To humanize: to hum – in eyes

For my final creative practice, I hummed in the fashion that I did at the first time. I hummed in my lowest, middle, and higher range of the voice for a period of twenty minutes. This time, I also wrote a poem as I did the humming.  

To humanize:  to hum – in eyes

When I hum in the lowest part of my range,

                I can feel the vibration in my eyes.

When I hum in the lowest part of my range,

                I can feel my heart giggling.

When I hum in the lowest part of my range, 

                my chest wishes that I could exhale for a long, long time.

When I hum in the middle part of my range,

                I can feel the vibration in my eyes

        if I think about putting the vibration there.

When I hum in the middle part of my range,

                I can feel the vibration in my face.

When I hum in the middle part of my range,

                and feel the vibration in my eyes

        it’s as though I am speaking to a child.

When I hum in the higher part of my range,

               I can only feel the slightest vibration in my eyes

       if I really think hard to do it.

When I hum in the higher part of my range,

               I can hear a new sound like glass ringing.

When I hum in the higher part of my range,

              and feel the vibration in my eyes,

      I feel like an ET with no mouth.

I created a Dream Purpose last summer that went like this:

Dream Purpose

          I will use my happiness, helpfulness, and passion through my playful nurturing and singing to plant seeds in others so that they may find the creative process in themselves and experience the shift in consciousness to wholeness.

By the end of the Graduate Certificate degree I have created a new Arts-in-Medicine program, Singmewell.

SINGMEWELL

Sing Me Well is a non-profit arts intervention program that uses vocal music, 

as an assist to traditional medical treatments, 

to humanize the healthcare setting and promote whole person health. 

For all the miles that have been traveled in this course of study, I have kept a north star; I have not really re-invented myself but just driven the fog away. I was not as lost as I thought. 

There is something very reassuring about humming, and there is something very reassuring about having found this area of study and practice. It has taken intentional doing, but it has also made my heart giggle. 

HUMMING in this Penultimate Creative Practice Blog

Humming is the sound one makes while passing air through the larynx and yet keeping the lips closed completely.

The humming which comes from a relaxed exhalation of a breath, pitched in the lower part of a person’s vocal range, results in a sense of relaxation.  You can feel vibrations in your chest and neck. Your relaxed breathing also tends to become deeper and slower.

Some Tibetan monk communities use chosen words that close with a humming sound to indicate deep meaning. They say out the words and then hold the final phoneme, the hum, for long periods. In this particular video, the gathered participants hum in two-parts. One part is the very lowest, the second part hums at the interval of one major third above. A bell is rung which sounds at the interval of the fifth. The lowest hum and the bell represent the lowest and the highest octaves. Different participants are in different octave between.  

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Here is the web address:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHDsCMvDUEQ.

For this creative blog, I enlisted the assistance of my husband. He is recovering from two surgeries. They gave him a small gizmo to encourage increased exhalation. Therefore, I was interested how humming might affect him.

We hummed in the following way: he hummed on the lowest pitch, I hummed on the third an octave higher, and then I rang a bell that sounded at the fifth above my husband’s pitch. We did this for 20 minutes.

He had to stop at different times during the humming. Initially he became dizzy. Then he coughed once. Otherwise, he did feel full body relaxation and a real focus in the mind.

Best of all, he said he wanted to do it again!

While continuing to research this topic, I also found a Georgian scholar, Dr. Joseph Jordania, who has spent time studying about and thinking about the hum. He came to this from his research of Georgian polyphonic folk song traditions. Though this song is not hummed, it is a traditional Georgian healing song sung for children. It is beautifully sung in three-part harmony.

  Here is the web address:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9P_KHDV4Js

In his article, “Music and Emotion: Humming in the Beginnings of Human History”, Dr. Jordania puts on his ethno-musicologist hat.

• He feels that humming can be thought of as the pre-linguistic “contact calls” among human group members. He suggests that, as with other animal groups, danger is marked by silence. Therefore, the continuous low noise in a group of the “contact calls” becomes an indication of well-being and safety. 
• He further suggests that while putting a child to sleep, a mother might substitute humming for the group noise. Humming relaxes the baby and she/he will fall asleep; humming relaxes everyone. 
• He lastly suggests that because it is associated with safety as a mechanism, humans are hard-wired to hum and therefore have a calmed reaction to humming. All of these suggestions could reinforce what we see when patients in a healthcare setting hum or are hummed to and feel more relaxed and/or happier.   You can find this article here: http://www.polyphony.ge/uploads/fortheng/02_jordania_engl.pdf.

HUM and PAINT

For this Creative Blog entry I want to share my experience of adding a second art form to the humming I was doing. Often in  discussions with other Artists in Residence, there have been occasions when the artist has offered the patient an experience with two art forms. Its a type of cross-pollination for experiencing a person's creative processes. 

Prior to this exercise, I had set up two papers on which to paint, my paints, my brushes, and the paint colors I had. Also I set out several small paper cups of water for rinsing the brushes.

I followed the routine of humming for twenty minutes. The first ten minutes I hummed a pitch in the lowest octave, then that same pitch in my middle register, and then again in my higher register of the voice. Each note would last as long as my breath would allow. The cycle was up and down for the three pitches. I was outside and the wind was blowing lightly and birds were singing in the trees.

At the end of ten minutes of humming, I picked up a paint brush and a color of paint. I painted this picture during a period of five minutes of the humming routine. Interestingly enough, I experienced the same relaxation of body, and the alert sense in my mind. For two weeks, I had been trying to think of the name of a certain flowering plant. In the last two weeks, we have moved and my husband has had a second surgery. We moved with one of these plants; we left two of these plants in the yard of the previous home; and the new rental house had this plant in the yard with three gorgeous blossoms. Still I had been unable to remember the name of the plant. However, today, once I began humming, the name of the flowering plant came right to mind: Amaryllis. Therefore, Pic 1 is my rendering of an Amaryllis.

During the final five minutes of this routine, I painted a second time. This rendering was an interesting representation of the various humming vibrations intermixed with representations of musical pitches. All were arbitrary except for the very last note I painted which is the one at the top left hand corner of the painting; some might consider that the beginning. It represents the many D2s that start musical compositions I have sung. It also begins my favorite selection which is from Mahler's Symphony No. 4. It is a poem from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", set by Mahler so beautifully: "Wir geniessen die himmlischer Freuden". The poem is about a child's view of Heaven.

Though this is surely not a child's depiction of Heaven, it is representational of my humming practice in its relationship to music as I experience it. I am interested that is is full of summer colors. None of it was intentional other than the last note I painted. It also suggests that I differentiate between hummed pitches and sung pitches. This creative investigation has been about vibration felt while humming. Without a doubt, I have thought more about the sensation of the vibration in humming because it is so much stronger. The open mouthed sung tone, by virtue of what I see in this painting,  is all about saying something, communicating something. 

Humming Two, Three, Four and Five

Humming Two and Three

Each of these twenty minute sessions was done using three octaves. I hummed on the lowest tone for a long breath out, relaxed with my next breath in and initiated a tone one octave up. Following that, my next tone initiation was one more octave up. I cycled up and down. In that way, the center tone got the most humming. Again I felt the mind alert and open whereas the body was very relaxed.

By the third session, I found that my breathing became more sustained almost immediately; the thoracic cavity yielded to larger intake, and the sustained exhalation on the hum was longer. This surprised me. Again I felt relaxed yet quite alert mentally.

As for vibration, I find that the first 10 minutes, the lower octave hum has a quick vibration that I can easily feel. The middle register hum begins with a quicker vibration, but yields to a slower and less even vibration. The highest hum is fairly straight feeling. Only in the second ten minutes does the vibration in the lower part of the voice get slower and less consistent. As I add more breath pressure, I can keep the vibration from getting irregular. In the middle voice, the vibration also can be made more stable by increasing the pressure of the breath. In the highest octave, a larger vibration begins to occur. It is never as quick as the lowest vibration, but it were as though I could feel it and hear it at both a fast vibration, and a slower one at the same time.

I read this week about the investigation of the inner nature in an article, “Embodied Ethical Decision Making”, written by Lenore Hervey. Though she was discussing how the body might move in dance based on what the mind was thinking, it seems that the vibration (or embodied thought) in the larynx might also relate to ethical decision making. One philosopher thought that ethical thought might come from natural functions of the body. Others suggested that the “lived experience of the body” was related to ethics. Might one develop a greater ethical sense if they were more aware of their own body experiences? 

Humming Four

For ten minutes I hummed throughout the breath on each of three pitches, at the interval of the octave, alternately. What I found was that the lowest tone no longer caused any discomfort; in fact I began noticing pleasant thoracic vibration. The middle octave tone did offer vibration in the neck and lower head area. The upper octave tone offered no vibrational sensation in the thoracic cavity. Yet the longer I did this, I began to feel more vibration in the skull.

Then I continued for another five minutes humming very pointedly into the nasal passages in the middle and upper octave only. I was able to increase the amount of vibration, but not enlarge the area where it was felt.

Next I hummed “The Ashgrove”. It is a simple folk song of the British Isles with a two-octave range. When I sang it in the lowest part of the voice, the second part of the song went into the middle range of the voice. I tried to notice the amount of vibration I felt while singing in this range. Then I hummed beginning in the middle range, the upper octave of the vocal range was used for the second part of the song. I tried to notice where I felt vibration. Vibration while humming in the higher ranges of the voice had little vibration associated with it. However, I heard a definite resonance difference.

Humming Five

In the fifth session I hummed on the “vocal fry”. This is the sound the larynx makes when trying to sound at the very lowest part of the range. Some liken it to the sound of frying food. I felt a tremendous increased sense of vibration in the thoracic area when humming ‘vocal fry’ as compared to any of the hummed pitches.

I am reminded of the singers from the Steppe whom I heard last summer in Washington DC at an international folk music festival. They have very resonant voices, and use the lowest part of their voice and the vocal fry, as well as singing in the chest voice register. 

This video is a display of Steppe sacred music. You can hear singing on the vocal fry. You can tell there is vibration in the body!

Huun-Huur-Tu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0djHJBAP3U

Humming One

For this creation I am sampled the vibrational effects of the larynx. I have a brief video of humming in my lowest register. The interval hummed is of going back and forth between two pitches one whole step apart. I actually spent 20 minutes humming. I spent time humming in my lowest vocal region, and then took it up an octave. The object of the event was to notice what my body felt and what my mind thought during the time. 

My breathing slowed and regulated. My mind, though active, was at peace. When I changed octaves, my breathing had to adjust to the needed increase in pressure. My body seemed more in a state of alertness. I stayed in the low octave for five minutes, then went to the upper octave for 10 minutes, and then back to the low octave for five minutes. The most impressive sensation I had was that my larynx became sore humming in the low part of my voice. It was much more natural for me to hum in the middle register.

One other thing I noticed was that due to the thickness of the vocal folds in the lower part of the voice, the vibration of the instrument should have been slower. It was not. It was faster. The vibration in the voice in the upper octave was the slower vibration rate. I was not impressed that my mind "went" anywhere unique, but the whole body did feel relaxed and calm.

This post is a Prezi creation. The information came from the Discussion section from my HUM 6930 course at the University of Florida, instructor, Amy Bucciarelli. My classmates and I have been in our Practicum and found ourselves working through many situations. Our instructor guided our conversation about these issues and what we might suggest for our new challenges. I thank them all in advance for their contributions.

Here is the Prezi site address:
http://prezi.com/7ljcsercnkpz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

You will need to swipe and paste into your browser to view this.

Thank you,

Barbara

I have been visiting in the Northeast Georgia Medical System for several weeks 

as an Artist-in-Residence (Practicum). During this time I have encountered many

lovely people. Some have accepted my invitation to share in music-making. The 

sharing has been a two-way and for this I am very grateful. I have created 

a miniature reflection concerning the space the patients, staff, and visitors 

and I have been sharing. 

Healing Garden

Holes in my soul and shape ___

Enter in

Air that swirls and hurts my feelings!

Leaning, resting . . .,

Involve my thoughts;

Nudge me to let go.

Grace, find me.

Gather my parts, my holes;

Arrange and plant them here ___

Rain and fertilize the soil; let me go deep.

Dance me down to the softness of my imagination.

Embed my desires for health

Deeply here to grow new wholes.