MAGIC CHORD for OLIVER. A six note chord (5:9:12:15:18:22) spelled out by my dog's name. This is a recording made in my living room with the windows open. I have purposefully not edited it or cleaned it up so that it preserves life happening around it, whether that is the sound of my other dog investigating the microphone or the sound of my footsteps creaking around my flat. I was thinking about that conversation between Cage and Feldman (excellently framed in David Fennessy's Piano Trio (2019)): 'Let's imagine... that the concert is in a room, and that one door from that room is open, and in the room upon which it opens, radio music is audible. Now, must that door be closed or may it be left open?' (Cage and Feldman 2015, p.18).
I've also been listening to Catherine Lamb again recently, particularly to her LP shade/gradient (2017), and reading about her use of different fundamentals. This nudged me into overlapping three versions of the MAGIC CHORD for OLIVER in the space with fundamentals tuned at the ratio 190:191. Band pass filters pursuing a slow process of sweeping across the frequency range add further layers of exposure and concealment, like clouds passing in front of the sun.

Cage, J. and Feldman, F. 2015. Radio Happenings: Conversations 1966-1967. MusikTexte.
Fennessy, D. 2019. Piano Trio (Music for the pauses in a conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman). Psappha. Panopticon. [CD]. NMC Recordings.
Lamb, C. 2017. shade/gradient. Black Pollen Press.

MAGIC CHORD for OLIVER

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