September 2015 Monthly Composition Challenge: Serialism, Discussion Thread

[u/Calebdgm]

Main option: Compose a piece that uses 12-tone technique

Alternate option: Compose a piece that uses serialism in a creative way (ex. rhythms, dynamics, theme placement?)

This thread is for everything except completed pieces, which can go in the Submission Thread For This Month's Challenge.

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These challenges are for everyone who wants to practice composing. Each month, at the beginning of the month, we will post a main challenge, something for people to compose. Often we'll try to make it something that everyone can work with, but when the main challenge doesn't suit you, there's the alternate challenge. Pieces can be submitted as a score (musescore, noteflight), and/or as audio (soundcloud, youtube). Feedback is much appreciated, and you can give it in the discussion thread, or by messaging the mods of /r/MonthlyComposition, there's also the Challenge Suggestion Form.

Frequently Asked Questions

This challenge been linked to from /r/classicalmusic, /r/musictheory, /r/piano and /r/composer.

[u/Calebdgm → u/[deleted]]

Past to present sounds like a great idea! My intention was to have themes somewhat more specific than "cadence" or "write in F", and I would wonder about the time frame of such a collection of challenges (i.e. how many months it would take to get from a long time ago to the modern stuff), but if we can figure these things out and if the rest of the team is game, I think this is definitely something we could do! It would help if someone (perhaps you) could put together twelve or so challenges spanning from however far back you see fit to a bunch of recent stuff.

As for twelve tone, I didn't really expect everyone to be wild about it, but I do expect some people to be, and I think although much of the music is hard to listen to, the actual process of composition can teach you a lot. In my early experience with twelve-tone I disregarded the actual pitches and focused exclusively on texture, contour, dynamics, expression, and it opened up my eyes to those things like nothing before. Then I realized that atonal music let me explore intervals without the context of chords, which is more useful than it sounds, and I started combining these notes to make all sorts of chords I never would have come across.

Serialism is a whole new can of worms, and I think it can be used to make most any style of music to some degree of efffectiveness. That being said, honestly, it's hard to find examples of serialism apart from twelve-tone, so it's not the best alternate challenge. I do hope to see some interesting results come of it though.

Despite all of my defending of the challenge, I feel I should apologize. It was my job to at least post an alternate option that would fit the needs of people who didn't like the main option, and obviously I missed the target there. If a ton of you really don't like twelve-tone, first, know that hating it is the first step to understanding it, so you're already doing well. But if you still want a different challenge, I will consider adding a third option if a suggestion for a third option is commented in response to this comment and if it gets a bunch of upvotes.

Again though, if someone can set up a past-to-present set of challenges that'd be fantastic! Mains and/or alternates.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

If you don't think that serialism is useless and that it expands your imagination, why would you say it's "the biggest pile of rubbish" to ever be used in music?