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Twelve Tone Help !

ed buller

Senior Member
Hi

I am curious weather anybody can point me in the right direction regarding techniques used in this sort of music. It's definitely Satan Bug Row.png

but where does the surrounding material come from. Is that made up of notes from the row just used as a pitch set rather than following a traditional serial approach ?


the row in use ( the b is heard earlier ! )


View attachment The Satan Bug; The Clue extract.mp3

I really don't like twelve tone music ( although I love Berg) are there disciplines and approaches that were used by the Hollywood crowd that where widespread and made this music sound so distinctive ?

I can hear the "Row sound" clearly here. Again the surrounding harmony sounds quasi tonal. are these the "berg Tricks ?"



best

ed
 
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Hi Ed, i'm in a hurry, but these are some basic concepts:

- Tradititionally, everything is derived from the row.

The material is (in theory):
1) The row and every chromatic transposition
2) The row and every chromatic transposition backwards ("retrograde")
3) the row with inverted intervals ("Inversion")
4) the inversion backward ("retrograde inversion")

in your case, the inversion would be:
g-b-c-g#-f-a-c#-d-f#-a#-e-d#

- you can use the row in a melodic and/or a harmonic sense.

- you can combine different rows (also transpositions, retrogrades, inversions etc.)

- different rows may meet in unison, but not in octaves

With your row, there would be lots of possible chords that sound somehow tonal.
(that's something A. Berg did often)

E.g.

- Eb-G-D (reminds Ebj7)
- d#-f#-a-d (reminds B7#9)
-D-f#-a (D maj)
-f#-a-c#-e# (f#min j7)
-a-f-c# (A+)
-db-f-ab-c (Dbj7)
- c-g#-e (C+)
e-g#-h-a# (Emaj add#11)

etc.

tbc.
 
Have you laid out the matrix (run P0 across and I0 down and fill in the rest) and studied it for harmonic potential? In general some rows work better for quasi tonal use, and then learning various row operations, chunking into 3, 4, and 6 note complexes, and so forth, can also help surface tonal combinations, or rather the notes that you want rather than what the system is most immediately presenting you with.

But maybe you are just wondering how to go about analyzing once you have the row? That again requires the matrix or at least being able to identify the row forms in use. Tracing rows is not a lot harder than doing something like sudoku puzzles, but there aren’t really any formal rules to how rows can be used other than the notes will come in sequential order. But multiple notes can also be used at the same time and multiple row forms can be used at the same time as well. And you can use partial rows. And you can repeat notes.

in any case for this excerpt I’d make a matrix and sit down with the score and sort the harmony out from that.
 
I really don't like twelve tone music ( although I love Berg) are there disciplines and approaches that were used by the Hollywood crowd that where widespread and made this music sound so distinctive ?
Another source of inspiration from Hollywood with a less immediately obvious use of serialism is David Shire’s score for the OG Taking of Pelham 123.

Also, there’s John O’Callaghan’s book on Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes.
 
Have you laid out the matrix (run P0 across and I0 down and fill in the rest) and studied it for harmonic potential? In general some rows work better for quasi tonal use, and then learning various row operations, chunking into 3, 4, and 6 note complexes, and so forth, can also help surface tonal combinations, or rather the notes that you want rather than what the system is most immediately presenting you with.

But maybe you are just wondering how to go about analyzing once you have the row? That again requires the matrix or at least being able to identify the row forms in use. Tracing rows is not a lot harder than doing something like sudoku puzzles, but there aren’t really any formal rules to how rows can be used other than the notes will come in sequential order. But multiple notes can also be used at the same time and multiple row forms can be used at the same time as well. And you can use partial rows. And you can repeat notes.

in any case for this excerpt I’d make a matrix and sit down with the score and sort the harmony out from that.
It's been a while since I've done anything like this, but I think that would be the most reliable way to test just how freely these excerpts are composed.

My guess would be that neither Goldsmith nor Williams, nor most others in Hollywood, followed procedure as strictly as, say, Webern did at times. More likely it was just another tool in the toolbox? Like the Berg approach.
 
Have you laid out the matrix (run P0 across and I0 down and fill in the rest) and studied it for harmonic potential? In general some rows work better for quasi tonal use, and then learning various row operations, chunking into 3, 4, and 6 note complexes, and so forth, can also help surface tonal combinations, or rather the notes that you want rather than what the system is most immediately presenting you with.

But maybe you are just wondering how to go about analyzing once you have the row? That again requires the matrix or at least being able to identify the row forms in use. Tracing rows is not a lot harder than doing something like sudoku puzzles, but there aren’t really any formal rules to how rows can be used other than the notes will come in sequential order. But multiple notes can also be used at the same time and multiple row forms can be used at the same time as well. And you can use partial rows. And you can repeat notes.

in any case for this excerpt I’d make a matrix and sit down with the score and sort the harmony out from that.
Yes, the matrix is the foundation of pantonal music.

Best,

Geoff
 
My guess would be that neither Goldsmith nor Williams, nor most others in Hollywood, followed procedure as strictly as, say, Webern did at times. More likely it was just another tool in the toolbox? Like the Berg approach.
exactly !...I don't think they did use it other than as a colour but THAT's what i am trying to crack. I have lot's of books that cover serialism and dodecaphony. That's not what intrigues me. I think there was a hollywood trick that a lot of composers where using in the 60's that had THAT sound to it but was also a more stable tonal world. I just hear it in all the irwin Allen TV stuff and also some leith stevens ( war of the worlds ) and others. Very different to what was going on 5 years before or five years after !

best

ed
 
The way I see it, there are two approaches you might take. One would be to study the sixties composers themselves, and the other would be to study the composers who might have influenced them.

Certainly, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps would have been an influence, for example, in addition to Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern.

Even though you're not interested in a strict adherence to 12-tone form, I still think that creating a matrix could be helpful, simply because it provides variations on a theme as well as suggesting harmonic ideas.

Best,

Geoff
 
exactly !...I don't think they did use it other than as a colour but THAT's what i am trying to crack. I have lot's of books that cover serialism and dodecaphony. That's not what intrigues me. I think there was a hollywood trick that a lot of composers where using in the 60's that had THAT sound to it but was also a more stable tonal world. I just hear it in all the irwin Allen TV stuff and also some leith stevens ( war of the worlds ) and others. Very different to what was going on 5 years before or five years after !

best

ed
I'm almost certain you will find those harmonies derive from the row if you get hold of the music. But you'll need to lay out the matrix and look at a score (or transcribe) to figure out how. The harmony is almost certainly formed by isolating and verticalizing cells derived from the rows into sonorities that hover in a tonal proximity, as per @Living Fossil's post.

ETA: Here's the matrix:

Screen Shot 2021-04-24 at 3.56.44 PM.png
If you aren't finding the harmonies in the matrix, you likely isolated something other than the correct row form. That would be my assumption rather than that the composer used the row only to generate the thematic material. There is just so little reason to compose this kind of music that way, and abandoning the row for the harmony rather slows down the compositional process since you are back to weighing every note choice (as with free atonality).
 
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I would also recommend doing some short serial composition exercises where you push the system toward tonal and/or octatonic expression. That's probably the best way to get a feel for how the system shapes compositional thinking as it intersects with quasi tonal material.
 
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