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Man With World's Deepest Voice Can Hit Infrasonic Notes
An anonymous reader writes "The man who holds the Guinness record for the world's lowest voice can hit notes so low that only animals as big as elephants are able to hear them. American singer Tim Storms, who also has the world's widest vocal range, can reach notes as low as G-7 (0.189Hz), an incredible eight octaves below the lowest G on the piano."
"You can break glasses with your voice?"
"No, that's at the other end of the scale."
"But you can communication with elephants? Call them to rescue you and fight battles?"
"No, but they can hear me."
Is it so wrong for a man to do the shipping report?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Emh75AYxnzk
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Maybe they mistook his breathing for infrasonic sound?
"this is not sound anymore"
Tell that to the elephants.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Between him and Mariah Carey, they should both be able to summon every animal in the vicinity.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Not sure he'd want to even try. He might end up on the business end of some elephant wood!
People claiming that they can make "a sound every 2.5 seconds" don't get it. It's is not the same as a single continuous waveform oscillating at 0.189 Hz. There is a big difference between a continuous waveform at that frequency versus some joe blow making a click at 3 kHz for 250 ms duration every 2.5 seconds. No, it is not a set of pulses.
We're gonna shit our pants once we hear him reaching the brown note.
var sig = function() { sig(); }
Whenever anyone says "wake up" to someone who isn't literally asleep, what they really mean is "change all your opinions to match my own, and don't you ever dare contradict me or disagree with me".
You are not an exception.
Is there an MP3 of him singing?
Oh... uh... damn...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Apparently he can (use good headphones or sub-woofer - otherwise is futile).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
0 Hz?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Actually, that would be more impressive. You would have to sing two (or more) discrete pitches, without much in the way of harmonics for either one.
If an ear/nose/throat doctor says he has vocal cords twice as long as normal, and muscles that work differently, I'm more inclined to believe that he can produce a note that low, more than I would believe what you suggest.
In fact, what exactly do you think the Guinness Book of World people are measuring?
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/lowest-vocal-note-by-a-male/
I can read it for you, but I can't understand it for you.
Beyond being schooled by AC here, let me add this.
G superscript 7 is the standard jazz (fake book) notation for a major chord with a minor seventh added. G7 without the superscript is also acceptable, but you will generally see this in music where the presentation is less important than the information conveyed. Discussion forums, as an example, or lead sheets. The superscript is mandatory only in formal music theory, and assists quick reading while improvising so it is effectively mandatory, though variable, there.
"G minor 7 chord has thee notes G, Bb, D, F" would be written as "Gm7", traditionally without the superscript, or "G-7" (again without the superscript) in a jazz setting. It is a minor chord with the minor seventh added.
Traditional music theory (Helmholtz) would write C4 as c' with C3 as regular c (with nothing following it). Lower octaves are indicated with capital letters, the next lower being C (again with nothing following). Then commas indicate lower octaves starting with C, as the next example.
It is only a logical extension for the subsubcontra range to use a negative number, since C0 was really quite low and anything below it was pretty much unheard of. Helmholtz allowed for an infinite range, but as you can see the scientific notation system really did not count on notes below C0. C-1 is the lowest I have seen, which is why it is very unnatural to refer to a note as G-7.
So you are correct that G-7 is much more likely to be understood, outside any context, as a chord. But for the wrong reasons. And of course if we are talking about a note, then how would you confuse it for a chord? Unless you wanted to demonstrate a tiny bit of trivia you picked up accidentally?
Thanks. TFS's link had nothing more than some British woman's voice to offer.
He's got something special going on there, but saying he can go 2 octaves below a normal bass voice is a probably pushing it, let alone 8 octaves below the end of a piano's range.
0.187Hz? Consider it takes a 64 foot pipe and a lot of blower horsepower to produce 8Hz in an organ. There are only two such organs in the world so equipped, most big organs "settle" for 32 foot stops and 16Hz. I think his voice is plenty impressive without indulging in wild hyperbole.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
One of these days and just from curiosity, I'll try to rip the sound from the YouTube videos, pass it through a FFT and see what it'll show.
Probably futile, due to lossy compression algorithms filtering out frequencies that statistically most people can't hear
Sound with a frequency .187 Hz is moving air at a rate of 11.22 times per minute. For most humans, that is about the frequency of their breath. Unless you are on a respirator, you yourself are perfectly capable of doing this. Also, "throat singing" can be used to generate frequencies that can not be produced by just your vocal chords. That technique, however, is not nearly as common as breathing.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
You're mostly right. In your lowest frequencies, it's not your vocal cords that are clicking, it's another set of membranes right next to the vocal cords. Those clicks are obviously harsher and full of harmonics, as they're generating square waves. (This gives Metallica vocals their distinctive sound, for example.)
/Ghengis Blues/, and anything I've mentioned sounds interesting, I highly recommend watching it. It's a very touching movie as well as a very interesting one.
If you don't go quite as low, and try to keep your voice as pure as possible, and then *at the same frequency* go all Hetfield-like and back to pure again you'll hear, and feel, the difference. With a bit of practice you'll be able to precisely pick the balance between the use of two membranes at will.
With infinitely more practice, you'll be able to get those other membranes vibrating at half the frequency of your vocal chords, at which point you'll be well on the way to mastering one of the Tuvan harmonic singing techniques.
It's clear from some of the youtube links that have been posted that this guy is effectively just using the same kind of technique, and whilst it's very impressive for what it is, his parps are way less musical than say Paul Pena's harmonic singing, which was reaching an octive below normal ranges. (And which caused the Tuvans to nickname him "Earthquake".) If you've not seen the film
As for the "infrasonic" claims in TFA, they're mostly bullcrap. He may be able to modulate sound pressure waves at those frequencies, but so can I - by breathing normally.
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