twelve-tone music

The twelve-tone technique is a style of musical composition that organizes all twelve notes of the chromatic scale into a series called a tone row.

Additionally, a twelve-tone series is a repository of intervals and can be seen as an outgrowth of atonal music with its emphasis on interval over chord or scale. The basic premises of twelve-tone music are as follows: All twelve notes of the chromatic scale must occur.

The pitch material of a strict 12-tone work is entirely (or nearly entirely) derived from a single 12-tone row. A row is an ordered set of the twelve pitch classes of the chromatic scale. Each of the 12 will appear exactly once, and order is paramount.

Serialism or the twelve-tone technique is a way of composing music that involves replacing major and minor scales with a fixed ordering of the pitches in the chromatic scale. This generates a structure that, in principle, remains in place throughout the composition in question.

In classical music and Western music in general, the most common tuning system since the 18th century has been 12 equal temperament (also known as 12-tone equal temperament, 12-TET or 12-ET, informally abbreviated as 12 equal), which divides the octave into 12 parts, all of which are equal on a logarithmic scale, with ...

The idea behind twelve is to build up a collection of notes using just one ratio. The advantage to doing so is that it allows a uniformity that makes modulating between keys possible.

Example. P, R, I and RI can each be started on any of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, meaning that 47 permutations of the initial tone row can be used, giving a maximum of 48 possible tone rows.

Twelve-tone music is an example of serialism (q.v.) in music.

But when it comes to our familiar 12 notes, it's not all about frequency – in fact, frequency hasn't created this set of 12. We typically use just 12 notes in Western music because of the spaces – or intervals – between the notes. Pieces of music are familiar entirely because of these intervals.

Create a Twelve-Tone Melody With a Twelve-Tone Matrix

1. Introduction: Create a Twelve-Tone Melody With a Twelve-Tone Matrix.
2. Step 1: Write Numbers in the Top Row.
3. Step 2: Populate the First Column.
4. Step 3: Fill in the Second Row.
5. Step 4: Fill in the Remaining Rows.
6. Step 5: Translate the Numbers to Pitches.
7. Step 6: Write Music!

Twelve-tone technique (also dodecaphony, and in British usage, twelve-note composition) is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg.

Example. P, R, I and RI can each be started on any of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale, meaning that 47 permutations of the initial tone row can be used, giving a maximum of 48 possible tone rows.