chenilletartar

The only comment I ever remember my mother saying about music I had written was: “I don’t understand it, dear.” And, well, there was another short response: “It hurts my ears.”  Yes, I distinctly remember her covering her ears at one concert. She had heard a piece for tape that was sequenced using an eighth tone scale and was of course full of dissonance. As I remember there were a fair number of high pitches, probably there to achieve a decent amount of difference tones–the sound produced by two frequencies which adds up to the difference between the two pitches–and it was the buzzing difference tones that caused the pain.  The recording below doesn’t exploit difference tones. But I still don’t think my mother would understand it.

Tuna MM. Jan. 22, 2011