DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17812972
title: Harmonic Frontier Audio - Overtone Singing (Preview Pack v0.9)

description: Harmonic Frontier Audio – Overtone Singing (Preview, v0.9)

A high-fidelity vocal dataset designed for AI training, music research, and creative sound development.

Overtone Singing (Preview), created by Harmonic Frontier Audio, provides a compact reference set demonstrating the quality, formatting, and metadata conventions used in the Harmonic Frontier Audio Extended Vocal Techniques Spectrum.



 

🔎 Summary

This dataset provides high-quality, rights-cleared audio recordings for use in AI training, music research, and sound design, capturing the extraordinary vocal phenomenon known as overtone singing (also called harmonic singing or Khoomei).In overtone singing, the vocalist isolates and amplifies specific harmonics above a sustained fundamental pitch, producing the perception of two or more distinct tones simultaneously.

Developed by Harmonic Frontier Audio, this dataset follows The Proteus Standard™ for dataset provenance and ethical AI use.It provides researchers, developers, and musicians with clean, controlled examples of overtone production for applications in voice synthesis, spectral modeling, and cross-cultural timbre analysis.



 

🎶 About Overtone Singing

Overtone singing is one of the world’s most striking and acoustically fascinating vocal arts.Practitioners manipulate the shape of the vocal tract to filter and emphasize individual harmonics, creating the illusion of multiple pitches from a single voice.

While it is best known from Tuvan and Mongolian traditions (such as Khoomei, Sygyt, and Kargyraa), variations of overtone singing appear across many cultures — including Tibetan chant, Sardinian cantu a tenore, and modern Western overtone choirs.

This dataset presents a neutral, non-traditional representation of overtone singing.It is designed not to imitate any specific cultural style but to serve as a technical and expressive study of harmonic isolation and control — useful for both acoustic analysis and generative modeling of the human voice.

If you find this dataset useful, please consider giving it a 🤍 on Hugging Face to help others discover it.



 

📂 Contents

Audio Files (.wav)



Recorded at 96 kHz / 24-bit WAV format

Exported as mono

Fade-ins and fade-outs of 3–5 ms applied for transient consistency

DC offset minimized and normalized to maintain consistent loudness

No compression, normalization, or external processing applied

High-pass filtered at ~40 Hz to remove subsonic rumble


 

Categories in this Preview



Sustained Fundamentals



Long tones on single fundamentals with isolated harmonics



Harmonic Intervals



Alternation between two harmonics within a sustained fundamental



Arpeggio Gestures



Sequential harmonic articulations forming triadic or scalar structures



Glissando



Continuous overtone sweeps across the harmonic series



Short Melodic Exercise



Simple original melody emphasizing controlled harmonic shifts and transitions






Metadata (.csv)Includes structured fields for file name, category, content, fundamental pitch, harmonic numbers and pitches, microphone, channel configuration, sample rate, bit depth, recording chain, and dataset version.



 

🎤 Recording Notes



Recorded in a treated studio environment using a single-mic setup:



Microphone: Rode NT1-A condenser microphone

Recording chain: Rode NT1-A → Zoom F8n Pro



Recorded at 96 kHz / 32-bit float, rendered as 96 kHz / 24-bit mono WAV for release.

Room tone and subtle breath noise were preserved to retain the natural acoustic realism of overtone production.




⚡ Usage

This preview pack is designed for:



Evaluation of Harmonic Frontier Audio dataset structure and fidelity

Testing AI and DSP systems that model or classify harmonic timbres

Creative sound design and extended voice synthesis research


👉 Note: This is not a full dataset.The complete Harmonic Frontier Audio dataset for Overtone Singing will include:



Expanded harmonic and vowel variations

Dynamic overtone transitions and melodic gestures

Additional tuning modes and glissando articulations




 

💡 Full Dataset Availability

This is a preview pack of the Overtone Singing Dataset.The complete dataset — with extended harmonic content and melodic variation — will be available for licensing.

For licensing inquiries:📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com



🔗 Explore More from Harmonic Frontier Audio



Subharmonic Phonation / Vocal Fry (Preview)

Whisper Phonation (Preview)


(All datasets follow The Proteus Standard™ for ethical dataset provenance and licensing.)



 

📜 License

Released under CC BY-NC 4.0.



Free for non-commercial use, testing, and research.

Commercial licensing available via Harmonic Frontier Audio.

A formal rights declaration is included in this dataset bundle.




 

📧 Contact

Harmonic Frontier Audio📩 info@harmonicfrontieraudio.com🌐 https://harmonicfrontieraudio.com/



 

🔮 Future Roadmap

This preview release is part of the Harmonic Frontier Audio – Extended Vocal Techniques Spectrum.Upcoming planned datasets include:



Whisper Phonation

Falsetto

Vocal Percussion

Growl / Metal Vocals

Subharmonic Phonation / Vocal Fry (Full Dataset)


Over time, Harmonic Frontier Audio will expand the Extended Vocal Techniques Spectrum alongside its Folk & World Instrument catalogs — creating the first unified library of ethical, rights-cleared world and human vocal datasets for AI training, synthesis, and sound design.



 

🗒️ Release Notes

Version 0.9 (Nov. 2025) – Initial Preview Pack release for Overtone Singing.See CHANGELOG.md for detailed version history.



 

Citation

If you use this dataset in your research, please cite:

Pullen, B. (2025). Overtone Singing Dataset (Preview) [Data set]. Harmonic Frontier Audio. Zenodo.https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17812972

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-4527-0178