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 I | |||||||||||
| 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.
