The Biggest, Oddest (and Most Unique) Sound in New York

Several months ago, a group of college students waited to be admitted into 275 Church Street, a small, unremarkable black building in New York's Tribeca neighborhood. After being buzzed in, they began to ascend the stairs and got the first sign that they were at the location of the Dream House: "We heard this strange sound coming from upstairs," says Troy Carey. They started to feel uneasy. It was a jarring, droning noise that only got louder as they approached the exhibit's entrance on the third floor. "We peeked in," he says — the sound was now blaring — "but we got too freaked out, so we left."

The Dream House is simply a warm, dimly lit, spacious room, but it's also a portal that whisks visitors away from the world outside. It is the creation of minimalist composer La Monte Young ("The Well-Tuned Piano") and his collaborator, visual artist Marian Zazeela. The ominous droning sound is a composition by Young. The full title is notoriously long but it begins, "The Base 9:7:4: Symmetry in Prime Time... ." The room is empty save for some pillows, a shrine, Zazeela's light works and the four refrigerator-sized speakers blaring Young's work. Since Young and Zazeela first opened the Dream House in 1993, intrepid New Yorkers, musicians and sound fanatics have been going to bask in its unusual environment. It will close on June 20th and reopen again in September.

At first the sound at the Dream House may seem like a noisy bog, but closer listening reveals it be an intricate composition that contains very specific properties. The sound is composed of 35 tones that create small and never-before-heard intervals found between the notes Ab and C, which are then redistributed over nearly the entire range of human hearing. Young was able to articulate these innovative intervals through the use of a specialized electronic instrument called the Rayna synthesizer. "Not only is it unlikely that anyone has ever worked with these intervals before, it is also highly unlikely that anyone has ever heard them or perhaps even imagined the feelings they create," Young once said of the synth's capabilities.

"La Monte has always been interested in making new music, and he doesn't mean new as in novel, he means new as in 'it didn't exist in the universe before,' " says Jeremy Grimshaw, an Assistant Professor at Brigham Young University who is writing a book on Young's work. "When you first walk into the Dream House you've probably never heard those sounds before. This is not a fully accurate explanation but imagine it like this: Ring the G string and then the B string on a guitar. Now imagine 35 microtones crammed in between them and then redistributed over seven octaves. That is approximately what the sound played at the Dream House is like."