Autoschediasms, the American composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey's conception of spontaneous composition, casts the participants as equals. The decision-making power is balanced between Sorey and the instrumentalists. Focusing on the 2020 performance of Autoschediasms by Sorey and the contemporary-music ensemble Alarm Will Sound, presented as part of the ensemble's Video Chat Variations series, this article limns the experience of Autoschediasms and asks: what is the sensory counterpart to Sorey's democratic ethos? In Autoschediasms, I argue, it is timbre that synchronises the performers’ interactions, in all their care and openness, with the pressures and freedoms of listening. Timbre activates absorbing, unforeseen, manifold variation in the composition. This sonic impression of democratic music-making around and across difference comes to reflect the conditions of radical humanity and vulnerability inherent in spontaneity. Through close listening, and in dialogue with critical improvisation studies and timbre theory, I suggest that Autoschediasms illuminates the ethical dimension of timbre: what timbre can do for the aspiration towards musical inclusivity.