Analysis of the end of The Composer’s Voice

For the original entry, the full piece, go here.

I have always wondered what were the notes sung at the end of The Composer’s Voice. Now that I have acquired Melodyne some 5 years later I can investigate that rather strident ending a capella chord to answer the question just what notes did us four xenharmonic musicians without any tuning guidance land on…

First I present the last phrase in mono and noise reduced and compressed.

Here is the spectral analysis – click to enlarge, right click to download and view locally

The first chord is a nice sounding chord – when I took the snip I was not removing harmonics.

The second chord is a bit more fleeting….

It is the third prolonged chord that is most interesting. If you don’t exclude the harmonics you see something that is like two stacked 400 cent thirds with ~ 100 cents between them and some extra flavor.

But if I try to remove the harmonics (which I discovered I could do and still get an analysis during this exercise) one gets to this which is a diminished chord with a diminished minor third. I’d think the tritone is close enough at 578 cents but the 255 cent “third” is a truly xen interval.