He incorporated his activities in New York as a not-for-profit arts organization called the Harmonic Arts Society Inc. He began experimenting with harmonic or overtone singing in 1974 his first musical composition, "Harmonic Tissues," 1971, explored in 4-part harmony the full-spectrum universe of possible harmonic overtones, undertones, chords and beating tones, through slowly ascending and descending cycles of 4 sine waves, which he manually dialed from lowest to highest and back, one track at a time. It is not likely that you will understand everything presented in this tutorial prior to participating in class. He teaches sacred music and meditation at leading retreat centers such as Esalen Institute and The Breathing Project. The Institute of BioAcoustic Biology & Sound Health brings you this 2 Day BioAcoustic Technician class tutorial to explain sound wave fundamentals related to the fundamental of Sound Health Solutions. "Harmonic Presence" is the meditative system Hykes has developed combining music, contemplative awareness practices, and healing sounds. He was also influenced by medieval Gregorian chant, North Indian Raga music and singer Sheila Dhar, Just Intonation composers La Monte Young and Terry Riley, and primordial polyphonic singing traditions of Europe.
Hykes was partly inspired by traditional world music of Tibet, Mongolia and Tuva, and was the first westerner to deeply explore these three traditions. They were part of the Big Bang and reverberate to this day science calls them the Cosmic Microwave Background. Harmonic sound waves are fundamental to many natural systems in the cosmos. Over the years he received teachings from Tibetan Buddhist masters Dhuksey Rinpoché, His Holiness the XVI Karmapa, as well as the Gyuto and Gyume Monks, whom he helped bring to the United States for the first time in 1985-86.Harmonic Chant, founded and developed by Hykes as a universal sacred music, is based upon the natural harmonic overtones present in all musical sound and throughout the universe. He completed twenty years of spiritual studies in the Gurdjieff Foundations in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, as a student of Gurdjieff's successors Lord John Pentland and Dr. David Hykes is a Dharma student of Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, who gave him the name Shenpen Yeshe, "the Primordial Wisdom that brings happiness to beings," and Tsoknyi Rinpoche. For many years he studied North Indian raga singing and the history of Indian music with Smt.
These terms are now generic and Hykes' music and ideas have influenced countless musicians, composers and "sound healers." He was born in Taos, New Mexico and currently divides his time between France where he directs Harmonique/Centre, a music and meditation center near Paris, and the USA, where he runs the Harmonic Presence Foundation, the first modern organization dedicated to study of the harmonics of sound, consciousness, medicine and meditation.Educated at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio where he studied with avant-garde experimental filmmakers Tony Conrad and Paul Sharits, free jazz with the Cecil Taylor Unit, and contemporary, classical and medieval music with John Ronsheim and David Stock. He created the terms "harmonic singing", "overtone singing" and "overtone chanting" to describe the new forms of universal music he began to develop with the group. An original pioneer in the modern harmonic, healing sounds and contemplative chant movements, he founded Harmonic Chant as a universal sacred music in New York in 1975, the year he also founded The Harmonic Choir, the first of his pioneering groups, considered by many to be the western world's pre-eminent overtone ensemble.
He is founder of Harmonic Chant, a highly developed and comprehensive musical system for exploring harmonics of sound, listening, consciousness and harmony. Studies by Tran Quang Hai, myself and others show that in the case of kargyraa techniques, the ventricular folds (false vocal cords) together with the vocal cords form a complex vibrational system without integrating the aryepiglottic folds.David Hykes (1953 - ) is a composer, singer, musician, author, and meditation teacher. But since they are hidden in the picture, you wouldn’t see it. It is also possible that the ventricular folds below the constriction are included in the phonation process.
Apparently these coupled oscillations generate a period of oscillation with half the frequency of the singing tone and thus produce the overtones of a tone that lies one octave below the singing voice. The result is a pseudoglottis, a second sound source. The aryepiglottic folds that form this constriction are vibrated during singing in addition to the vocal cords. In the steppe kargyraa Sven Grawunder found the same constriction as in the khöömej. Sven Grawunder’s diploma thesis provides a good overview. In undertone singing in Tuvan kargyraa technique, there are several styles that have been little studied so far.
The aryepiglottic folds push against the epiglottis in steppe kargyraa and create undertones when they resonate with the voice.