DEMETRIO STRATOS RETHINKS VOCAL TECH- NIQUES: A HISTORICAL INVESTIGATION AT ISTC IN PADOVA Elena Ceolin Graziano Tisato Laura Zattra Università di Padova Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti Visive e della Musica ceolin.elena@libero.it ISTC (Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione), CNR, Padova tisato@pd.istc.cnr.it Università di Padova Dipartimento di Storia delle Arti Visive e della Musica laura.zattra@unipd.it ABSTRACT Demetrio Stratos (1945-1979) was a singer known for his creative use of vocal techniques such as diplophony, bi- tonality and diphony (overtone singing). His need to know the scientific explanation for such vocal behaviors, drove him to visit the ISTC in Padova (Institute of Cogni- tive Sciences and Technologies) in the late Seventies. ISTC technical resources and the collaboration with Franco Ferrero and Lucio Croatto (phonetics and phoniat- ric experts), allowed him to analyze his own phono- articulatory system and the effects he was able to pro- duce. This paper presents the results of a broad historical sur- vey of Stratos’ research at the ISTC. The historic investi- gation is made possible by textual criticism and interpre- tation based on different sources, digital and audio sources, sketches, various bibliographical references (published or unpublished) and oral communications. Sonograms of Stratos’ exercises (made at the time and recently redone) show that various abilities existed side by side in the same performer, which is rare to find. This marks his uniqueness in the avant-gard and popular music scene of the time. The ultimate aim of this study was to produce a digital archive for the preservation and conservation of the sources related to this period. 1. INTRODUCTION Efstratios Demetriou (April 22, 1945 – June 13, 1979), better known as Demetrio Stratos, was a multi- instrumentalist, music researcher and singer. He is known for his activity with the Italian progressive rock group Area, as well as for his collaborations with other artists and his solo activity. His interests in ethnomusicology and extra-European traditions, the complete mastery of a wide range of vocal techniques and the awareness of the spoken language constraints, were his background. That induced him to free the voice from the linguistic superstructures and to explore the underlying sonic substance. Among the most impressive results of his research on what he called the instrument-voice [1], a series of unbelievable perform- ances must be mentioned, mainly in the whistle register, producing two or three inharmonic partials at the same time, in a frequency region that could reach the 8,000 Hz. During the late Seventies, Stratos visited several times the ISTC of CNR (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche) in Padova (http://www.pd.istc.cnr.it/). Here, he worked with the physicist Franco Ferrero, who was an expert in phonetics, and with Lucio Croatto, phoniatric expert, to explore this vocal effects by the means of ISTC technical resources: a spectrograph of the VoiceIdentifi- cation and an electroglottograph (or EGG, or laryngograph) Elettro-Glottograph EG 830 by the F-J Electronics [9]. Unfortunately, Stratos’ premature death at age 34 put an end to his research activity, which would have provided other results and assertions to his original view and defi- nitely future pedagogical and scientific outcomes. Why, thirty years after his death, the myth of Demetrio Stratos’ voice is still alive and growing? His unusual ex- tension of vocal techniques, the musical use of his vocal features and his penchant for scientific research, show the emergence of a figure in the musical scene who struggles against established vocal techniques and monody, but also against the established music industry. What was Stratos looking for from phonetics, physi- cists, and phoniatric experts? In what way did he try to study his ability to obtain such complicated techniques? This paper is an attempt to reply to this double question. The investigation starts from two premises. The first one is the necessity to study the Stratos’ scientific experience through the sources, an aspect which has not yet been considered by literature. Literature normally has a target audience from the rock ambience. Stratos should be considered more broadly for his scientific contribution. His Paduan period is significant for this reason. It is a particular case where creativity rethinks science, as happened worldwide in the musical and scien- tific research centers (San Diego, Stanford Universities, Ircam, CSC in Padova, etc.). The Seventies drove musi- cians and scientists to collaborate in order to understand how voice and instruments physically worked (think e.g. the spectral analysis and physical models research, etc.). In this case, the performer himself decides to study his own voice and be more acquainted with his own capabili- ties. Copyright: © 2011 Ceolin et al. This is an open-access article dis- tributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 Unported , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.