Recently my co-workers asked me about the tragic polyphony accident that I describe on my profile here on KGMI’s fine Web site; the accident that I claim rendered me permanently unable to hear diminished 13^th chords. Many of them struggled to conceive what horrible abuse of harmony could possibly leave a musician without the ability to hear a dim13. I had to confess that I can still hear dim13 chords just fine, but I haven’t blogged in a while so I decided to come up the following explanation…

It happened in a smoke-filled jazz bar back in the pre-9/11 days. I was on the stage with a surly bebop trio experimenting with avant-garde chord-combinations. I don’t remember the event very well, but the boys tell me I was hunched over my piano pouring with sweat, obsessed with finding even more radical and bizarre ways to pound the keys. After six sleepless days and nights of pushing the limits of discord, we stumbled upon what is now known as the “brown chord,” and I instantly fell on the keyboard screaming with blood pouring out of my ears. As I recovered from the accident, the doctors told me I had gained the ability to taste colors, but I would be cursed with horrible flashbacks every time I hear a diminished 13^th chord.