Episode 109: Name That Tune
(Theme song and intro plays)
ALEX: Welcome to the Black Tapes Podcast. This week, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover: from Coralee Strand disappearing along the roadside near Big Sur, California to that mystical moment at the crossroads with Robert Johnson.
(intro music)
ALEX: We begin this episode with an update on Coralee Strand. Many of you have been wondering how Strand felt about that audio file of his missing wife. I recorded this interview the day after we aired that episode.
ALEX: It must have been difficult for Strand- hearing his wife’s voice after so many years, but what about the other side? What about the Jacobsons’ perspective? Strand did take off for five days, right in the middle of everything. There was nothing easy about any of this. Nic and I sat down to discuss where we were at in our investigation.
ALEX: Nic spoke with Tina Stevenson via Skype from Lake Tahoe, where she runs a grocery store slash post office slash bus station. Nic described Tina as huge smile, huge hair, and absolutely no filter.
ALEX: At this point, Tina took a look at the message. She didn’t remember any Coralee, but she said the message looked familiar. She opened her email and had a look.
ALEX: Nic took a look at the message. It was clearly sent to somebody named Lisa Graves. Not Coralee Strand. We did some digging, and as it turns out, somebody named Lisa Graves was Coralee Strand’s college roommate. We’ll follow up on Lisa Graves next time, plus an update on our search for the mysterious Warren. But right now, we’re heading back to Seattle and the recording of that Ouija board experiment, where Michelle Braid’s hair was moving, seemingly entirely on its own.
ALEX: I have to admit, I was getting a bit frustrated at the lack of movement of the black tapes from unsolved to solved. We had yet to conclusively close a single case. I felt like the worst detective in the world, but Strand was fine with it. He told me it was just a matter of time. We just needed technology to catch up so we could find ways to disprove some of these more fantastical cases.
ALEX: Now, I’m going to play a Skype message I received last week. The sender had called a few times while I was offline and eventually left a voice message. You might remember him from episode 3 of the podcast.
ALEX: I’m sure what you’re feeling right now is exactly what I felt when I first heard that message. Keith Dabic travelled all the way to Russia to hunt down a composer he believes can prevent the effects of the unsound. Crazy. I know people were scared by the unsound- but fly to Russia scared? I did look up Alexander Scriabin, he was a famous Russian composer from the beginning of the 20th century. If you google him, you’ll see him described as everything from a genius to a madman. But there was one item in particular that caught my eye. In 1930, the director of music for the BBC, Sir Adrian Boult, banned Scriabin from the airwaves, claiming his compositions were, quote evil music. Here’s my producer, Nic.
ALEX: That’s Professor Alan Downes, an expert in Russian, classical music. He teaches at Washington State University.
ALEX: I left Professor Downes’s office a little more enlightened about musical history, but still a long way from anything that would help me decipher the images that Keith Dabic had sent.
ALEX: Dr. Singh pulled up another figure on her computer. This time it was a spiral with a bunch of notes circling it.
ALEX: She brought up a webpage with a virtual keyboard on it.
ALEX: I drove back to Seattle, my head filled with musical and geometrical theory. Nic was still waiting for me at the office with even more news.
ALEX: We’ve been in touch with the American embassies in both Moscow and Kiev, but they say there’s nothing they can do. Keith’s friends and family haven’t heard from him. The local Russian authorities haven’t been helpful. We’re looking into finding someone on the ground in Russia, to look for Keith on our behalf. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I sat down with Charlie Strand, to discuss her mother’s disappearance.
ALEX: We’ll have the conclusion of that interview with Charlie along with Strand’s reaction next time. For now, Dr. Pullman has some information on the sound file Keith Dabic sent us from Russia.
ALEX: From Pythagorean commas to mysterious and evasive composers, this episode has raised a lot more questions than it’s answered. Still no word from or about Keith Dabic and our calls to Percival Black continue to go unanswered. Next time, a lot more about the disappearance of Coralee Strand. Plus, our new agent on the ground in Russia makes a breakthrough. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan, we’ll be back again in two weeks.
ALEX: Thank you so much for listening to the black tapes podcast, if you enjoy our show, please rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you found us. The Black Tapes Podcast is a National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale production, recorded in Seattle and Vancouver. Produced by Nic Silver, mixed and engineered by Alan Williams and Samantha Paulson. Edited by Nic Silver and Alex Reagan. Associate producer Robert Romero Jr. Executive producers Paul Bae and Terry Miles.
ALEX: Welcome to the Black Tapes Podcast. This week, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover: from Coralee Strand disappearing along the roadside near Big Sur, California to that mystical moment at the crossroads with Robert Johnson.
(intro music)
ALEX: We begin this episode with an update on Coralee Strand. Many of you have been wondering how Strand felt about that audio file of his missing wife. I recorded this interview the day after we aired that episode.
- ALEX: So I hear they extended your stay here in Seattle?
- STRAND: Looks like I’ll be here at least another three months.
- ALEX: And they have you teaching?
- STRAND: One graduate section, a bit of research.
- ALEX: Do you like it?
- STRAND: I do. There are some very interesting students.
- ALEX: (laughs) Well, like I mentioned on the phone, I wanted to speak briefly about that audio recording, the tape of Coralee.
- STRAND: I do appreciate you sending over a copy.
- ALEX: Yeah, of course. I only wish they’d digitized the entire tape.
- STRAND: Yes…
- ALEX: How did hearing her voice like that make you feel?
- STRAND: It was difficult.
- ALEX: That’s understandable.
- STRAND: She sounded like…she sounded like herself.
- ALEX: That statement might warrant some expansion.
- STRAND: Well, (pause) for a few months leading up to our trip, Coralee had been behaving…differently.
- ALEX: Differently how?
- STRAND: It was subtle, at first, just a bit of added distance. I don’t know. I was working a lot at the time, could have been as simple as that.
- ALEX: Do you remember Coralee ever mentioning somebody named Warren?
- STRAND: No, never. I’m sorry, we’ll have to continue this conversation later.
- ALEX: Okay.
- (door closing)
ALEX: It must have been difficult for Strand- hearing his wife’s voice after so many years, but what about the other side? What about the Jacobsons’ perspective? Strand did take off for five days, right in the middle of everything. There was nothing easy about any of this. Nic and I sat down to discuss where we were at in our investigation.
- ALEX: So, what did you find out?
- NIC: Okay, well I spoke with every single friend of Coralee’s that I could find, and Mrs. Jacobson has been actually really helpful.
- ALEX: Great.
- NIC: She sent- yeah, she sent everything they got back from the police after Coralee’s death, including a USB drive with a cloned copy of Coralee’s phone, a huge box of documents, and emails that were from that phone’s connected account.
- ALEX: Really?
- NIC: Yeah.
- ALEX: That’s amazing!
- NIC: It is pretty amazing.
- ALEX: So…
- NIC: So, of course, no Warren in her contact list.
- ALEX: Ah. Yeah, that would be too easy.
- NIC: The email account linked to her phone only contained a couple of hundred messages, so that clearly wasn’t her main account. But, in the documents, we did find a faded, printed email from a store in Lake Tahoe that did mention a man named Warren Beauchamp.
- ALEX: Really??
- NIC: Really.
- ALEX: And?
- NIC: And, I reached out to the owner of that store, a woman named Tina Stevenson.
ALEX: Nic spoke with Tina Stevenson via Skype from Lake Tahoe, where she runs a grocery store slash post office slash bus station. Nic described Tina as huge smile, huge hair, and absolutely no filter.
- STEVENSON: So this is for the radio?
- NIC: It’s a podcast, actually.
- STEVENSON: A what?
- NIC: It’s a kind of radio on demand.
- STEVENSON: I don’t know what that is.
- NIC: It’s basically the radio. Can you please repeat what you told me about Warren Beauchamp?
- STEVENSON: Again?
- NIC: Yeah, we’re recording, so it’s for our audience.
- STEVENSON: Yeah, okay, all right. He’s a locksmith that we used to use around here.
- NIC: At the post office?
- STEVENSON: He did work on the grocery side and the post office side whenever we needed doors or locks changed.
- NIC: Okay. Well, like I mentioned on the phone, we’re doing a story on a woman who went missing up around Big Sur. Her name is Coralee Strand.
- STEVENSON: So why’re you looking in Tahoe?
- NIC: Well, we’re just following a lead.
- STEVENSON: Oh, okay. You said something about an email?
- NIC: Yeah, I have it here. Other than the name of your store, the sender and recipient information is too faded to read. Here, near the middle of the message, after the details about new credit card information, it read: Warren’s coming in tomorrow.
- STEVENSON: Okay?
- NIC: Can you see that?
- STEVENSON: Can you just hold it back a little? Okay. Yeah.
ALEX: At this point, Tina took a look at the message. She didn’t remember any Coralee, but she said the message looked familiar. She opened her email and had a look.
- STEVENSON: Um…yeah, here it is! I knew I recognized it.
- NIC: Do you mind forwarding that to me?
- STEVENSON: Sure, no problem.
- STEVENSON: You get it?
- NIC: Just a sec- (pause) Uh….yeah! It definitely…it looks like the same message!
- STEVENSON: Yeah, it is. But this message is to a customer named Lisa Graves.
- NIC: Right, you’re sure it’s not Coralee Strand?
- STEVENSON: Nope, Lisa Graves.
- NIC: Who’s Lisa Graves?
- STEVENSON: She used to come in here pretty regularly, she had a post office box. We had a break in about 5 years ago and had to replace all the locks. This was the message I sent her about the key replacement.
- NIC: Key replacement?
- STEVENSON: Yeah, for her post office box.
ALEX: Nic took a look at the message. It was clearly sent to somebody named Lisa Graves. Not Coralee Strand. We did some digging, and as it turns out, somebody named Lisa Graves was Coralee Strand’s college roommate. We’ll follow up on Lisa Graves next time, plus an update on our search for the mysterious Warren. But right now, we’re heading back to Seattle and the recording of that Ouija board experiment, where Michelle Braid’s hair was moving, seemingly entirely on its own.
- ALEX: I said, I saw her hair move, on its own.
- STRAND: Yes.
- ALEX: What do you mean yes?
- STRAND: That’s why it’s in my collection of what you call the black tapes.
- ALEX: Wait, I thought it was unsolved because of the accuracy of the planchette while the participants were blindfolded?
- STRAND: That’s the main reason, but the Braid woman’s hair was also…interesting.
- ALEX: Interesting?
- STRAND: A table full of people had just witnessed something that frightened them. They were short of breath, some were breathing quite heavily.
- ALEX: You think someone’s breath blew her hair off her shoulder?
- STRAND: It certainly is possible.
- ALEX: Well, watching that tape, it seems unlikely.
- STRAND: I feel like you might be losing the skeptic’s perspective in this case.
- ALEX: Well, I know what I saw.
- STRAND: What we see if often not the truth. You saw her hair move, after learning about her grandfather. It’s all about context, expectation bias.
- ALEX: And there’s a flip side to expectation bias, if you expect everything to be rational and easily explained.
- STRAND: True, but the cases we’ve been looking at have been far from easily explained.
- ALEX: But her hair lifted, as if someone else was there behind her.
- STRAND: (sighs) Well, I guess it remains unsolved then.
- ALEX: I guess.
ALEX: I have to admit, I was getting a bit frustrated at the lack of movement of the black tapes from unsolved to solved. We had yet to conclusively close a single case. I felt like the worst detective in the world, but Strand was fine with it. He told me it was just a matter of time. We just needed technology to catch up so we could find ways to disprove some of these more fantastical cases.
ALEX: Now, I’m going to play a Skype message I received last week. The sender had called a few times while I was offline and eventually left a voice message. You might remember him from episode 3 of the podcast.
- DABIC: Hi, Alex, this is Keith Dabic from Hastur Rising? You interviewed me a while ago about the unsound? I was hoping I could talk to you about something, it’s complicated. I couldn’t stop thinking about the unsound. There’s this guy I knew from school, he listened to it right around the time I did. Well, just after our interview, I heard he drowned in the lake while fishing. (sigh) A friend of the band helped me dig into the deep web, you know the dark net? And, there was a lot more stories about people dying within a year. That really freaked me out. I became kind of obsessed, I guess, with finding a cure, or something, a way to prevent the unsound from having an effect. I’m not a hundred percent sure if it’s real, I don’t think, but I’m a hundred percent sure I don’t want to die.
- I found someone, on the deep web forum. He’s supposed to be able to neutralize the unsound’s curse. I don’t know. I tracked him down. He’s a composer, I’ve never heard of him, but I guess for people into that kind of stuff, he’s kind of a big deal. His name is Percival Black. He’s a teacher as well. I’ve been studying all kinds of music, and well, stuff, I don’t really have time to explain everything right now. I’ll call you again tomorrow. I just emailed you something. It’s Black, he’s working on a new piece, I think you’ll be interested in this. Have you heard of Alexander Scriabin? Look him up. He’s a famous Russian composer. Yeah, I’m calling from Russia. Okay, I’ve got to get going. I’ll call you later. Bye.
ALEX: I’m sure what you’re feeling right now is exactly what I felt when I first heard that message. Keith Dabic travelled all the way to Russia to hunt down a composer he believes can prevent the effects of the unsound. Crazy. I know people were scared by the unsound- but fly to Russia scared? I did look up Alexander Scriabin, he was a famous Russian composer from the beginning of the 20th century. If you google him, you’ll see him described as everything from a genius to a madman. But there was one item in particular that caught my eye. In 1930, the director of music for the BBC, Sir Adrian Boult, banned Scriabin from the airwaves, claiming his compositions were, quote evil music. Here’s my producer, Nic.
- NIC: This stuff is crazy.
- ALEX: Right?
- ALEX: Nic’s referring to some images that were attached to a blank email message from Keith Dabic, a series of photographs from what appears to be a handwritten journal. There were dozens of pages and they looked old, really old.
- NIC: Well, we don’t know for sure if Dabic actually flew to Russia. For all we know, he could have been calling from Seattle.
- ALEX: Well, maybe but he has no reason to lie about that. He did sound pretty freaked out.
- NIC: I suppose, but to be honest, freaked out doesn’t seem to be an uncommon state for Keith Dabic.
- ALEX: Yeah, right? What do we know about Alexander Scriabin? Other than the fact that his music was banned by the BBC in the 1930s?
- NIC: Well, for one thing, he died from a sore lip.
- ALEX: What?
- NIC: Yeah, apparently his lip became infected and spread throughout his entire body. He actually died at 43 from septicemia in 1915, but they say it started much earlier.
- ALEX: With a sore lip?
- NIC: Yeah, exactly.
- ALEX: Well, I don’t think Keith Dabic called to warn us about cold sores.
- NIC: Probably not. Aside from the unsound, we have no idea what Dabic was getting into.
- ALEX: What about Scriabin?
- NIC: Well, it turns out Scriabin was known for composing some pretty disturbing music. When he was a young man, he injured his hand- his right hand. His doctor told him it was permanent, and you can imagine for a pianist, that was devastating news.
- ALEX: Yeah.
- NIC: So, Scriabin composed his first major piano sonata. When asked to describe that piece, he said and this is a direct quote, that it was against god.
- ALEX: Wow, that’s intense.
- NIC: Yeah. He also composed a piano piece called The Black Mass.
- ALEX: Ooh.
- NIC: I heard it over the weekend, and to my ears it really doesn’t sound evil or anything, but I’m more of a Steely Dan guy.
- ALEX: Ah, right. Well, what about the images that Keith sent?
- NIC: Well, they look like they’re from somebody’s journal, maybe Keith’s, I dunno? There are some pretty weird looking entries. This one, for example. “I am come to tell you the secret of life, the secret of death. The secret of heaven and earth, I am god. I am nothing. I am life.”
- ALEX: Wow.
- NIC: Yeah, it’s accompanied by a bunch of musical notes and numbers. This number in particular keeps popping up.
- ALEX: 1.01364335043922. Any ideas?
- NIC: Well, pi starts with a 3.
- ALEX: Right.
- NIC: And it’s too long to be an IP address.
- ALEX: Okay, well, what about the other composer? The one Keith Dabic hunted down?
- NIC: Percival Black?
- ALEX: Right, yeah.
- NIC: Well, he’s released a few albums. He’s not on Billboard’s Top 100 or anything, but he gets generally good reviews. He lives in a monastery in Russia.
- ALEX: Well, that’s something!
- NIC: Yeah, the Russian Orthodox Church has a monastery in Mordovia in a city called Saransk. Brother Black is from England, actually.
- ALEX: Oh.
- NIC: He joined the brotherhood in the 80’s to write sacred music for the church.
- ALEX: Oh, and why Russia? Why not join an English monastery?
- NIC: I have no idea.
- ALEX: Any luck tracking down this Percival Black?
- NIC: We left two messages and we’re looking into other methods of getting in touch, but that monastery is really remote.
- ALEX: Okay, so, where do we go from here?
- NIC: Well, we need to find somebody who knows something about classical Russian music.
- DOWNES: Ah, the great, misunderstood Alex Scriabin.
ALEX: That’s Professor Alan Downes, an expert in Russian, classical music. He teaches at Washington State University.
- DOWNES: And by misunderstood, I mean that literally, nobody understood him.
- ALEX: Him, or his music?
- DOWNES: Both. He could have been another Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninoff but he soon fell out of favor with the musical establishment due to some of his more esoteric work.
- ALEX: Could you elaborate?
- DOWNES: He developed a whole system of atonal music, it was dissonant. And audiences didn’t know what to make of it. And due to philosophical leanings, the Church soon levelled charges intimating that his music contained… dark intent.
- ALEX: Dark intent?
- DOWNES: One of his favorite compositions was titled, The Satanic Poem.
- ALEX: Oh.
- DOWNES: (Laughs) It’s not as diabolical as it sounds. It’s about a couple who strike a Faustian bargain with Satan and it ends in tragedy.
- ALEX: Faustian bargain? You mean selling your soul to the devil?
- DOWNES: Yes. Much like blues player, Robert Johnson, who you know, met the devil at the crossroads and sold his soul to him for the gift of music. That myth stretches back centuries.
- ALEX: So people thought Scriabin sold his soul to the devil?
- DOWNES: Well, some people did, certainly. He was a mystic, deeply entrenched in theosophy, he was what you might call today an eccentric.
- ALEX: Might?
- DOWNES: Some scholars believe Scriabin thought he could decipher the secrets of the universe. Of God, of creation, and he was trying to do this through his music.
- ALEX: Okay, but to my understanding, mystical music has been around for centuries.
- DOWNES: True, but not quite like this. This is from Scriabin 6th Sonata. Listen, here. What is he doing?
- (dissonant piano music plays)
- DOWNES: And more importantly, why? What does he want us to feel?
- (music stops)
- ALEX: That’s pretty far from Gregorian chanting.
- DOWNES: I’ll say.
- ALEX: What do you think? About what he’s trying to say with his music?
- DOWNES: (sighs) I don’t think he was trying to say anything. I believe he was trying to extinguish something. To exorcise it. I…I believe that this was his confession.
- ALEX: His confession? For what?
- DOWNES: I won’t even hazard a guess, but that piece, that was something Scriabin himself refused to play.
- ALEX: He wouldn’t play his own composition? That seems odd.
- DOWNES: Not if you think of music as an expression of your soul. If Scriabin was unburdening himself of his demons, why would he want to revisit that?
- ALEX: Fair point, but I can definitely see why it didn’t catch on. It sounds…terrifying.
- DOWNES: That’s due to the structure of the song, Scriabin liked using augmented fourths.
- ALEX: Sorry?
- DOWNES: It’s a chord. Here.
- (piano chord)
- DOWNES: What does that sound like?
- (chord again)
- ALEX: Like the opening notes of a horror movie.
- DOWNES: Exactly. That was an augmented fourth. It’s also known as the Devil’s Interval.
- ALEX: The Devil’s Interval?
- DOWNES: Diabolus in musica. The devil in music. Until Scriabin time, that chord was actually banned by the Church. You can see why Scriabin has this reputation now.
- ALEX: Sure, but I don’t understand what this has to do with figuring out the secrets of the universe.
- DOWNES: Scriabin also had a condition called synesthesia. Music made him literally see colorful shapes.
- ALEX: That must have been a… a challenge?
- DOWNES: Actually, he embraced it. He used it to compose. Allegedly, the key of D major made him see golden brown hues. E flat major produced a deep red for him. He claimed that music allowed him to see true forms, and he meant that in a very Platonic sense.
- ALEX: So…in layman’s terms?
- DOWNES: Music allowed him to see God.
- ALEX: Literally?
- DOWNES: Yes.
- ALEX: Did he say what god looked like?
- DOWNES: No. But near the end they say that he believed he had found a way that he might actually… become god.
- ALEX: I can’t imagine the Church was crazy about that.
- DOWNES: You imagine correctly. “I am the apotheosis of world creation, I am the aim of aims, the end of ends.”
- ALEX: Scriabin wrote that?
- DOWNES: Yes.
- ALEX: Can I show you something?
- ALEX: I pulled up Keith Dabic’s file on my phone and showed him the scanned texts that Nic had read earlier.
- DOWNES: “I am come to tell you the secret of life, the secret of death. The secret of heaven and earth, I am god. I am nothing. I am life.” I guess Scriabin could have written that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Wagner or Strauss, or Mahler, Nietzsche was all the rage at the time.
- ALEX: Okay. Just one more question. Have you heard of a composer named Percival Black?
- DOWNES: Black? Um…nope, no, never heard of him, sorry.
ALEX: I left Professor Downes’s office a little more enlightened about musical history, but still a long way from anything that would help me decipher the images that Keith Dabic had sent.
- NIC: Heeeey, Alex!
- ALEX: Oh, hey, Nic! How’s it going?
- NIC: Pretty good, well, not great when it comes to the hunt for Keith Dabic.
- ALEX: Really? What’s the update?
- NIC: Well, I’ve called every number that I can find… well, it looks like we’re going to have to wait until he reaches out to us again.
- ALEX: Well, what about Brother Black?
- NIC: Again, every number- I tried every number, but we’re still looking into a few other things. Um, listen, while you’re at the university…I’d like you to see someone.
- ALEX: Okay, great. I’m still here. I’m in the music department.
- NIC: How are you at math?
- ALEX: Math? Keith Dabic’s numbers?
- NIC: That’s right.
- ALEX: Who am I seeing?
- NIC: She’s a PhD candidate named Sandy Singh. She’s waiting for your call.
- ALEX: Okay, great! Where is she?
- NIC: Neil Hall, not too far from there.
- ALEX: Okay, perfect, I’ll go down there right now.
- NIC: Okay, good luck!
- ALEX: Okay, thank you!
- NIC: Bye.
- ALEX: Bye!
- SINGH: I’m Sandra Singh, Sandy. I’m a doctoral candidate: modular arithmetic here at Washington State University.
- ALEX: Could you describe your field of study for our listeners?
- SINGH: Sure. Well, I develop computer architectures to solve various systems of contingencies, I’m still not sure why your listeners would be interested in this.
- ALEX: Well, we’re trying to identify that number that my producer sent you.
- SINGH: Okay, well, a few years ago, this guy gave a Ted Talk. Do you know Ted Talks?
- ALEX: Yeah, yeah, of course.
- SINGH: Well, he was talking about vortex based mathematics. Well, that’s what he called it. It was supposed to be his grand unifying theory, it was…it would completely revolutionize technology, solve our global energy problems. It was like figuring out God.
- ALEX: Wow. How have I never heard of that?
- SINGH: Well, because it was total… can I say BS?
- ALEX: Yeah, go ahead.
- SINGH: It was total BS, most of it anyways. It was like he just renamed a bunch of stuff we already know and made it sound really smart. But there’s this other guy named Reuben Neil who did some pretty unique stuff with it using computational models. He actually figured out some impressive modular problems using something called a Pythagorean comma.
- ALEX: I feel like I’m going to have to take notes.
- SINGH: Oh. Was that a joke?
- ALEX: Kind of.
- SINGH: Because you’re recording.
- ALEX: Yes.
- SINGH: Oh. Okay. Would you like me to explain the Pythagorean comma? You know, for your listeners?
- ALEX: Please.
- ALEX: She opened her computer. There were a bunch of numbered lines and patterns.
- SINGH: Okay, so he has this pattern of embedded hexagons using a formula, you’ll remember the vortex based mathematics I mentioned?
- ALEX: Okay.
- SINGH: You see right here where the hexagons line up? In the center, there’s this tiny gap.
- ALEX: She moved the cursor around and type a bunch of numbers. I didn’t really get what she was talking about mathematically, at all. But I did see two shapes, and there was a bit of a gap.
- SINGH: It doesn’t line up perfectly. This type of thing happens from time to time in simple geometry.
- ALEX: This is simple?
- SINGH: Would you like me to clarify a specific aspect of the experiment?
- ALEX: No, I’m sorry, please continue.
- SINGH: Okay, so, this is where the Pythagorean comma comes in. 1.01364335043822. That’s the ratio for the Pythagorean comma going upwards.
- ALEX: Okay, so the Pythagorean comma, that’s the name of that ratio?
- SINGH: Yes. This ratio is the exact size of the discrepancy in the hexagonal pattern. Isn’t that amazing?
- ALEX: Yes.
- SINGH: Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool, too. So I tried it out on different geometric constructions, it turns out that this ratio fills in the gap in a large number of these models.
- ALEX: Okay, so, these gaps- why’re they important again?
- SINGH: Do you believe in god?
- ALEX: I don’t know.
- SINGH: Okay, do you believe in Plato?
- ALEX: Yes, definitely.
- SINGH: Most mathematicians are Platonic. The universe is built according to certain physical laws, and our job as we see it, is to discover these laws in formulations.
- ALEX: I think I remember this from my intro to philosophy class.
- SINGH: It used to be that math could explain everything, but then things started to get smaller. We went subatomic, we started measuring things on the quantum scale, and suddenly our math wasn’t so elegant anymore. There were spaces in our equations, gaps, so now there are a large number of mathematicians who view the universe non-Platonically. They believe that math is a human construct: the language we use to describe the universe. But the Pythagorean comma fills in one of these blanks almost perfectly. So, maybe it’s time to rethink things again. The universe may have a code after all. Maybe it’s just a matter of using different kinds of equations to figure it out. Sorry, was that too confusing?
- ALEX: No, no! Your explanation was excellent. I’m just…I’m wondering what any of this has to do with music.
- SINGH: Oh! Right, well, the Pythagorean comma comes from music.
- ALEX: What?
- SINGH: Yeah, maybe I should have started with that. The person who figured out the hexagonal discrepancy using the Pythagorean comma was a musician. A composer. Music and math are really two sides of the same coin.
- ALEX: How so?
- SINGH: I’ll show you.
ALEX: Dr. Singh pulled up another figure on her computer. This time it was a spiral with a bunch of notes circling it.
- SINGH: In music there is something called the circle of fifths. If you take two en-harmonically equivalent notes like C and B sharp, there’s a slight difference but it’s nearly imperceptible to the human ear.
ALEX: She brought up a webpage with a virtual keyboard on it.
- SINGH: Here.
- (plays two notes)
- SINGH: Do you hear a difference?
- ALEX: Is one just an octave higher?
- SINGH: Yes. Well, to our ears. But graphically these two notes don’t line up perfectly. If you look at this spiral graph, that is the first note I played, and that is the second.
- ALEX: Oh, okay, I s- they’re a bit off.
- SINGH: Exactly. A perfect circle of fifths is not really perfect when it comes to octaves. Euclid discovered this discrepancy 2000 years ago, and thanks to computers we’re now able to plug it into various other uses to fill the gaps in our models. Have you heard of a Shepherd Tone?
- ALEX: Is that a band?
- SINGH: Not a band, no. If a solution to a problem is related to natural numbers, it necessarily follows that a second solution exists related to smaller numbers in turn a third, fourth, so on.
- ALEX: Okay.
- SINGH: Well, the problem is there can’t be an infinity of ever smaller natural numbers, so any solution posited is incorrect. It’s disproven because its outcome requires a contradiction. I’m going to play something for you.
- (slow, distorted tones)
- ALEX: It just keeps going down? How long is this thing?
- SINGH: It’s actually a very short loop.
- ALEX: Really? It sounds like it just keeps goes on and on and on.
- SINGH: It’s not going down at all. Or descending.
- ALEX: Really?
- SINGH: It’s simply two octaves played together. It only sounds like its descending.
- ALEX: Wow.
- SINGH: Yeah, Pythagoras and Euclid had it going on!
- ALEX: So this gap, or Pythagorean comma, is like some kind of missing piece in figuring out the universe?
- SINGH: That’s definitely overstating it. If we’re lucky, it might just open up a small crack, just enough to glimpse a part of its design.
- ALEX: You use the word design. Does this mean that you believe in God?
- SINGH: Well, (pause) when I look at mathematics, I see a universal beauty. I definitely see… something. I’m just not sure what to call it.
ALEX: I drove back to Seattle, my head filled with musical and geometrical theory. Nic was still waiting for me at the office with even more news.
- ALEX: I’m exhausted.
- NIC: Well, I hope not too exhausted. We received an email.
- ALEX: Keith Dabic?
- NIC: Mr. Hastur Rising himself.
- ALEX: But there’s nothing there.
- NIC: There was an attachment.
- ALEX: Another photo?
- NIC: Not this time. It’s a sound file.
- (Ethereal music plays)
- ALEX: What is it?
- NIC: I have no idea.
- ALEX: Why would Keith send us this without any context?
- NIC: Well, bear with me. Even though Hastur Rising has disbanded, Dabic still controls the band’s back catalog.
- ALEX: Okay.
- NIC: And in our bit torrent world, it’s a lot harder to make money as musician than it used to be.
- ALEX: Right, but I don’t think I’m following.
- NIC: What if Dabic wants to use our podcast to promote an upcoming project? Our episode on the unsound did get a lot of attention. Maybe he saw a spike in album sales and-
- ALEX: I don’t think Keith would use his friend’s suicide for self-promotion. Would he?
- NIC: I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I had to say it out loud.
- ALEX: Okay.
- NIC: I sent the file to Professor Downes to see if he could identify it. He says he’s never heard it before.
- ALEX: Spotify?
- NIC: Nothing.
- ALEX: Well, how about sending it to that structural acoustician? The guy who looked at the unsound?
- NIC: Right. Dr. Pullman.
- ALEX: Yeah, maybe the unsound is layered under the instruments, like it was on Jeff Wendt’s computer. I mean, why else would Keith send it to us?
- NIC: That’s actually a really good idea.
- ALEX: Thanks!
- NIC: Oh, one more thing.
- BLACK: Hello! I am returning a phone call for Alex Reagan. My name is Percival Black.
- ALEX: Hi, Brother Black? This is Alex.
- BLACK: Hi. Well, most people just call me Percy.
- ALEX: Hi, Percy. Thanks so much for doing this interview.
- BLACK: My pleasure.
- ALEX: I have to be honest, we had a hard time finding information about you online.
- BLACK: Well, I’m on there. I’m pretty sure.
- ALEX: Your recorded work is well-represented, but there’s not really anything else.
- BLACK: What would you like to know?
- ALEX: Well, do you ever perform live?
- BLACK: I stopped performing live a few years ago to concentrate on my studio work, but I do have some shows coming up.
- ALEX: I see. And what are you working on at the moment?
- BLACK: A related series of sacred compositions.
- ALEX: What do you mean by sacred?
- BLACK: Well, I believe music serves many purposes. Some find personal joy or comfort in it, some put it in the background while they do the dishes, I use it to bring me closer to God.
- ALEX: Oh.
- BLACK: Yes. I compose to bring myself and others closer to understanding God, the universe, and our place within that universe.
- ALEX: So you use music as a way to…worship?
- BLACK: In a sense, yes.
- ALEX: You mentioned that you might start performing again?
- BLACK: Yes, that’s correct.
- ALEX: Why now?
- BLACK: Well, in a way recorded music removes you from the fullness of experience. I miss having a live audience, it’s the difference in standing by the edge of the ocean and seeing it on television. You can’t touch the divine through headphones or a screen.
- ALEX: I was wondering- have you ever heard of the unsound? (pause) Brother Black? Er- Percy?
- BLACK: Sorry, you cut out there for a moment.
- ALEX: I was asking if you’ve ever heard of the unsound?
- BLACK: Is that a composition?
- ALEX: Sort of.
- BLACK: Well, I’m afraid I’ve never heard that particular piece.
- ALEX: Well, I understand that you’re a teacher as well.
- BLACK: Yes, occasionally, but I’m currently not working with any students.
- ALEX: So you don’t have a student there named Keith Dabic?
- BLACK: No.
- ALEX: Are you sure? Dabic? Keith Dabic? He’s an American. He would have arrived there in the last month or so.
- BLACK: I’m afraid that name doesn’t ring a bell.
- ALEX: Oh. Okay.
- BLACK: Is there anything else?
- NIC: (whispers) Alexander Scriabin?
- ALEX: Alexander Scriabin? Hello? Percy?
- (Skype disconnects)
- NIC: Well…that didn’t go well.
- ALEX: I’ll say.
- NIC: He really didn’t want to talk about Scriabin, who seems to be central to this whole…whatever this is.
- ALEX: There has been a whole lot of Scriabin.
- NIC: Well, apparently near the end, Scriabin became obsessed with something he called the Mysterium. The Mysterium was going to be his masterpiece, but he died before he could finish it.
- ALEX: What was it?
- NIC: Well, whatever it was, it was big. He wanted to build a huge temple in the Himalayan Mountains where they could play this new composition- this Mysterium. He said there would be no audience, only participants, only players.
- ALEX: And how would that work?
- NIC: Well, it’s all in his notebooks. He describes a huge communal orchestra. And then for the big finish, the universe implodes.
- ALEX: What?
- NIC: Yeah. He wrote that the human race would be wiped out and replaced by a new race of beings.
- ALEX: Um…that’s…
- NIC: Yeah. That’s Scriabin.
- ALEX: Well, so the Mysterium was Scriabin ushering in the apocalypse.
- NIC: Sounds like it.
- ALEX: Wow.
- NIC: Oh, and you’re going to love this part. Apparently Scriabin described his new race of beings as quote, shadows stepping forth from the shadows.
- ALEX: Shadows?
- NIC: Shadows. To add yet another slight twist, there’s a version of the Mysterium out there already.
- ALEX: Really?
- NIC: Yeah. A guy named Alexander Nemtin composed and recorded what he thought the Mysterium would sound like. He says he got the information from Scriabin’s journals.
- ALEX: Apparently he got some bad information. The universe didn’t explode.
- NIC: Implode.
- ALEX: Right.
- NIC: I forwarded the scanned pages that Dabic sent to Professor Downs. He compared it to scanned copies of Scriabin’s notebook from the National Library which is like 72 pages long. He told me they’re very close, but a little off. As if somebody copied Scriabin’s notebook but maybe lost something in the translation or transcription.
- ALEX: So, do you think that file Keith sent, do you think he somehow took photos of Brother Black’s adaptation of the Mysterium?
- NIC: That seems like the most likely scenario.
- ALEX: We need to find Keith Dabic.
ALEX: We’ve been in touch with the American embassies in both Moscow and Kiev, but they say there’s nothing they can do. Keith’s friends and family haven’t heard from him. The local Russian authorities haven’t been helpful. We’re looking into finding someone on the ground in Russia, to look for Keith on our behalf. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, I sat down with Charlie Strand, to discuss her mother’s disappearance.
- ALEX: So, how was Italy?
- CHARLIE: It was great, thank you.
- ALEX: Okay! Well, there’s no easy way, so let’s just dive in.
- CHARLIE: Okay.
- ALEX: Why do you think your father went missing for those five days?
- CHARLIE: He was looking for my mother.
- ALEX: Wasn’t that up to the police?
- CHARLIE: They did their best but they weren’t getting anywhere, and the first 48 hours are the most important.
- ALEX: Right. Why did you move in with the Jacobsons after… everything that happened?
- CHARLIE: I was upset with my father.
- ALEX: I’ll say. You asked to be emancipated.
- CHARLIE: I was almost 16, it’s not that unusual.
- ALEX: It kind of is.
- CHARLIE: I was upset, I was angry.
- ALEX: Why?
- CHARLIE: Because he couldn’t find her.
- ALEX: Your father?
- CHARLIE: Yes.
- ALEX: You were angry with your father because he couldn’t do something an entire police force couldn’t do?
- CHARLIE: Something like that.
- ALEX: Okay. Let’s go back to those 5 days. Your father was out there, alone- what do you think he was doing?
- CHARLIE: He wasn’t alone.
- ALEX: I’m sorry?
- CHARLIE: He wasn’t alone. I was with him.
ALEX: We’ll have the conclusion of that interview with Charlie along with Strand’s reaction next time. For now, Dr. Pullman has some information on the sound file Keith Dabic sent us from Russia.
- (telephone ringing)
- DR. PULLMAN: Hello?
- ALEX: Hi! Dr. Pullman, its Alex.
- DR. PULLMAN: Hey, Alex, how’re you doing?
- ALEX: Good, good! Thanks again for doing this.
- DR. PULLMAN: Not a problem. I know you’re busy, so I’ll get to it. I drowned out all the instruments and didn’t find anything under it.
- ALEX: Oh….okay.
- DR. PULLMAN: Yes. You were hoping for more.
- ALEX: Well, we thought maybe you’d find something underneath it all.
- DR. PULLMAN: Like the unsound, right?
- ALEX: Yeah.
- DR. PULLMAN: Yeah, sorry to disappoint you on that, butI did find something.
- ALEX: Okay, what is it?
- DR. PULLMAN: So, I input the file into a program to measure and map relative frequency response and wave pattern structure. Interestingly, when you position the frequency pattern of that music file with the unsound, they’re exactly the same.
- ALEX: What?
- DR. PULLMAN: Yeah! I was as surprised as you. It cycles up and down in perfect symmetry, using one simple formula, when you graph it, it shapes uniformly using one specific ratio.
- ALEX: What ratio?
- DR. PULLMAN: Sorry?
- ALEX: Can you read out the ratio?
- DR. PULLMAN: I can, if you like, but it’s a bit long.
- ALEX: Yeah, that’s fine. Go ahead.
- DR. PULLMAN: Okay…it’s 1.01364335043822
ALEX: From Pythagorean commas to mysterious and evasive composers, this episode has raised a lot more questions than it’s answered. Still no word from or about Keith Dabic and our calls to Percival Black continue to go unanswered. Next time, a lot more about the disappearance of Coralee Strand. Plus, our new agent on the ground in Russia makes a breakthrough. It’s the Black Tapes Podcast, I’m Alex Reagan, we’ll be back again in two weeks.
ALEX: Thank you so much for listening to the black tapes podcast, if you enjoy our show, please rate and review on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you found us. The Black Tapes Podcast is a National Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale production, recorded in Seattle and Vancouver. Produced by Nic Silver, mixed and engineered by Alan Williams and Samantha Paulson. Edited by Nic Silver and Alex Reagan. Associate producer Robert Romero Jr. Executive producers Paul Bae and Terry Miles.