Works » By Title » P » Puzzle (1:48 / 1972)

Puzzle was composed when Vivian Adelberg Rudow was a student in electronic music at the Peabody Conservatory. Her assignment was to compose a piece using lots of splicing, cutting 1/4 inch magnetic recording tape with a straight edge razor and taping it together with splicing tape. There was very little equipment at Peabody, and only an old Ampex nonprofessional quarter track tape deck at home. She recorded an everyday sound at home on meager equipment, took the tape to school and manipulated the sounds to slower, or faster speeds, took the newly made tape with the manipulation plus the original tape home, cut them up with the single sided razor blade and spliced the piece together forming a sound puzzle, leaving the original sound at the end.

People guessed the sound and the Puzzle was played over the radio with the radio station offering a prize. I always timed the guessing to see who was fastest at guessing (giving candy as a prize). The fastest person was a ballet dancer who was having trouble with the original sound product.