But shortly back to the 12tonetopic. Currently my idea is to create a 12tonerow in the common way, and use another set of all 12 notes from the chromatic scale for (free) harmonisation. Surely with a few rules, no tone does appear again until the tonerow has reached the end. For example: Four 7th chords in one tonerow are possible, or maybe 6 triads, or one 9th chord and four triads, etc. pp..
I made a few attempts, and it seems to work. My main problem is at the moment to choose/create the right 12tonerow for my purposes. I don't like if it sounds to tonal, so i have currently some difficulties to divide the scale into groups that make sense...
Joined: Dec 20, 2005 Posts: 110 Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:03 am Post subject:
12 tones Subject description: and Carnatic music
I'm not an expert, but the Carnatic (south Indian) music I've been playing for the past few years seems to have a standard 12-tone framework, with microtones used for what we in the west would consider flourishes or ornamentation. But unlike much "ornamentation", the microtonal notes are often the heart of a piece, and never taken lightly. My sense is that there are almost two separate systems that are double-exposed to create a composition.
Note: I don't mean that the music is 12-tone serial in composition, I just mean that it has a basis in a 12-half step division of an octave. _________________ Robert Edgar
rbedgar@stanford.edu www.robertedgar.com
Joined: Jul 07, 2007 Posts: 2071 Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 7:51 am Post subject:
Subject description: polyharmonies
Polyharmonies are not typically 12 tone, but a polyharmonic piece could use all 12 tones in a chromatic scale during the course of its lifetime.
One approach I like is giving a higher statistical distribution to intervals that I perceive as consonant, and a lower (but often non-zero) distribution to dissonant intervals. This can take the form of multiple voices playing the piece in several overlapping-but-non-identical scales. The harmonies fly apart on the un-shared scale portions and come back together on the shared ones.
Is one allowed to apply statistical methods to standard 12-tone composition? _________________ When the stream is deep
my wild little dog frolics,
when shallow, she drinks.
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
Audio files: 5
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 11:10 am Post subject:
Subject description: polyharmonies
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Is one allowed to apply statistical methods to standard 12-tone composition?
Sure! Unless you equate 12-tone composition with 12-tone-row composition. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Aug 28, 2006 Posts: 858 Location: Guangzhou, China
Audio files: 4
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 1:44 pm Post subject:
danielrast wrote:
Milton Babbitt is getting to one of my favourite composers...
Yeah, Babbitt's one of the few serialist composers whose music has some character and humor. While the rest of the lot were perfectly, deadly serious little musical revolutionaries whose tempests were no bigger than their teapots, he was having a good ol' time.
Speaking of self-proclaimed revolutionaries, Boulez's Sur Incises (excerpt below) actually grooves in a few places (go in about 4 minutes)! I'm not a big fan of Boulez but I warmed up to this piece quite nicely.
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
Audio files: 5
Posted: Thu Dec 24, 2009 3:40 pm Post subject:
Subject description: polyharmonies
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
I guess I meant the row thingy!
Is that what the original post was about?
Merry Christmas.
Yea, the rwo-thingy LOL
BTW Webern's tea pot was two parsecs wide -- I've seen it -- from the inside. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Jul 07, 2007 Posts: 2071 Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 10:04 am Post subject:
Subject description: polyharmonies
bachus wrote:
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
I guess I meant the row thingy!
Is that what the original post was about?
Merry Christmas.
Yea, the rwo-thingy LOL
BTW Webern's tea pot was two parsecs wide -- I've seen it -- from the inside.
Like a Tardis is it -- small on the outside, big on the inside? _________________ When the stream is deep
my wild little dog frolics,
when shallow, she drinks.
Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 4145 Location: Sweden
Audio files: 371
G2 patch files: 100
Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2009 3:11 pm Post subject:
Subject description: polyharmonies
Acoustic Interloper wrote:
One approach I like is giving a higher statistical distribution to intervals that I perceive as consonant, and a lower (but often non-zero) distribution to dissonant intervals.
Joined: Jan 04, 2010 Posts: 10 Location: Guatemala
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 11:37 am Post subject:
Limits off
My recomendation is that you take all of those systems, and all of those rules and remove your fear of creating something within boundaries and create whatever you want. Make an experiment, take a "traditional" chord progression, with a traditional structure, and get some weird chords under, or in a bridge, or take your melody with the traditional chords, and out of nothing keep the melody but use the other weird chords. If you have the need to experiment just try some things, and remeber, it's not about the rules, it's about making it sound right for you, the rules are there because that will automatically sound good, but the can bend or brake.
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
Audio files: 5
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:01 pm Post subject:
Re: Limits off
aldanasjuan wrote:
the rules are there because that will automatically sound good
"In the world of mules there are no rules." Ogden Nash
So it is in music. What people call rules are assertions derived from theoretical analysis of abstractions drawn from the works of real composers. They are there because they give some general indication of what techniques composers have found useful in the past.
No end of truly terrible sounding music has been written that slavishly follows the "rules of music." And one can find no end of examples where even Bach and Beethoven "broke the rules."
Good composers do not follow the rules, they create their own--not blindly but with informed insight and intuition.
Edit:
Thpelling _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham Last edited by bachus on Mon Jan 04, 2010 2:03 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: Aug 08, 2009 Posts: 1082 Location: Out scouting . . .
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 1:26 pm Post subject:
I just discovered this thread and remember working on 12-tone rows in music theory class. This discussion has inspired me to try to find those rows and try to use them together with some new performance/compositional strategies I have been developing.
--Steve
Joined: Jul 07, 2007 Posts: 2071 Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 2:30 pm Post subject:
MusicMan11712 wrote:
I just discovered this thread and remember working on 12-tone rows in music theory class. This discussion has inspired me to try to find those rows and try to use them together with some new performance/compositional strategies I have been developing.
--Steve
You rascal!
I'm attacking finger / accent patterns myself. Very easy to get stuck in a rut there.
The Musimathics Vol. I book has pretty good introductory coverage of 12-tone rows. I am sure that there are plenty of others. _________________ When the stream is deep
my wild little dog frolics,
when shallow, she drinks.
Joined: Jan 18, 2005 Posts: 4145 Location: Sweden
Audio files: 371
G2 patch files: 100
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 2:38 pm Post subject:
Re: Limits off
bachus wrote:
aldanasjuan wrote:
the rules are there because that will automatically sound good
"In the world of mules there are no rules." Ogden Nash
So it is in music. What people call rules are assertions derived from theoretical analysis of abstractions drawn from the works of real composers. They are there because they give some general indication of what techniques composers have found useful in the past.
I believe that all music is listened to in context - you compare the sounds you hear with sounds you've heard before. A composer or musician uses the current context to make new music and becomes part of a feedback loop, like a still string picking up the vibrations from adjacent strings. If his or her new music is powerful enough, or resonates with some trend, it changes the context.
Any sound that lacks all connection to context will just sound like gibberish, or noise - you can't make sense of it. At the same time it is obvious when you are just mimicking something that has already been played or composed, and you'll be regarded as equally uninteresting.
The "rules" of music are that context. Like with language, it takes some training to use it properly, but it also changes all the time, as does language (a fairly common answer from a language expert when asked if x or y is the proper way to phrase something is: "both are correct"). I'm very much into the idea of music as a kind of language without purpose.
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
Audio files: 5
Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 4:37 pm Post subject:
Re: Limits off
Antimon wrote:
...The "rules" of music are that context. ...
William Hoskins believed that for "modern" music each peice should be understood to create it's own rules and so extened the context of music "in vivo", so to speak. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Aug 08, 2009 Posts: 1082 Location: Out scouting . . .
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 5:42 pm Post subject:
I just scanned one of my HS 12-tone row thingies. As part of the music theory class, we had classmates perform the piece.
Although it was decades ago I seem to recall having my performers do this as a round. I am not sure if I orchestrated this somewhere along the lines. I do remember that it was tough for HS musicians to play--and I had absolutely no conducting skills. Also, the syncopation was challenging. I seem to recall when designing the rows I was trying to develop some chord-like overlapping.
For the fun of it, I started to plug the notes into SONAR a few days ago to try to recreate it as I think I imagined it all those years ago. I will see if I can do a piece based on this but using performance techniques I am now developing.
Anyhow, since I stumbled onto this thread, I thought I'd dig this out and share it.
--Steve
Historical footnote: the blank staff paper was reproduced by a ditto machine; hence its purple color.
Joined: Feb 29, 2004 Posts: 2922 Location: Up in that tree over there.
Audio files: 5
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 6:37 pm Post subject:
MusicMan11712 wrote:
Historical footnote: the blank staff paper was reproduced by a ditto machine; hence its purple color.
Yea, I remember ditto machines too ... wow! you really are old
Anyway 'be interesting to hear what you do with it. _________________ The question is not whether they can talk or reason, but whether they can suffer. -- Jeremy Bentham
Joined: Jul 07, 2007 Posts: 2071 Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 6:50 pm Post subject:
bachus wrote:
MusicMan11712 wrote:
Historical footnote: the blank staff paper was reproduced by a ditto machine; hence its purple color.
Yea, I remember ditto machines too ... wow! you really are old
Anyway 'be interesting to hear what you do with it.
Ah, I helped to cofound and coedit an alternative high school newspaper that outsold the official school mouthpiece by an order of magnitude and turned a profit, which we plowed back into improving our materials and overall look. This was some time before PCs. In addition to writing and editing, one of my main jobs was inking and running the ditto machine that we used to print the thing.
I was also in the official journalism / school newspaper staff that year, earning a "C" for the accomplishment of outselling the journalism class' rag. Got thrown out of the National Honor Society as well. Good times!
EDIT: Correction, I am pretty sure ours was a mimeograph machine. I know that the ink was black. I did left+right justification manually by counting letters and adding spaces before I typed the articles up. _________________ When the stream is deep
my wild little dog frolics,
when shallow, she drinks.
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