Saul's Music Space

[Saul]

Cool. Please actually make #3 atonal this time.

Did your "Etude In C major No.2" take days?

Why don't you think about this question seriously?

The answer to the question is that you just threw in random stuff, thinking that just because it is "atonal," that it is just as good as the atonal music written by Schoenberg (who often spent a little bit more time than "some days" working on his music).


No, they don't even sound like Webern, for one. Actually, much of Webern I don't even care for...


oh, wait. Was I supposed to say that out loud? But I want to be accepted by these obscure intellectual circles, and to appear cool, I have to pretend that I like Webern. Oh, gee... now no one will accept me. 

What wasn't atonal about it?

[greg]

What wasn't atonal about it?

The first bar and the last two bars are obviously in C Major.

Even during a couple of bars along the way, only white keys are being used, so it retains a feel close to C Major. The whole thing is just 30" long, and nearly half of it feels C Major.

Just because it goes off into some "strange" accidentals for awhile doesn't make it atonal. If you listen to a typical Prokofiev melody, you'll notice that it might start C Major, go off into something else, and then end up connecting to C Major at the end of the melody.

Peter and the Wolf, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/v/pFF1q6l33Fs&feature=PlayList&p=FE4DD082885DFB25&playnext_from=PL&index=6&playnext=2

[Joe_Campbell]

Greg, that was probably the worst permutation of that theme to try and demonstrate tonality...was it played before a football game??

[greg]

Greg, that was probably the worst permutation of that theme to try and demonstrate tonality...was it played before a football game??

I couldn't find a good video- I meant to find one that would just show off the string theme, and that's it. I don't think there is one on youtube, though. You'd have to find a complete performance and know when to start it up.

[Saul]

Greg,

Yes, you made some good points about Gibberish No.2, it does sound more classical then atonal at least in some sections...but by the second measure its not C major any more.

Here's Gibberish No.3


http://www.youtube.com/v/2dKNeGKA3GA

[(poco) Sforzando]

What wasn't atonal about it?

It didn't lack a key center.

But just remember:
Schoenberg: There's plenty of good music yet to be written in C major.
Charles Rosen: The only problem is that nobody has written any of it yet.

[Luke]

Everything you said is pure lie, no wonder you come to the wrong conclusions about me and my works.

I never use any keyboard to write my works. I enter each and every note slowly and thoughtfully.

Really? Truly? Then that is a very sad state of affairs. Tell me why, then, just to take the first thing I look at, your third 'atonal' piece, you 'slow and thoughtfully' entered that recurrent rhythm as four 32nd notes with the last two tied, rather than as two 32nds and a 16th? It looks stupid and it makes the thing harder to read; it's simply the wrong notational choice. I could kind of understand if the computer was making the choices for you - you know I was actually being charitable to you in suggesting that that was how you compose. But, no, you carefully made that notational choice, apparently? Why?

But why you care for this truth, you're only here to make fun and ridicule.

If that is true, please tell me why for many years I have seen you write music like this and said nothing at all? I'm only commenting because of your bizzare claims, the other day, to be a better composer than Schoenberg etc., with your own music posted as 'proof' of this. It needed rebutting, that ridiculous claim, Saul.

And I should be the one asking whether you have a job or not.

Ask away (though it wasn't me who asked you that in the first place). I teach music, Saul - piano, theory, composition, music history, cello.


BTW, that new one isn't atonal either. I know, you sat there and played some 'funny' black notes into it, but that doesn't make it atonal. Look at those long stretches of pure white note figurations, or those simple triad arpeggiations in the left hand - purely tonal they are, though not functionally tonal (but then your usual tonal music isn't functionally tonal either, very often). Your 'atonal' black notes on top of the latter are no such thing at all, they are just a random approximation of the spicy 'wrong-note' technique sometimes used, in a very calculated way, by Prokofiev, in whom they are not atonal either.

[Saul]

Really? Truly? Then that is a very sad state of affairs. Tell me why, then, just to take the first thing I look at, your third 'atonal' piece, you 'slow and thoughtfully' entered that recurrent rhythm as four 32nd notes with the last two tied, rather than as two 32nds and a 16th? It looks stupid and it makes the thing harder to read; it's simply the wrong notational choice. I could kind of understand if the computer was making the choices for you - you know I was actually being charitable to you in suggesting that that was how you compose. But, no, you carefully made that notational choice, apparently? Why?

If that is true, please tell me why for many years I have seen you write music like this and said nothing at all? I'm only commenting because of your bizzare claims, the other day, to be a better composer than Schoenberg etc., with your own music posted as 'proof' of this. It needed rebutting, that ridiculous claim, Saul.

Ask away (though it wasn't me who asked you that in the first place). I teach music, Saul - piano, theory, composition, music history, cello.


BTW, that new one isn't atonal either. I know, you sat there and played some 'funny' black notes into it, but that doesn't make it atonal. Look at those long stretches of pure white note figurations, or those simple triad arpeggiations in the left hand - purely tonal they are, though not functionally tonal (but then your usual tonal music isn't functionally tonal either, very often). Your 'atonal' black notes on top of the latter are no such thing at all, they are just a random approximation of the spicy 'wrong-note' technique sometimes used, in a very calculated way, by Prokofiev, in whom they are not atonal either.

When I compose I also like the score to look interesting and appealing.
That is why I chose to tie the 32 notes.

I would hardly call it stupid. There is absolutely nothing stupid about it, and it makes no problem to read.
But yes, you're entitled to your opinion, Luke.

This is great that you teach music, good for you.

I work as a sales rep in my father's small business, it's a family owned business for the past 20 years.

Cheers,

Saul

[Luke]

When I compose I also like the score to look interesting and appealing.
That is why I chose to tie the 32 notes.

I would hardly call it stupid. There is absolutely nothing stupid about it, and it makes no problem to read.
But yes, you're entitled to your opinion, Luke.

I want to say, first, that everything I'm going to write here I mean completely genuinely, as well-meant compositional advice, and it would be great if you took it on board, because if your music was more legibly written, I promise you that more musicians would take it seriously when they first laid eyes on it. First impressions count, and notation is important, Saul, it tells us a great deal about a composer and how seriously we should take his or her music, just as good or bad spelling tells us about the competence of a writer.

Also, of course, well-notated music is easier to read. I'm good at reading music, Saul, and I know how you mean this music to be played, but because that notation is not really the right one, and because the right one is so obvious, I had to have a second glance at it to check that it was what you really meant. In fact, I've had three or four 'second glances' whilst writing this and the previous post, just to check that, yes, you really did write that rhythm that way - it just seems so odd to me, you see, that someone would choose to do that. As much as possible, it should be a rule of thumb that you don't ask your performers to look twice at your scores as I've had to do - if the rhythm is simple, it needs a simple notation (and if it's complex, it may well need a complex one, and they may have to look at it multiple times before they understand it - that's OK too). The interestingness or appealingness of the score should always come second to legibility, and the sound of the music should always be reflected in the appearance of the score.

In this specific case: of course everyone knows that a tied 32nd is the same as a 16th, but in the context you used it, the 16th is that bit clearer, so you should have chosen to write it that way. There are rules about rhythmic notation, and they are there for a reason - every composer from Bach to Boulez would write that rhythm  32-32-16, not 32-32-32_32, unless there was a specific reason not to.

I've got two examples for you. The first is my own mock-up of the C major scale, in quarter notes, played twice. I hope you agree  that the second notation, in the second bar, is easier to read. The first notation would sound identical, but looks ridiculous, yes? Nevertheless, the deliberate mistakes I made in notating the first one - tying notes that didn't need to be tied, and using wrongly chosen enharmonic accidentals that make the line of the music look different to what it actually is, zig-zagging here where the actual pitch just rises - these are mistakes I've seen over and over in your scores. Not to this extent, obviously, I'm trying to show you why it is a mistake by taking it to an extreme, that's all.

Second example - Beethoven, piano sonata op 110. Here is one of the rare examples where we do see, in the second and third bars, 32 notes tied in the way you did. Notice how in the first bar, the melodic line combines 8ths, 16ths and 32nds in exactly the way I said you ought to - no ties except to clarify the metric structure of the bar (the first quarter-tied-to-dotted-8th could have been written as a double dotted quarter; the 8th tied to a 16th could have been written as a dotted 8th, but the ties here are the right choice because they make clear where the beats lie. This is the correct and normal use of ties). In the next bar, we have the example I really wanted to show you, of what is, essentially, the incorrect use of ties. This notation is bizarre, technically it is wrong, it's confused people for centuries - but that's precisely why it is so wonderful. In a piece of yours, Saul, because this kind of wrong notation is common, we would look at that and just go 'typical Saul, he means straight 16ths I guess'. In a piece of Beethoven, because we know, from all the other perfectly notated bars, that he must have a specific reason for the odd notation, we delve deeper, we discern that the odd notation here must be something to do with the oddness of the music, with this peculiar pulsing repeated note that speeds up and slows down in an organic, natural way, not in the 2-4-8-16 proportions of, well, almost everything else in the classical canon. The 'incorrect' notation here makes us look deeper and understand the very special nature of this passage better, realise that we need to play it in a very special way and with special attention - that's the power of notation, correctly used. If you are going to use ties to tie your 32nds together when they don't actually need to be tied, you lose this potential, as well as just making your music look wrong and uninviting, as explained above.

[Guido]

Greg,

Yes, you made some good points about Gibberish No.2, it does sound more classical then atonal at least in some sections...but by the second measure its not C major any more.

Here's Gibberish No.3


http://www.youtube.com/v/2dKNeGKA3GA

This isn't atonal. Tonal music is allowed to have augmented fourths in it too you know! Much of it just sounds like standard romantic harmony - after bar 5 no one could describe it as atonal, it's very clearly in a key*. Bar 24-27 are pure C major! Again, I quite like this one actually.

*Luke - did you hear the clear references to Janacek's Piano Sonata?

[(poco) Sforzando]

Second example - Beethoven, piano sonata op 110. Here is one of the rare examples where we do see, in the second and third bars, 32 notes tied in the way you did. Notice how in the first bar, the melodic line combines 8ths, 16ths and 32nds in exactly the way I said you ought to - no ties except to clarify the metric structure of the bar (the first quarter-tied-to-dotted-8th could have been written as a double dotted quarter; the 8th tied to a 16th could have been written as a dotted 8th, but the ties here are the right choice because they make clear where the beats lie. This is the correct and normal use of ties). In the next bar, we have the example I really wanted to show you, of what is, essentially, the incorrect use of ties. This notation is bizarre, technically it is wrong, it's confused people for centuries - but that's precisely why it is so wonderful. In a piece of yours, Saul, because this kind of wrong notation is common, we would look at that and just go 'typical Saul, he means straight 16ths I guess'. In a piece of Beethoven, because we know, from all the other perfectly notated bars, that he must have a specific reason for the odd notation, we delve deeper, we discern that the odd notation here must be something to do with the oddness of the music, with this peculiar pulsing repeated note that speeds up and slows down in an organic, natural way, not in the 2-4-8-16 proportions of, well, almost everything else in the classical canon. The 'incorrect' notation here makes us look deeper and understand the very special nature of this passage better, realise that we need to play it in a very special way and with special attention - that's the power of notation, correctly used. If you are going to use ties to tie your 32nds together when they don't actually need to be tied, you lose this potential, as well as just making your music look wrong and uninviting, as explained above.

The famous tied 8th notes (quavers, for them as likes that sort of talk) in the Grosse Fuge are another excellent Beethoven example.

[Luke]

Yeah, but that's a bit too modern and dissonant, dontcha think?

[karlhenning]

This isn't atonal.

No, but it's been well established that Saul is capable of writing gibberish ; )

[(poco) Sforzando]

No, but it's been well established that Saul is capable of writing gibberish ; )

One out of two ain't bad.

[Saul]

No, but it's been well established that Saul is capable of writing gibberish ; )

'Well Established'...?

Don't you know that Atonal is another word for Gibberish?

http://www.youtube.com/v/XJqQk3mgpYY&feature=related

[Joe_Campbell]

Oh God...I love Roslavets! Have you heard his 3 etudes as well? Bring on the gibberish!!

[Saul]

I will soon record myself and play for you some Atonal Gibberish stuff, Karl...hang tight...

[Joe_Campbell]

Why did you edit that post after I said I liked Roslavets? Was he not atonal enough for you? Maybe it was because someone actually professing love for the music you condemn as incompetent would completely shatter your argument that the pursuit of modern "gibberish" is a purely intellectual one.

edit - apparently, the adjustment to his post was made before I even commented, which makes no sense

[Saul]

Why did you edit that post after I said I liked Roslavets? Was he not atonal enough for you? Maybe it was because someone actually professing love for the music you condemn as incompetent would completely shatter your argument that the pursuit of modern "gibberish" is a purely intellectual one.

edit - apparently, the adjustment to his post was made before I even commented, which makes no sense

No it wasnt that atonal, that's right. but this thing is a flip...

[Saul]

Hey Karl,

Here's something I instantly composed on the piano this morning and recorded myself performing it.

Its called Gibberish Fantastique an Atonal Fantasy...

http://www.youtube.com/v/I7gADAx17Mg