It sounds horrible, but that’s exactly the point.

In a new TED talk titled ‘The Beautiful Math Behind The Ugliest Music’ you can hear what they’ve called the world’s first piano sonata free of any patterns or repetition whatsoever.

As mathematician Scott Rickard points out early on, that does not mean it is just random notes. Rather, the piece is based around a Costas Array, which is used primarily in radar and sonar. As Rickard explains, the development to create this piece is really just a tremendously complex 88×88 Costa Array (since there are 88 keys on a piano) that’s founded on hundreds of years of developed field theory.

If “pattern free” piano music sounds familiar to some of you — well, it should. In addition to citing the mathematicians that inspired the piece, Rickard also brings up composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose own explorations of atonailty and form breaking have had a huge influence on music ever since. Schoenberg’s work was similar to what’s happening here, though not exactly the same – he actually died over a decade before John P. Costas first wrote about his arrays.

Watch the TED talk below.