In the con­ven­tional use of an in­stru­ment the ba­sic tone is con­sid­era­bly louder than the over­tones con­nected to and built upon it. There­fore our fac­ulty of dis­crimi­na­tion ne­glects the spec­trum of over­tones in fa­vour of the ba­sic tone, and we never clearly ex­peri­ence the pat­tern of the over­tones – the true world of the mu­si­cal sound-space.

It is like stand­ing in front of a loud ship’s siren, next to which quiet mu­sic is played from the ra­dio: one no longer hears the mu­sic but only a slight col­ouration in the sound of the siren.

In the con­ven­tional way of play­ing an in­stru­ment this mixture of siren and ra­dio is what we call the sound of the in­stru­ment, and the re­spec­tive timbre of the in­stru­ment then re­sults from the re­spec­tive ra­dio pro­gram.

Such an in­stru­ment tech­nique is as far from the true mas­tery of an in­stru­ment as this siren-ra­dio mixture is from a subtle, ar­tis­tic mu­si­cal event.

More­over, the lis­tener does not per­ceive the in­di­vid­ual over­tones sepa­rate in space and there­fore misses the ex­peri­ence of space from the very be­gin­ning.