The Third Frequency

Twenty seconds.

Two sung tones. C2 at 65.41 Hz. G2 at 98.00 Hz. A perfect fifth apart. Neither one is the difference tone.

Subtract 65.41 from 98.00 and you get 32.59 Hz. That frequency doesn't exist anywhere in this piece until the two voices are added together through a curve that isn't perfectly straight. Add two signals through a linear stage and you get their sum, nothing else. Add them through a nonlinear one and the stage folds them into each other, and new frequencies appear that neither signal contained. Sums. Differences. Their multiples. 32.59 Hz is one of those.

It has no oscillator. No one sang it. It isn't hiding inside either voice, waiting to be isolated. It's made in the meeting of the two, in a stage that bends slightly instead of adding cleanly, and it stops existing the instant either voice drops out.

That's the part I keep sitting with. A frequency that belongs to neither source, exists only between them, and vanishes the moment they stop being close to each other. Not a blend. Not an average. A third thing, made by proximity and a little bit of nonlinearity, that has no home of its own.

I built this because I wanted to hear a frequency that lives only on those terms. This is C2 and G2. The frequency between them was never sung.