Charles Ives: 3 Quarter-Tone Pieces (1924) - I. Largo

The piano on the left is tuned one-quarter tone down, providing notes in-between the notes of the normally tuned piano. Performed by the Paratore brothers.

• Category

  Music

[focorockstar]

The piano has been drinking.

[squeemu]

Stop being such a God-damned sissy. Use your ears like a man.

[Hugh Shrapnel]

Beautiful

[Robert Hainault]

Neither out-of-tune nor random. Precisely tuned a quarter lower on one piano and notes selected according to a musical logic. I'll grant you it sounds pretty weird, but no weirder than a gamelan.

[Devin Morrison]

Go home Piano you're drunk.

[Dawson Bonde]

This is Ives showing up Schoenberg.

[TheSchmatto]

Yeah, like if you play around with the harmonic series you get some really out-there notes, natural but 'out there' to our ET ears. Like if you're playing a trumpet in C, in the 3rd octave you get a really flat Bb, which if scaled, would be like a 3rd of a semitone, so smaller than a 1/4 tone. Quarter tones do appear though, like in the next octave you get a note smack dab between E & F.

[Frapazoid]

I like the way it sounds.

[Fernando Faria]

I guess you're right. I failed to see the great musical value in this performance, ignorant as I am. But your comment brought me to reason and now I'm a big fan of out of tune pianos playing random notes. Thank you for the enlightening.

[Fernando Faria]

Was this an open concert, or did the people who atttended it pay to get in? If the second is true, then my comments regarding money are not snide at all, as you pointed out, and Justin Bieber and this have something in common: people pay money to listen to crap.