Bzzzt! Thanks for Playing

Hypothetical situation:

Imagine that you’re going to a concert. However, you’re not going alone. You’re taking an old friend (I picture Samuel L. Jackson). The thing is, you want to have some fun. You decide that you’re not going to tell your friend where you’re taking him—it’ll be a surprise. So you blindfold him. Even after you arrive and sit down in your seats, the blindfold remains fixed.

Then...

...lute music!

McFarlane demonstrated great technical facility on his 18-stringed instrument, and his swift five-finger plucking would have created the illusion of several more musicians onstage...

In other words, your friend with the blindfold would have thought there was more than one musician. That’s how good this guy was.

...were it not for the lute's delicate timbre.

Naturally, without a blindfold, you would have been able to see that there was only one player. Sam L., on the other hand, would have been able to figure it out, because he could hear the timbre was delicate. You know, unlike the crude timbre of three lutes.

Um, yeah. (winces, inhales) I don’t know about that. Maybe I'm terribly nitpicky, but I would have guessed it was an auditory spatial location thing, not an auditory spectra recognition thing. So...

Bzzzt! Thanks for playing.
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