What Is Pure Sound? (c) Dean Carter centreforpuresound.org 2024

• Most sounds are Compound in that they generate overtones (aka ‘harmonics’). The string, air column, or other vibrating body creates a ‘first note’ or fundamental which is, usually, the only audible note, but actually this fundamental vibration creates a series of sub-vibrations within itself that are not separately audible but ‘colour’ the tone. Indeed musical timbre is exactly the relative absence or presence or volume of the overtones in any given note.  Without overtones, all instruments would sound the same at any given pitch.
• String and wind instruments generate their overtones in a strict mathematical order relating to the length of the  various sections of the string or air column vibrating. This is called the ‘overtone scale’ or ‘harmonic series’, and it appears that actually all other intervals and scales used as fundamentals in music derive from it.
• Metallophones, struck metal instruments, produce more random overtones not adhering to the ‘overtone scale’. And then instruments using metal strings generate both a random series and an ordered ‘overtone scale’ series.
• In contrast, a  Pure Sound generates no or few overtones.
• Overtones themselves once made audible do not generate overtones and are therefore Pure Sounds.
• A Compound Sound is therefore a combination of Pure Sounds, but we do not experience them as separate Pure Sounds, but as one compound sound.
• Instruments which generate few and/or very faint overtones are Pure Sound instruments.
• Electronic tone generators generate the purest Pure Sounds.
• Acoustic instruments which generate only a few faint overtones are : Crystal bowls and tuning forks.
• Instruments which generate audible separately heard overtones on top of their fundamental are also Pure Sound instruments.
• Gongs generate audible overtones as well as white noise and many other sounds.
• Tibetan bowls generate audible overtones.
• The overtones generated by struck or wanded instruments like Tibetan bowls are random and do not follow the archetypal pattern of the overtone scale, being metallophones as explained above.
• crystal bowls, Tibetan bowls, and gongs, due to their being pure sound generating instruments,  have been shown to increase your red blood cell count and supercharge your white blood cells for the first time in laboratory experiments. (Our preference though is not to use gongs due their intermixture of white noise.)
• String and wind instruments can be made to generate their overtones audibly through certain techniques. When played in this way we are experiencing  a Pure Sound, .e.g overtones/harmonics are sometimes written into guitar music and deliberately produced as a special effect.
• The human voice can be made to generate its overtones audibly also: this is called ‘overtone singing’, ‘overtoning’ etc. There are various techniques and styles for doing this including ‘Tibetan-style’, ‘Mongolian style’, and in the West new techniques and styles have developed in the last 30 years or so.
• On the other hand knowledge and production of overtones has been forgotten or systematically suppressed in most forms of Western music, in line with a general de-sacralisation of sound and almost everything else.
• The Centre for Pure Sound and many other teachers and overtone singers are now redressing this, and teaching and demonstrating overtone singing and chanting techniques
• The main technique or style developed or remembered  in the West involves mainly manipulation of lip-shape, plus nasalisation, so I’ve come to call it ‘Western Labial Style’.
• Come to one of our ANGELS OF SOUND  weekend PLAYshops if you are interested in learning this self-healing and empowering technique for yourself.
• Overtoning as well as crystal and Tibetan bowls  feature in our Divine Union Soundbaths: again the effect has to be experienced for yourself to be believed. See under ‘Divine Union Soundbaths’.
• The information above is covered in greater depth and detail with graphs and diagrams in our Free Download version of Chapter One of my book The Cosmic Scale-The Esoteric Science of Sound.
• Plus watch Dean’s interview on the Home page.