Serialism

Audio for this style algorithm. The sheet music.

This style algorithm allows one to generate music using Schoenberg’s Twelve Tone Method of Composition or, applying it to more than just the notes, create music that could be called Serial.

The process starts by taking the first number of unique notes from your initial data equal to the number of pitches in your tuning to form a tone row. If it can’t find enough unique notes then the tone row will make do with less. There is a flag that can be set that allows for immediate repetition in the tone row. Here are some examples. Say the first five notes that are generated are C, E, E, E, C, G. The first method will form the tone row C, E, G (skipping the two E's and C). If the flag is set to allow for immediate repetition then the row would be C, E, E, E, G. The repetition algorithm only allows for immediate repetition if it occurs in the original data.

Once the tone row is in place you can tell the software how to manipulate it. The four commands are P, R, I, and RI which stand for prime, retrograde, inversion, and retrograde inversion. Following each command should be a colon and the transposition in scale degrees or half-steps/semitones. The example above uses the command sequence: P:P1, P:-1, I:P1, R:P1, RI:P8, P:-M7. The first command “P:P1” uses the tone row without manipulating it and without transposing it (P1 means perfect unison which is the root note of whatever scale you choose). Notice that you can use negative values for the transpositions.

In addition to the notes you may, if you wish, also serialize the volume and/or duration tables. The command structure is the same except there are no transpositions. In the example above we used the command sequence “P, R, I, RI” for the volume and “P, RI, R , I” for duration. The rows for each of these is generated as above for notes except that immediate repetitions are not allowed.

The example above started with a chromatic scale but there’s no reason why you couldn’t start with another scale and create a C-Major tone row, for example. And you can also use any tuning like 3-EDO or Harry Partch's 43 Tone system.