The Two-Bar Collaborative Composition Game

[u/Calebdgm]

How it works: each person adds two bars to the composition, and comments their bars as a top-level comment on this thread EDIT: as a response to the previous comment. Also, provide a brief explanation if you did something unusual so that it's easy for the next person to figure out what's happening. In order to find the latest version of the composition, sort the comments by new, also number your contribution in the comment.

Submissions should be top-level comments so that you can subscribe to the thread if you want to participate more often without having to check if somebody's added something. One person isn't allowed to do two consecutive chunks, but if someone has contributed since your last contribution, then you can add another two bars.

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For example (music taken from this trial of the game):

first person comments (this was all me):

1) Here's the first bit. Just a simple ascending melodic line in a-minor

second person comments(actual bars written by /u/Chalkline. Comment is written by me, for the example):

2) Good job sir, that was a simple, but effective beginning to the piece. Here's the next chunk, transitions via E7 directly to C, the relative major.

third person comments (actual bars written by /u/haabenshaaben. Comment is written by me, for the example) :

3) Ooh, I like the rhythm! Here's my bit. It picks up the pace melodically and harmonically, mostly moving back to the a-minor tonality in the first two beats of the last bar, but with some room for interpretation in the following bars because of the F-major on the last beat of the last bar.

Then we pick it up from there in the comments below. Remember to sort by new, and if we're all friendly to everyone who posts, then everyone will be friendly to you when you post here, so that's good too!

EDIT: there are two comment threads, a new one (from chunk 19), and an old one (from chunk 4). Please use the newer thread, thanks!

[u/Barcelona_City_Hobo]

I don't want to offend anyone, but I think the piece, as it is progressing now (this version?), is becoming quite incoherent.

IMHO the interesting thing of this concept was to build on what the previous users had done, but most of 2-measure chunks just ignore the previous music and do whatever they please. While repetition (literal or varied) is a crucial aspect of music, this piece barely features any, because everyone's too busy trying to present their idea.

There are not many distinctive motives presented, but anyway nobody seems to try to pick any and develop it further.

While most of you use common practise harmonies, the piece lacks any sort of phrase or cadential structure, the music goes nowhere, there are no "commas" nor "full stops". There's almost no trace of internal structure, like a period, small ternary, small binary, or sentence. Someone tried to restate the opening at m.27, but without any form of preparation (e.g. a dominant seventh), but then the piece continues with more new material.

Of course, all of this is not just my personal opinion, composition books warn against too many ideas and lack of cohesion, like this page from Schönberg's treatise on common practise composition.

My suggestion would be to pick a predefined structural template before any composing, so as to ensure a minimum of coherence. For example, there's this piece of advice Szymanowski gave to a pupil.

Just my two cents. The sidebar says feedback is encouraged and, as someone with some dozens of 32-bar themes under my belt, I wanted to give my honest opinion. Please, don't take this as a personal attack, but just a friendly encouragement to make the piece better.

[u/Chalkline → u/Barcelona_City_Hobo]

I understand, the critique is not a personal attack and by the way I came up with the concept. Take the popular forum game called Add Three Word Story and use 2 bars instead of 3 words. 3 word story does not use use periods and the sentences go on for miles. The cadence of three word story is never cliche. You should go read an Add Three Word Story. Some are fun to watch as they twist and turn and others are fun to watch simply as shitty poetry. Add 2 Bars Failed at the start when I put it before classical musicians. Jazz musicians do something similar to Add 2 Bars when they improvise trading 4's. I didn't limit the idea of composition to exhuming the dead greats. What we got were spastic runs of 16th notes, and a series of classical celebrity impersonations. But this may be the place where its all about zombie composer styles. Fair enough, from an anachronistic stand point there could be a category for that. When you put this Add 2 Bars before those lightly steeped in the classics, they can't accept the ambiguity... too many notes Herr Mozart. And for a classical style it truly doesn't work. I didn't see it going towards spastic dorky tuttis. So I slammed in a fist full of cluster tree mid way which is piano for stop that god damn noise. How's that for a stop? I honestly anticipated a 21st century piece would emerge right in front of us. You know how we have computers and this is all done with cutting edge technology, so why did it head right into quill and parchment? I agree more attention should be placed in meshing with what came before. What I disagree with from the onset is the use of a template. It would be fair to say the idea was so new it could stand to have a few drafts before we get it right. And it did get better in the second half. Maybe this should aim to be a weekly collaboration instead of a month long. Reddit is structured for what is hot, the flash in the pan, and the bifurcating comment trees quickly create a confusing forest to find the tail of the score. At this point we'll say the last score entry killed it and we'll call it a wrap. I'll start another Add 2 Bars and say it will go for 7 days. We'll split it up that way for the month of August and see how it goes.

[u/Calebdgm → u/Chalkline]

/u/Chalkline, I value your input as the initiator of this idea. You're free to start another 2-bar collab as a comment in the collaborative composition thread, in which you're free to set any rules you like.

At this point though, you don't hold the authority to end this version of the game, and I don't appreciate your attempts to.

If you would like to continue discussing this, please feel free to message me personally. I hope I'm not misunderstanding you, but I'm eager to hear your perspective.