Title: Quick Reveal #2
Instruments: Electronic
Program Notes:
Quick Reveal #2 (there is no #1, I just thought “#2” sounded catchier) is an amalgam of two psychoacoustic ideas that I have been interested in. The first is the human tolerance to white noise, especially when the level of that noise grows slowly. The second is the ability of the ear to pick out the timbre (and therefore identity) of an instrument without having all the information. For the latter, in this piece, I have recorded myself playing a mystery instrument, and then manipulated the overtone series to mask it for the majority of the piece. Only by the “reveal” does the audience have the whole series (including the fundamental pitch). There are also scattered clues that resulted from sampling and manipulating parts of the long recording. For a graphic representation of the piece, please see the PDF below.
First Performed: April 2009