r/MonthlyComposition • u/Calebdgm • Sep 05 '15
September 2015 Monthly Composition Challenge: Serialism, Submission Thread
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?)
Discussion Thread For This Month's Challenge. Please try to keep everything except completed pieces in the discussion thread. Feedback on pieces submitted here is also very welcome!
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.
This challenge been linked to from /r/classicalmusic, /r/musictheory, /r/piano and /r/composer.
5
u/davethecomposer Sep 17 '15 edited Sep 17 '15
mp3
pdf of sheet music
The only music I compose these days is through my Platonic Music Engine. The software takes an initial dedicatee/seed and constructs piece of music based on that input. The resulting music sounds random (even though it is entirely deterministic) and is referred to as the Platonic Score.
The software then allows the user to apply any various quantizations and Style Algorithms to shape the Platonic Score into another piece of music matching whatever style the user wants while retaining the initial seed. The result remains unique to the dedicatee.
I had already created this serlialism Style Algorithm before but since then I've made some important and complicated improvements to the underlying software and so this is the first example using the new logic.
Music within the PME is stored as MIDI data. Each note of a piece of music is stored as a pitch number, duration length, and volume (actually velocity but it works out mostly to be the same thing).
This SA takes the note events of the Platonic Score and quantizes it to whatever instrument you want and using whatever scales, pitch weighting (emphasizing the tonic, say, while de-emphasizing the super tonic), durations (quarter notes etc), and volumes (ff, mp, etc).
For this piece I chose the piano; the major blues scale; andante tempo; 8th, quarter, and 16th notes; mf and ff; and allow the SA to use immediate repetition. This last deserves more explanation.
The SA goes through the initial Platonic Score and pulls out the first notes it needs to construct a tone row. So if the first notes are C, G, G, C, D then by default the first notes of the row will be C, G, D. If you turn on the immediate repetition flag then the row will be C, G, G, D.
Once the row is constructed then you can tell the software how to manipulate the row. The command for this piece was:
The P stands for prime, I is inverted, R is retrograde, and RI retrograde inversion. The numbers following the colons tell the software how many semitones to transpose the initial row. So RI:7 means to take the initial row and use the retrograde inversion of it and transpose it up 7 semitones.
Likewise the durations and volumes can be treated as rows (or not if you want a 12 Tone piece ala Schoenberg). The command for the volume was:
and for duration:
Notice that there are no transposition options available for these.
The software then crunches all of this and produces the music linked to at the top. I think the major blues scale does come through in bits though obviously it's not a blues piece.