After today’s lesson about aleatoric music, think about some ways in which you could create a piece of music that leaves some of the composing material (i.e. tempo, structure, dynamics, pitch) up to the performer. Remember there are no rules so be creative! List them here
Aleatoric Music
November 23, 2007 · 7 Comments
Categories: Area of Study 2
Tagged: aleatoric, gcse music, john cage, music, music education
7 responses so far ↓
MR // October 13, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Well i thought of using the 12 first letters of the alphabet for each note like so:
A=C
B=C#
C=D
D=D#
E=E
F=F
G=F#
H=G
I=G#
J=A
K=A#
L=B
I also thought of a way of getting the dynamics for your experimental piece, well you hit a piece of metal so it makes a ching! then the longer it goes on for the louder the dynamics are going to be and if the ching lasts not very long then the dynamics will be quiet
SH // October 14, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Tell the performers to play any rhythm but describe the rythm to them with one(non-musical) word.
ie. Buzzy, Lively, Angry, Sorrowful (not words like Fast, Slow, Repetative).
megan // October 14, 2008 at 6:04 pm
you could give the preformer an image or word for them to compose a piece of music from. this way they have alot of freedom on how they do this.
JN // October 14, 2008 at 7:38 pm
You could draw pictures to tell the performer an idea of how to make the noise eg hitting the table and allow the rest of the performance to be designed by him.
You could also do it using a graph to show the loudness of a note, a high number meaning loud.
You could use mathematic equations.
You could write out a list of instructions and the performer could roll the dice. The number rolled would tell the performer what part of the piece to play each time.
You could just write down the note letters and no other notation and allow them to improvise, like using a scale.
ED // October 15, 2008 at 4:54 pm
You could tell the performers just to play according to what mood they are in.
You could tell the performers to compose a story so the tempo, dynamics etc change as the story moves on.
KT // October 16, 2008 at 3:20 pm
You could tell the performer what key to play in, and give hom a rhythm, but leave the rest up to him Ie: pitch, tempo and dynamics.
You could also draw images, a mouse for example, and let the player play whatever a mouse remindsthem of, this could be followed by an elephant for contrast.
HB // October 16, 2008 at 6:01 pm
If you knew what you wanted the piece to ‘feel’ like, you could write a description of an emotion, or maybe even a scene from a movie, and then conduct it yourself with non-conductive movements such as jumping around mentally, doing a back-flip, standing still, blinking. and just see how the performers interpret your actions, most of the performers will respond in a similar fashion, such as if you look lively, they may play faster, or louder, but it will still affect each individual performer differently thus still making every piece original.
If you wanted it to sound more musical, you could set a certain key for it to be in, or maybe several keys and have a ‘cue’ to change key. If people didnt notice your cue to change key it could make the piece even better with half of the performers in one key, and others in another key.
I liked the idea of pictures, but thought the conductor could have a whiteboard, and draw randomly on it, or actually draw a picture, and the performer/performers to interpret what he is doing with music.
H-B