This presentation examines the generation of multiphonic sounds in wind instruments by augmenting the wind instruments' own tone generator with the performer’s own voice. This technique—using the singing voice to modify a wind instrument's sound—has deep roots in jazz, notably in saxophone performance, where growling effects arise from non-linear interaction between voice and instrument. Performers may achieve refined results, such as harmonically tuned multiphonics, by aligning the voice’s pitch with the instrument’s tone generator, as demonstrated by jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff. In-tune harmonics can also be generated by carefully tuning the voice to the wind instrument's tone generator, a technique mastered by jazz trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff and others. The talk presents acoustic measurements across various wind instruments (reeds, flutes, and brass) to highlight the challenges for and acoustic contexts of different musical instruments. One major obstacle for reed and brass wind instruments is the fact that the tone generator acts as a valve, obstructing the sound of the voice. Flutes do not share this problem as they are open-open resonator systems, and especially in rock music, the sung voice is often used to augment the sound. e.g., Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull.
Braasch et al. (Wed,) studied this question.