet. Each class is based on the prepa­ra­tion of a deli­cious dish and on the bite-sized acqui­si­tion of parts of the Ital­ian lan­guage and cul­ture. A good diet is not based on recipes only, it is also root­ed in healthy habits and in cul­ture. At the end of the sem­i­nar the par­tic­i­pants will be able to cook some healthy and tasty recipes and to under­stand and speak basic Ital­ian.

As Rebus­co explains in a short video, this course has the advan­tage of mak­ing the lan­guage lessons a lit­tle less abstract. It gives stu­dents a chance to apply what they’ve learned (new vocab­u­lary words, pro­nun­ci­a­tions, etc.) in a fun, prac­ti­cal con­text.

Above, we start you off with the first lan­guage les­son in the sem­i­nar. It begins where all basic cours­es start — with how to say your name. Below, you can watch the class learn to cook fresh pas­ta. Along the way, the course also teach­es stu­dents how to make espres­so, risot­to, home­made piz­za, bruschet­ta, and bis­cot­ti. Lec­tures for the course can be found on the MIT web site, YouTube and iTunes. Speak Ital­ian with Your Mouth Full also appears in our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons and 1200 Free Cours­es Online. Buon Appeti­to!

Ingre­di­ents & Cook­ing Instruc­tion:

Food Prepa­ra­tion

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­ter List of 700 Free Online Cours­es From Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

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