I think so too. Atonality definitely plays a part in a lot of metal, not exactly sure what kind of met you are into. But the heavy stuff from the late 2000's early 2010's uses it frequently. If you mapped it out on paper it wouldn't really make much theoretical sense but it's highly effective. Something like Oceano comes to mind. that'll be the next step of metal, every riff is a 12 tone row haha. Thanks for watching
Here's an exercise for atonal: Compose 1. a love duet, 2. fairies and sprites at play 3. Piece to accompany a documentary about megafauna. I think we've come to expect programmatic music now. or I have. Great lesson, though. I think there's a place for it definitely.
I haven't researched whether Pierrot Lunaire or Wozzeck are purely atonal or hybrid. My sense as an amateur is that composers thought, 'I'll try and see" and then discovered how limiting it is. If one makes money from composing for shows, opera (movie scores are decades away) You need variety. It's ironic (I hope I use the term correctly) that it's often paired up with a movement called Expressionism as it seems to go best with deadpan, expressionless faces. It's the sound of resignation and associated with emotionally exhausted, morally spent and numb characters.
I've heard that expressionism came out from the general attitude of the world during the world wars. It was highly mathematical and cold as the world at the time was not really in the mood for the romanticism of the past. There was a book I had to read that had that theory in it, I believe it was Richard Taruskin 20th century music or something like that
This is honestly really cool! Schoenberg seems so random and like he's hitting pitches with no rhyme or reason but it's fascinating to see the theory that goes into making it sound effectively random! Tonality comes so naturally it's very hard to escape unless you do so intentionally. Great video!
I checked out a few of your compositions, Sonatina in D major has some interesting harmonies in there, I enjoyed it! Maybe you could take this system and write something more musical than i did. Even if you don't like the end product you get some inspiration by going through the process.
At shoenberg’s time this was him finding his voice and being unique. Now, this type of music is so tired and used by so many composers through the 20th-21st century. Now tonal music almost seems more revolutionary lol
Exactly! This modern atonal classical era has an incredibly small fan base and short life time in the public sphere. You literally have timeless masterpieces from the 1600-1700s that have aged extremely well
Yes harmonies are permitted, but they don't follow the traditional rules of harmony. Cluster chords are very common in this type of music and the harmonies are non-functional. Hope that helps, thanks for watching!
The system is totally based on intervals and their qualities, and how to construct beautiful counterpoint with a harsh material. So yes, harmony is at the core of this - as like anything Schoenberg did.
Sorry I meant to get this a little sooner. I think in some cases they were chosen for the vibes, or the sound. It other cases they were chosen for the particular properties or structure of the row. And it some cases the row could even have been generated randomly. Thanks for watching!
@@jakethurston-doublebassThanks for taking the time to answer! I was going a little crazy because I'm writing a serial (but not too dissonant) fugue, and my (imo) best sounding transposition of the dice-written subject and countersubject rows ended with two back-to-back parallel octaves 🫠
@@jakethurston-doublebass group theory is about groups, which are sets with an additional structure given by a multiplication operation subjected to certain conditions- the operations you went over are kind of similar to applying the multiplication operation in a group! im gathering that the goal of the operations are to switch up the notes while maintaining the fact that no note is a tonal center, multiplication in a group is sort of akin to that in this case, im reminded of the group of integers under addition modulo 12...
Nice summary, but ironically I have even less respect for Schoenberg now. While I can appreciate some of the mathematical aspects of his ideas (I'm a maths teacher and cubing is one of my hobbies), what he did makes no sense for music. You may as well write stories the same way. Have various nouns, verbs and adjectives ready and then randomly swap them around. Wouldn't want to favour one emotion, character, place or object over another, would we? So let's make some arbitrary rules and call it art. You could do this with any art form. Make random rules, for no reason, then apply them. It seems clear that Schoenberg lost his way and went a bit crazy. Tonal music is music. Atonal music is garbage, the equivalent of random words or random blotches of paint. At best, it makes sense for brief parts of thriller or horror movies, but that's it.
@@kenhimurabr Tonal music is a slight fraction of noise, but at least it's music. I could record the traffic or a cat sleeping and people like you would enjoy it as "music". If by "gatekeeping" you mean "having an opinion which I can articulate but which you can't address", then sure. Guilty as charged.
Atonal Music is beautiful. It eschues the notion that melody or daresay catchiness has anything remotely to do with artistic expression. You still have plenty to do with rhythm, dynamics, form... And all of this can be used to create such an effect. Beethoven's a hack.
Also: Atonal music is not possible in 12 tone equal temperament. There isn't a combination of sound that doesn't correspond to a powerful relationship in the both the harmonic series and conventional harmony the notes are too distant to cause anything resembling categorical confusion you might get with extreme microtones. Schoenberg knew this and militantly rejected the term. If a prospective student expressed inter in learning "atonality," he would sometimes suggest they tried dividing the octave into a 13 equal parts instead of wasting both their time in his class
Atonality is not possible regardless of temperament. All sound is tonal, tonal center is simply the reference point which the brain uses to comprehend sound.
@@gonzoengineering4894 the neurological basis for that fact is my very own ears, and a comparison of my ears to those of others. Tonal center exists regardless of theory, or idea, it is simply the biological way the brain figures out noise. Because ultimately, the brain works in *relativity,* everything is figured out through comparison, and the only way to compare things, is by having something to compare them to. The tonal center is a point of comparison.
@Whatismusic123 Yeah, your subjective experience of your sensory perception is no counter to the actual evidence that perception of tonality is based on training and inculturation. Hearing is indeed based on relativity, but even untrained ears will perceive an average of 3 reference points, not one. The upper limit for a trained ear is believed to be 12 reference points, but there isn't actually evidence to suggest that this is a hard limit of the brain so much as a limit of musical experience
@@gonzoengineering4894 all such evidence is misguided from the start, as they all analyze the conscious mind, not the unconscious mind. You don't *choose* to hear a tonal center, the brain does it automatically, you train yourself to recognize what note the brain chooses as a tonal center. tonal center, chord roots, points of inversion, time in music, all such things are figured out by your brain unconsciously, you need training to recognize them, not training to choose a note consciously and say it's a tonal center by the means of decision, looking for clues like V-I. You are someone who is incapable of recognizing tonal center, 99% or more musicians have never ever been trained to recognize tonal center, they all falter as soon as they hear a single example which they don't already recognize, like a major scale, or the dorian mode. as soon as you give them locrian, mystic scale, octatonic scale, etc. their hands are completely tied and the root of their inability is exposed. they cannot recognize tonal center even when dealing with major modes, because as soon as they hear a "IV/x, V/x I/x" they immediately rewire into consciously regarding that as a tonal center, even though that's not how tonal center works at all, that's just how modern art's garbage theory decided tonal center works, because all modern theory is pseudoscience.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, myself included. But I don't think the point of the system was to make "good" music that would appeal to a ton of people. It was to break free of tonality and explore other possible ideas. And it definitely did that. I have always found it more interesting on paper than it is to listen to. Atonal music in general can be tough to listen to, but it did create pathways that other genres of music picked up on through the 20th century. But I certainly don't blame anyone that doesn't get this kind of music stuck in their head, I certainly don't.
@@jakethurston-doublebass yeah, agree it's not necessarily music to listen to, but I think experiments and theories like this can open up new ways of thinking, to borrow and distill certain elements into otherwise "normal" tonal/functional music. I feel like many jazzers do this somewhat intuitively, for example using a structure built on tonal harmony (ii-V-I) but then toying with the occasional polytonalities to create tension and strange colors. But it's not like they hang out there the entire time, they find a way back to the tonal center for release. Like any artistic medium, I think we can always look at experiments for what they are and borrow/mix ideas that suit our creative end goal and dig a little deeper into something experimental, while still remaining "accessible" or relatable.
That's clever. i mentioned in an earlier reply, that I don't blame anyone that doesn't enjoy this music or get it stuck in your head. It's your right to have an opinion on it and not like it. However the system was specifically designed to break free of tonality and not make any one note the focus, so yes it in a way it is random. Organized chaos kind of. Schoenberg did also write some pretty beautiful music in the late romantic style before he went down the atonal rabbit hole. But thanks for watching!
@@jakethurston-doublebass biggest issue however is that the guy who made the system did not have much understanding of tonal music at all, he was someone completely incapable of recognizing tonal center, roots of chords, time, etc., by ear. He was no authority for inventing a system for breaking free of tonality, though, to be fair, if he was capable, he never would have even tried, because tonality is not something to "break free from" it exists in all sounds and you cannot avoid it, he created a system for atonality, a concept that does not exist in reality, you cannot make something "non-tonal" the words "tonal" "pseudotonal" "atonal" "polytonal" are all meaningless jargon for things that either don't exist, or are simply a pointless word to describe how sound is naturally recognized by humans.
I once did an experiment where I put random notes into software. I literally had comments on the website say it sounded so mathematical and complex lol.
you can make some really wild sounding metal riffs this way honestly
I think so too. Atonality definitely plays a part in a lot of metal, not exactly sure what kind of met you are into. But the heavy stuff from the late 2000's early 2010's uses it frequently. If you mapped it out on paper it wouldn't really make much theoretical sense but it's highly effective. Something like Oceano comes to mind. that'll be the next step of metal, every riff is a 12 tone row haha. Thanks for watching
Blotted Science goes hard
youtube algorithm is cookin nice vid
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed. That shrine I built for the algorithm is finally working 😂
Here's an exercise for atonal: Compose 1. a love duet, 2. fairies and sprites at play 3. Piece to accompany a documentary about megafauna. I think we've come to expect programmatic music now. or I have. Great lesson, though. I think there's a place for it definitely.
I haven't researched whether Pierrot Lunaire or Wozzeck are purely atonal or hybrid. My sense as an amateur is that composers thought, 'I'll try and see" and then discovered how limiting it is. If one makes money from composing for shows, opera (movie scores are decades away) You need variety. It's ironic (I hope I use the term correctly) that it's often paired up with a movement called Expressionism as it seems to go best with deadpan, expressionless faces. It's the sound of resignation and associated with emotionally exhausted, morally spent and numb characters.
I've heard that expressionism came out from the general attitude of the world during the world wars. It was highly mathematical and cold as the world at the time was not really in the mood for the romanticism of the past. There was a book I had to read that had that theory in it, I believe it was Richard Taruskin 20th century music or something like that
This is honestly really cool! Schoenberg seems so random and like he's hitting pitches with no rhyme or reason but it's fascinating to see the theory that goes into making it sound effectively random! Tonality comes so naturally it's very hard to escape unless you do so intentionally. Great video!
Thanks I’m glad you enjoyed! There is much more to the theory than I put in the video as well. It can get incredibly complex.
You don't really need a system to write random noise though. What he is doing is just pseudoscience.
I checked out a few of your compositions, Sonatina in D major has some interesting harmonies in there, I enjoyed it! Maybe you could take this system and write something more musical than i did. Even if you don't like the end product you get some inspiration by going through the process.
It doesn't sound random if you understand the music
@@yat_ii I think everyone here understands the music, bud. you're not special, you just tricked yourself into thinking there's anything to it.
This is cool stuff man! I may challenge myself in the future to compose a song like this.
Glad you found it interesting! Give it a shot, if you follow the method it’s not too hard.
Cool. Love atonal music. And yes there are times when I tire of tertian harmony which I have to work with majority of times as a musician.
To everyone who sees this: go listen to Alban Berg's Violin Concerto.
At shoenberg’s time this was him finding his voice and being unique. Now, this type of music is so tired and used by so many composers through the 20th-21st century. Now tonal music almost seems more revolutionary lol
That’s a good point. Probably why we’re still playing Beethoven and Brahms for every concert. 😂
Exactly! This modern atonal classical era has an incredibly small fan base and short life time in the public sphere. You literally have timeless masterpieces from the 1600-1700s that have aged extremely well
@@jakethurston-doublebassmaybe it's because the money owners wanna hear Beethoven and Brahms for the millionth time.
pretty cool video dude!
Thanks! I'm glad you found it interesting.
i like the idea of not having a tonic, but all these math rules are fundamentally unmusical. does this system even permit harmonies?
Yes harmonies are permitted, but they don't follow the traditional rules of harmony. Cluster chords are very common in this type of music and the harmonies are non-functional. Hope that helps, thanks for watching!
The system is totally based on intervals and their qualities, and how to construct beautiful counterpoint with a harsh material. So yes, harmony is at the core of this - as like anything Schoenberg did.
i dont have better way of asking this but practically speaking, did composers decide which rows to use with each other based on vibes?
nvm i learned its "it depends" and also about combinatoriality lol
Sorry I meant to get this a little sooner. I think in some cases they were chosen for the vibes, or the sound. It other cases they were chosen for the particular properties or structure of the row. And it some cases the row could even have been generated randomly. Thanks for watching!
@@jakethurston-doublebassThanks for taking the time to answer!
I was going a little crazy because I'm writing a serial (but not too dissonant) fugue, and my (imo) best sounding transposition of the dice-written subject and countersubject rows ended with two back-to-back parallel octaves 🫠
This system may be good to train novice musicians to read parts instead of playing by ear.
Cool stuff! 😂
Thanks!
2:20 my gf told me this sounds like "evil solfege" after showing her this
That's an interesting way to put it 😂
People talk about 12 tone music poisoning musical academia, but I think musical academia poisoined 12 tone music
Agreed!
2:30
It's actually pretty easy to programm a matrix like that
I've always had to do it by hand. You should make a video on how to do that. I'd definitely watch!
so much group theory
Is group theory the same as set theory? I've never heard it called that. Thanks for watching!
@@jakethurston-doublebass group theory is about groups, which are sets with an additional structure given by a multiplication operation subjected to certain conditions- the operations you went over are kind of similar to applying the multiplication operation in a group! im gathering that the goal of the operations are to switch up the notes while maintaining the fact that no note is a tonal center, multiplication in a group is sort of akin to that
in this case, im reminded of the group of integers under addition modulo 12...
@@rhodesmusicofficialI guess you'll love "Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformations", by David Lewin. Check out this book! 😊
Nice summary, but ironically I have even less respect for Schoenberg now. While I can appreciate some of the mathematical aspects of his ideas (I'm a maths teacher and cubing is one of my hobbies), what he did makes no sense for music.
You may as well write stories the same way. Have various nouns, verbs and adjectives ready and then randomly swap them around. Wouldn't want to favour one emotion, character, place or object over another, would we? So let's make some arbitrary rules and call it art.
You could do this with any art form. Make random rules, for no reason, then apply them. It seems clear that Schoenberg lost his way and went a bit crazy.
Tonal music is music. Atonal music is garbage, the equivalent of random words or random blotches of paint. At best, it makes sense for brief parts of thriller or horror movies, but that's it.
Nice gatekeeping, but you're at least 100 years late. Btw, tonal music is only a slight fraction of music.
@@kenhimurabr Tonal music is a slight fraction of noise, but at least it's music. I could record the traffic or a cat sleeping and people like you would enjoy it as "music".
If by "gatekeeping" you mean "having an opinion which I can articulate but which you can't address", then sure. Guilty as charged.
Atonal Music is beautiful. It eschues the notion that melody or daresay catchiness has anything remotely to do with artistic expression. You still have plenty to do with rhythm, dynamics, form... And all of this can be used to create such an effect. Beethoven's a hack.
Next video: 13 Tone Music in 6 minutes or less. :D
13 tone would mean some seriously weird micro tonality. I’ll leave that one up to you 😂. 12 is hard enough.
I wonder if either of you know about Julian Carrillo 's 13th tone system! It was specifically named such to distinguish from shoenbergs' theory
Also: Atonal music is not possible in 12 tone equal temperament. There isn't a combination of sound that doesn't correspond to a powerful relationship in the both the harmonic series and conventional harmony the notes are too distant to cause anything resembling categorical confusion you might get with extreme microtones.
Schoenberg knew this and militantly rejected the term.
If a prospective student expressed inter in learning "atonality," he would sometimes suggest they tried dividing the octave into a 13 equal parts instead of wasting both their time in his class
Atonality is not possible regardless of temperament. All sound is tonal, tonal center is simply the reference point which the brain uses to comprehend sound.
@@DeeCeeHaich there's no neurological basis for that belief, and are you really going to argue that tonal music means containing tones?
@@gonzoengineering4894 the neurological basis for that fact is my very own ears, and a comparison of my ears to those of others. Tonal center exists regardless of theory, or idea, it is simply the biological way the brain figures out noise. Because ultimately, the brain works in *relativity,* everything is figured out through comparison, and the only way to compare things, is by having something to compare them to. The tonal center is a point of comparison.
@Whatismusic123 Yeah, your subjective experience of your sensory perception is no counter to the actual evidence that perception of tonality is based on training and inculturation. Hearing is indeed based on relativity, but even untrained ears will perceive an average of 3 reference points, not one. The upper limit for a trained ear is believed to be 12 reference points, but there isn't actually evidence to suggest that this is a hard limit of the brain so much as a limit of musical experience
@@gonzoengineering4894 all such evidence is misguided from the start, as they all analyze the conscious mind, not the unconscious mind. You don't *choose* to hear a tonal center, the brain does it automatically, you train yourself to recognize what note the brain chooses as a tonal center.
tonal center, chord roots, points of inversion, time in music, all such things are figured out by your brain unconsciously, you need training to recognize them, not training to choose a note consciously and say it's a tonal center by the means of decision, looking for clues like V-I.
You are someone who is incapable of recognizing tonal center, 99% or more musicians have never ever been trained to recognize tonal center, they all falter as soon as they hear a single example which they don't already recognize, like a major scale, or the dorian mode. as soon as you give them locrian, mystic scale, octatonic scale, etc. their hands are completely tied and the root of their inability is exposed.
they cannot recognize tonal center even when dealing with major modes, because as soon as they hear a "IV/x, V/x I/x" they immediately rewire into consciously regarding that as a tonal center, even though that's not how tonal center works at all, that's just how modern art's garbage theory decided tonal center works, because all modern theory is pseudoscience.
Just cuz you systematize making bad music doesn't make it good.
It's not everyone's cup of tea, myself included. But I don't think the point of the system was to make "good" music that would appeal to a ton of people. It was to break free of tonality and explore other possible ideas. And it definitely did that. I have always found it more interesting on paper than it is to listen to. Atonal music in general can be tough to listen to, but it did create pathways that other genres of music picked up on through the 20th century. But I certainly don't blame anyone that doesn't get this kind of music stuck in their head, I certainly don't.
@@jakethurston-doublebass yeah, agree it's not necessarily music to listen to, but I think experiments and theories like this can open up new ways of thinking, to borrow and distill certain elements into otherwise "normal" tonal/functional music. I feel like many jazzers do this somewhat intuitively, for example using a structure built on tonal harmony (ii-V-I) but then toying with the occasional polytonalities to create tension and strange colors. But it's not like they hang out there the entire time, they find a way back to the tonal center for release. Like any artistic medium, I think we can always look at experiments for what they are and borrow/mix ideas that suit our creative end goal and dig a little deeper into something experimental, while still remaining "accessible" or relatable.
Please, tell us precisely what “good” and “bad” music is. I’m sure you’ll have a totally non-question begging argument that I’ve never heard before.
no one claimed the system made the music automatically good. It's good music because it's dissonant, not because a system was used to make it.
@@Summalogicaegood music is functional
I'll do you better, 12 tone "music" in 6 words: pseudoscientific system for writing random noise.
That's clever. i mentioned in an earlier reply, that I don't blame anyone that doesn't enjoy this music or get it stuck in your head. It's your right to have an opinion on it and not like it. However the system was specifically designed to break free of tonality and not make any one note the focus, so yes it in a way it is random. Organized chaos kind of. Schoenberg did also write some pretty beautiful music in the late romantic style before he went down the atonal rabbit hole. But thanks for watching!
@@jakethurston-doublebass biggest issue however is that the guy who made the system did not have much understanding of tonal music at all, he was someone completely incapable of recognizing tonal center, roots of chords, time, etc., by ear. He was no authority for inventing a system for breaking free of tonality, though, to be fair, if he was capable, he never would have even tried, because tonality is not something to "break free from" it exists in all sounds and you cannot avoid it, he created a system for atonality, a concept that does not exist in reality, you cannot make something "non-tonal" the words "tonal" "pseudotonal" "atonal" "polytonal" are all meaningless jargon for things that either don't exist, or are simply a pointless word to describe how sound is naturally recognized by humans.
Insane rage bait hahahahaha
I once did an experiment where I put random notes into software. I literally had comments on the website say it sounded so mathematical and complex lol.
@@ethancolmancomposer lmfao