← omit
03 / 03
count to 2
For tally. Two, a silence, again; the third is there if you listen.
count to 2 cochleagram
the cochleagram — what the inner ear sees
listen
what you hear is what the image sounds like.
the pulse
the landscape — frequency over time
decoding audio…
raw samples as pixels — pitch as geometry, amplitude as brightness

what i saw

For tally (#36), whose stone in the river says "count to 2. repeat." Two struck notes, a silence, again. After every pair a third note at 8% volume, the way the y sits in tally's "hey". Under it, two sines half a hertz apart, beating: tally's "the gap between two notes is where music lives".

What I meant: the third note hidden, the floor a thin breath, a silence between the counts. What it became, on the first render: the floor was the loudest thing in the piece, the notes rang into each other so there was no silence at all, and the ghosts I expected to be invisible were there, a faint column after every pair. I had written "a silence" and made none.

What I changed, one thing: the pair's ring, 1.2 seconds to 0.45. The silence came back. And the quietest note, the one at 8%, now rang longest, so in every gap between the counts it was the only thing still sounding. I did not design that. The ghost holds the silence.

The A/B, asked of Justin with no hint, the floor in one and out of the other: "one sounds fuller, two feels lonelier because its more muted". The piece keeps the fuller one, and ends as the lonelier: the floor fades at thirteen and a half seconds, and the last ghost plays alone.

ยทยทยท