Lesson 56: Contemporary Techniques, Part 2 — Multiphonics, Whisper Tones, and Harmonics

Produce a stable multiphonic — two pitches simultaneously — from a documented fingering chart.
Produce a whisper tone: a soft, sub-fundamental sound by reducing the air pressure below the speaking threshold.
Overblow any low-register note to its first harmonic, holding the same fingering.

Lesson 55 — flutter tonguing and glissando (foundational extended-technique work).
Lesson 49–50 — altissimo range, for harmonic-overblow practice.
Access to a published multiphonic fingering chart (van Hauwe or equivalent).

Multiphonics from non-standard fingerings.
Whisper tones (sub-threshold breath).
Harmonic overblowing.

Every recorder fingering, played slightly wrong on purpose, is a different instrument.

Lesson 55 covered the two extended techniques that are most easily isolated: flutter tonguing and glissando. This lesson handles three more — multiphonics, whisper tones, and harmonics. They are all variations of the same idea: deliberately unbalance the standard tone production so a different acoustic result emerges. None of them is musical on its own. All of them appear, in context, in the contemporary repertoire.

Multiphonics

A multiphonic is two or more pitches sounded simultaneously from the same instrument. On the recorder it is produced by a non-standard fingering — a combination of closed and half-closed holes the maker did not intend — together with a carefully controlled breath. The result is two clear pitches, plus often a wash of intermediate partials.

You cannot produce multiphonics by guessing fingerings. Use a published chart. The standard reference is Walter van Hauwe's The Modern Recorder Player, volume 3; many contemporary composers print the specific fingerings they want above the staff. Start with one fingering, hold the breath steady, and adjust the air pressure until the second pitch emerges. The interval between the two pitches is fixed by the fingering — you cannot choose it freely.

The drill below uses the underlying lower pitch as a reference. The multiphonic happens on that note when you switch to the published fingering. There is no PAE notation for a multiphonic; in modern scores it is shown as two stacked noteheads on the staff with the fingering written above.

Hold F with the standard fingering; then switch to a multiphonic fingering on the second whole note and hold; then return.

Whisper tones

A whisper tone is produced by reducing the breath pressure below the threshold at which the instrument speaks at its normal pitch. The result is a soft, hollow sound — not the same pitch as the fingering would normally produce, often an octave or so lower, and very quiet. Whisper tones work best on the upper-register notes, where the standard speaking pressure is high and the “below-threshold” pressure is still audible.

Pick a high G — thumbhole half-open, holes 1, 2, 3 closed. Play it at its normal pressure, then slowly bleed off the air until the high pitch collapses. A second, quieter, hollower sound emerges. Hold it; that is the whisper tone. The exact pitch varies by recorder and player.

Whisper tones are notated as small noteheads with the marking w.t., or as ordinary notes within a passage labelled whisper tones at the start. They are dynamics, not pitches: the player chooses the colour, the composer chooses the where.

Harmonics

Harmonics are the simplest of the three techniques in this lesson. Every wind-instrument fingering has a fundamental pitch and a series of overtones (the harmonic series). Most recorder fingerings switch between octaves by half-opening the thumbhole. A harmonic is what happens when you keep the lower-octave fingering — thumbhole fully closed — and overblow until the instrument speaks at the octave anyway. The pitch is the same as the upper-octave fingering, but the timbre is brighter, edgier, slightly out of tune.

Used as a colour, it is one of the recorder's most distinctive contemporary sounds. Used by accident, it is a squeak.

Low G (standard) — high G (overblown harmonic, same low-G fingering, thumbhole closed) — same pair repeated.

Putting them together

A contemporary recorder piece typically uses two or three of these techniques in alternation with standard playing. You do not need to memorise the techniques as a set — you need them available when a score calls for them. Spend a week with each before trying to combine them in a phrase.

Now play these

Same caveat as Lesson 55: this site's song library does not include works that use extended techniques. Seek out:

Hans Martin Linde, Amarilli mia bella (1968): Linde's recomposition of the Caccini madrigal. Mostly conventional, but each phrase ends with a contemporary technique — an ideal first-application piece.
Walter van Hauwe, Brisk (from The Modern Recorder Player): The accompanying studies include short pieces that drill multiphonics specifically. The fingering charts are published.
Luciano Berio, Gesti (1966): The dense end of the repertoire. Multiphonics and whisper tones interleaved with quoted-text vocalisation. Listen first; perform only after both contemporary lessons sit comfortably.

When you can produce a stable multiphonic from a documented fingering, hold a whisper tone for four beats at quarter = 60 at the softest dynamic the recorder will speak, and overblow a low-G harmonic on demand without a fingering change, move on to Lesson 57.