Sometimes, singing in tight vocal harmony, certain chords locked just right will produce a hair-raising effect: the air buzzes, the sound gets "fuller," goosebumps, psychosomatic tears. I think it comes from overtone overlaps? Sharing rabbit hole and questions so far:
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Unfortunately, it's hard to convey this effect with a recording—it's much stronger if you're producing it. So I guess I'm mostly talking to other vocalists.
The first key bit seems to be that voices can sing in just intonation, i.e. whole number ratios:
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Yes, this is an in-person phenomenon. It’s impossible to reproduce authentically in a recording. It also is likely more noticeable in certain keys. And the room plays into it as well. It sometimes seems to me that rooms have their own natural point of resonance.
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More noticeable in certain keys! That's very interesting—do you think that's because it's sitting in a different spot in typical vocal ranges, and hence involving different timbres (and so overtone distributions)?
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That’s definitely one of the factors. I definitely notice that in my own singing. Another factor is that keys have sonic characteristics that have been tied to emotions; there was a time when composers really leaned into that idea.
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I haven’t studied that concept empirically so it could be nonsense.
On a similar train of thought, several years ago, I experimented and taught all of my a cappella rep at A=415 instead of 440. Made a huge difference in tuning.
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