Thursday, October 29, 2009

New music

I have to say that after a few days of listening to modern composers I am pretty surprised...! Some of this music is exciting, and engaging. I really enjoy Ravel, Rachmoninoff, Sibelius, Bartok, Prokofiev, and many others. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be as engaging as it is. I played this one for Jackie that was totally atonal and she said that she didn’t care that it didn’t have a tonal center, that it just sounded like music to her. That was pretty encouraging to me. I have been so worried about it. I finished my first atonal piece today it is on French Horn and not too bad. It was a pretty intense learning experience for me, I started off using a pitch class set 0234579, (for those of you people who know nothing about theory check the bottom) and was doing a good job of sticking to it but my teacher told me that I didn’t really need too, which made me feel relieved but also kinda made me mad because it was some kind of order in the chaotic world of atonality. Also because it was a fun challenge to work within and to try to manipulate to something more than just a random set of pitches. The piece starts out in 5/8 time and starts with 8th note 5ths moving up EBF# then goes to thirds CE, right above the B, The beginning kinda sounds like satellites by Dave Matthew’s band, (one of the few I have heard by them btw) But then changes the 0 in the set. to B rather than A, It is just a sequence of the original but adds a good variation in my opinion. It then moves a totally different direction switching to 16th notes that pull away totally from the set starting the B section of the A section(?(don’t worry I’m confused too)) I am going to stop explaining and let you look at what I did.



and just in case you can’t read music...

The piece isn’t done yet considering dynamics and stuff like that. I also feel like the end isn’t quite together yet. I am however excited that I have completed my first atonal piece!


A pitch class set is a set of pitches that aren’t dependent on a key but on where they sit in relationship to each other. For example the set I was working with was 0234579 if I start this set on C than my pitches would be
C DD#/EbE F G A
0 2 3 4 5 7 9
or if I started on F they would be
F G G#/Ab A Bb C D
0 2 3 4 5 7 9
So what I do is try to write a song that moves around those pitches rather than a sequence of Chords, like a typical I IV V I chord succession. Which is a totally different world and if you want an explanation of that you can ask.

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