Kris Rhodes

Just as the title asks.

Here's a song called "No matter what you might hear." I think it goes in this forum, as it certainly doesn't seem to fit any of the other categories. It's not jazz or rock, but it's probably accurate to call it "pop." I can imagine something like it (but much much better of course) being played on an Indie station. It has lyrics. Such as they are, they are as follows: I've included a "score" in NWC as well as the MIDI file. I put scare quotes around "score" because I generally use NWC just as a way to command the computer, not so much as a way to record a song for performance. Tell me what, if anything, you think. (Among many other things, I'm curious to know what you think is going on--who's the speaker, who are they talking to, what's the situation, and so on. It is not important that anyone get it "right"--there's no such thing in this case IMO--but I'm curious to know what people's impressions are.) -Kris NoMatterWhatYouMightHear.nwc NoMatterWhatYouMightHear.mid

I specified in my second post what I meant: Music that is not in a key, and is not usefully analyzed as moving from key to key. A later post in this thread, and wikipedia, seem to confirm my understanding--atonal music is "music without a tonal center." (Note, also, that by hedging that with the phrase "usefully analyzed" rather than simply "analyzed" I by-the-by showed that I am aware of the complexities and ambiguities involved in the question I was trying to ask.) Later, I also said I am looking for 12-tone and serial works. I selected these out of a list provided by someone else of types of music that sometimes get called "atonal." (Note: That list also included "aleatoric" music--random music--which is probably most likely to be strictly atonal, but I did not choose it because, being random, I doubt the music can be interpreted as communicating emotionally at all. I'd be happy to be corrected on that.) Also, to be clear: This board is great, and everyone here has for the most part been really cool. This thread has been very helpful. Comments on my music have been encouraging, constructive and edifying. I'm just taking issue with one small point: I do not think my understanding of atonal music is "simplified." I will grant it might not be articulate, since I have not been in contact with the composing community for about ten years now and I didn't have the idiom down even back then. -Kris Edited to add: To supply some context, I've written a self-introduction for the forum here.

Thanks everyone. I checked out George Crumb, and what I heard didn't seem to be quite what I was looking for. But I liked it. Meanwhile, the Quartet for the End of Tmie blew me away. I think I'm going to buy it. I see now how atonal music can do more than I have yet heard. -Kris

1. Techniques used: Noodling around 2. How long it took to compose the piece: An hour? 3. Structure of your piece: Palindromic, with variation. 4. Obstacles when composing: Making it intuitively "musical' while remaining interesting and palindromic. By "palindromic" I mean the fact that, in the first and last parts, the left and right hands are mirror-imaging each other, and also the fact that the song roughly follows an ABCBA overall structure. 5. Summary of overall piece: ?? Enjoy and critique! I know already that it's too short. :D -Kris palindrome.mid

Are you writing these as technical exercises or as something more than that? -KRh

Indeed! :whistling: Kind of what I was thinking as well, were I to keep working on this thing. Strange... the square wave voice on my computer souds very different than it did on my other computer. The one on my current computer is definitely not a pure square wave. (I'm talking, by the way, about a voice that is called "Lead: Square Wave" in the list of voices.) It's got this punchy attack, and a tone I'm tempted to describe as more "wet" than that of a pure square wave. Thanks for pointing that out. My computer, indeed, can not play bass very well. For example, if there is a bass drum in something I write, and if there is more than one voice other than the drum track, then I basically will not be able to hear the bass drum. So this is probably why the bass is so loud--I've turned it way up in order to be able to hear it on my machine. When others listen, are they able easily to turn the bass down as the midi file is played? I would not know how to do so myself, other than through use of WMP's equalizer function--which I've never been convinced actually does anything. KRh

Thanks, everyone, for your comments and analysis so far. It's been very interesting and constructive. If I do return to this piece, I think I will (as Nightfly suggested) treat it as an "introduction" to a longer work. Not a huge work--maybe three "movements" about the size of the song as it currently is. As Hane suggested, I will think about how varying beats-per-note could contribute to various dramatic effects. And as Nikolas suggested, I will think about, after all, not returning to this piece, and instead writing new stuff from scratch. Thanks again! KRh BTW Nikolas your analysis (which, as an aside to everyone else, I had requested in another thread) was exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for, and was very informative as a jumping-off point for me to begin my own research into this kind of stuff.

From that list, I would be especially interested in serial and 12-tone examples. Also, I do not know what "polytonal," "polymodal," or "aleatoric" mean. Interesting... Can you do me a favor and listen to my the attached file* (it's very short) and say something about how its harmony is to be analyzed in contemporary terms? Does it have a tonal sense of harmony or not? If not, what kind of sense of harmony does it have? Etc. (I've always thought of it as having a tonal harmony, but one which floats somewhat erraticly from key to key. However, I never thought about it that hard, and now that I do think about it, I'm starting to think I might have been wrong. Now I can't tell whether it's just that it has tonality but breaks some tonal expectations, or rather, whether it's simply atonal, though with a few phrases which partake of a tonality.) KRh *Its something I've already posted elsewhere here, but I did not want to send you off to search for it, that is why I'm reposting it here.

I meant atonal in the sense that the piece is not in a key, and is not usefully analyzed as moving from key to key. Does that help? KRh

Some people on this thread have said NWC uses bad midi sounds. I though midi sounds were specific to the hardware, not to the software running on it. Is that not correct? KrH

What's a .mus file? How is it different than midi? KrH

Every atonal work I've heard (and to be fair, I haven't listened to that many) struck me as kind of creepy and disconcerting. This is fine, but I am curious to know how composers have succeeded (if they have) in writing atonal work which brings generally positive sentiments to the listener. Don't get me wrong: I don't think that would necessarily be better music. I'm just curious to see if and how it's been done. Any suggestions? KrH

Okay gotcha. To be clear, I wasn't saying you are an average listener, sorry to have been unclear. I misunderstood you as saying that the average listener (not you) would lose interest in this piece. Also, to be clear, I don't generally limit myself to what I can play. It's just that there are certain specific pieces (including this one) which I want to be able to play on occasion. Well anyway, thanks for the comments! I'll give some thought to developing the piece. KrH

I think I do want to keep it short. But I'm interested to know how I might develop it without A. Making it too much longer B. Making it impossible for me myself to easily play. Well, you have no idea what my skill level at piano is, so you can't really address B very well. But still, I am interested to hear ideas about how to keep the interest up. Where in the piece do you start to fall asleep? (I know you listened attentively, but hopefully you see what I mean--some songs reach a point where the "average listener" will just stop listening, and I think you were saying my song reaches that point somewhere along the way.) And thanks for the quick reply! KrH