Tinkering with something

i have been toying with an idea in my head for quite sometime.

The idea:

Using the idea of planes of sound, I thought perhaps one could have the following:

On one level, you would have a purely serial/atonal texture. This texture would serve as the underlying texture - the quantum structure, so to speak.

Above this level, you would have a modal structure of resonance notes with as little melodic movement as possible.

And finally above this last level, you would have your melodic/tonal structure... this would be largely determined on events that take place on the lower two level.

Thoughts?

Note, I've started a work today to better illustrate my idea.

The idea of using different textures and techinques among different planes of sound isn't new, but I haven't heard of anything like you proposed. It would be worth trying. Although you would really have to balance out your orchestral forces so that the result isn't just a huge mass of sound, so that every plane is as distinct and separate as possible.

Are you speaking in terms of background, middleground, and foreground? What is a "modal structure of resonance notes?"

Well, my idea.... is basically to have 2 - 3 different types of tonal/atonal systems playing at once.

I used the reference to the planes of sound (background, middle, foreground) as a way to explain similarly what I'm referring to. Resonance notes, I won't give an explanation as they are pretty common, would be structured using modal progression - to go alongside the idea of using 2 -3 different types of tonal/atonal structures at the same time. One level of the work would be atonal/serial... another level would involve modality, and the last level would be tonal. It's hard to state as I've not actually sat down and devised this yet.

I thought you mean planes of sound in the sense like that with polychords (different areas in the frequency spectrum, so to speak). Do you mean foreground, middleground and background in the Schenkerian sense?

Similarly, yes. What I'm thinking is more of in the line of say polytonality/polymodality. Using two or three different types of harmonic tectonic structures simultaneously. For instance, if one were to do this in levels....

Level 1: Modality... instruments, parts on this level would be structured using modal harmony.

Level 2: Serialism....instruments, parts on this level would be structured using serialist techniques

Within this dual framework, one could also switch the levels amongst the parts - interweaving in each part serialism and modality - all within the eye of a larger structure.

Make sense?

Again, I'm working on a work to sort of illustrate this idea.

Inspired by the idea of "atonal texture" and "modal resonance notes", I thought of the following variant: Treating the "atonal texture" as "noise" and using your modality as filters/resonators that let elements of the background that fall in line with said modal structures come out more prominently, but without actually adding something on their own.

In a way, that's similar to the electronic sound synthesis technique of subtractive synthesis, where you start out with a very rich or thick signal (often also just noise) and build the music by cutting away stuff. The interesting aspect of this would be to get very modally coloured sounds out of a purely atonal (respectively uniform) material. Controlling the "strength" of your modal resonators would then let you plan the degree of how much of the original material you want to let through unhindered, or how much you want to focus on the modality.

In that sense you can both have a very controlled architecture (since you control what your resonances are at any moment and how strong they are), still have an amount of unpredictability however (since the resonances will only become audible if there's something "beneath" them at the moment, in your background texture), and also have your mentioned aspect of layers which are inherently completely different and set apart, but are still completely dependent on each other for creating the audible music (quite a polyphonic principle in that sense in its combination of inter- and independence).

(And of course you could carry the idea much further if you begin to consider what "resonance" may mean on more general levels. You might not just have "resonance notes", but entire resonating gestures, rhythms, melodies, whatever).

I realize that this is something completely different than your idea. Your idea is centered on actually having different planes of music at the same time, which all create an audible effect on their own, while mine will only have -one- acoustic result at a time (which, of course, can also be made as complex as you wish it to be), so you might still want to stay true to your more clearly multi-layered principle.

But for me, in your description, it just isn't clear enough yet what those three layers actually mean to you. Are they just three pieces going on at the same time, or to which degree are they structurally bound together? You already say that more than one level can actually be present in a single part (which I find a good idea - much more interesting than just splitting up the ensemble into groups), but does that mean to you that it's actually the levels that begin to interweave like this? (Because just having two different levels going on in an oboe part doesn't mean the two levels have to be connected in any way structurally. They can still be two completely separate entities.)

So I'd simply like to hear more about what exactly makes the separation into levels important/interesting to you, in what way you see the relation towards each other. Are they actively contrasting or even fighting each other? Are they in a polyphonic interplay? Or are they like different worlds, seemingly without any knowledge of the other, like in many Ives pieces? Do they have some, possibly hidden, common structural aspects? And so on. (And I think it may be more helpful to get a clearly cut out idea if you consciously decide against many of these options and only leave in there what really matters to you.)

Also: What will happen over time, formally so to speak? Are you merely describing a certain status that will "just be there" for the duration of the piece? Do you want to create a process involving the relationships of the planes towards each other, a process between different configurations of said planes, or even a process between two different interpretations of the whole "modal-tonal planes" idea as a whole? Or does this just constitute your harmonic/instrumental "setup" which you use as a palette for other musical ideas that create the actual formal principles of your piece?

Well, I would see an inherent structural similarity - both interconnected but yet different due to the contrast in union between the two. The idea here is that each effects the development of the other. Does that make sense, or am I rambling?

Sure. In that case I'd just try to get clear to which degree you want to allow them to affect each other and to which degree you want to firmly keep them apart (and decide whether this changes over time or not). If you allow them to affect each other too broadly, you may lose the impression of planes in the first place (especially if you don't display the planes very bluntly by your instrumentation), but instead just get the impression of simply atonal and modal aspects in your piece.

One example of a way to keep planes apart as planes, but still allow them to interact to some degree would be to consider the planes to be completely set apart in principle, then you "take a drill and cut some holes" at specific places, which let matter from one plane spill into the other, "corrupting" it. Those spilt in foreign parts can then further affect the development of the plane they have arrived in. (Just a randomly brainstormed example though.)

Would it be wrong, then, to marry the two together to where the modality would share the same thematic/motivic ideas with the serial?

I never said doing anything was wrong. Combining them is certainly a possibility (and is in a sense a reply to my question on what you want to do formally over time) - I just wanted to raise the question of how important hearing the elements as planes is to you, and that if this is important to you, there are certain dangers in treating all of them as a unit too much. But having them separated obviously doesn't mean they have to be always separated.

And of course, you need to be aware of how close the idea of "contrasting elements that finally are united" brings you very much in the direction of the most common classical form types, such as the sonata form. There's nothing wrong with that either, as long as you're aware of the historical connotations which many musicians may notice. (But that depends mostly on the execution of this basic idea.)

Right, I was just trying to formulate and get ideas and opinions on this. I think having them as merged is a great idea - more fluid, I think. Instead of hearing 1 mass of multiple layers... having it as 1 part with no delineation is better.

So, here is my stab at this sort of thing:

http://forum.youngcomposers.com/t25126/sonata%20for%20violin/