## First foray in dodecaphony

This week’s assignment in Visual Music with Zach Layton is to write a short twelve-tone piece for piano or electronics.

Using the Sounding Stone Twelve-Tone Row Calculator, I generated a twelve-tone series based on A, D, and G.

 Prime: A D G at transposition 0 is A D G Inversion: A E B at transposition 1 is Bb F C Retrograde: G D A at transposition 6 is Db Ab Eb Retro. Inv.: B E A at transposition 7 is Gb B E

12 x 12 Matrix:

 I n v e r s i o n v P r i m e -> ^ R e t r o I n v e r s i o n A D G Bb F C Db Ab Eb Gb B E E A D F C G Ab Eb Bb Db Gb B B E A C G D Eb Bb F Ab Db Gb Ab Db Gb A E B C G D F Bb Eb Db Gb B D A E F C G Bb Eb Ab Gb B E G D A Bb F C Eb Ab Db F Bb Eb Gb Db Ab A E B D G C Bb Eb Ab B Gb Db D A E G C F Eb Ab Db E B Gb G D A C F Bb C F Bb Db Ab Eb E B Gb A D G G C F Ab Eb Bb B Gb Db E A D D G C Eb Bb F Gb Db Ab B E A <- R e t r o g r a d e

In the Etude I have composed, I wanted to sketch out the vertical (harmonic) and horizontal (melodic) qualities of the 12-tone set. I sat down at the piano, and started recording in GarageBand, while I improvised several vertical and horizontal ways of playing through the 12-tone set. Then I did some editing of the sound samples in GB to isolate the performances I wanted to keep and then added some delay and multitracked the piano parts slightly out of phase to create a “serialism-meets”minimalism” kind of effect.