# Tools for serial and atonal composition?



## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

I'm really just an amateur here - I find that my compositional process is really messy. I don't actually care too much about my music being playable: most of the stuff I produce is electronic: but I still want to produce sheet music because I think it's important to have an element that represents the music abstractly.

My process currently is to write out code in supercollider that produces the rows and transformations I want and then process the audio there, and then take the list of notes and manually enter them into lilypad. I also have in the past taken the output from supercollider and converted it into midi and uploaded it into musescore - which works fine for works that aren't too rhythmically complex but when I'm work with time-point sets it often gets too complicated for musescore to interpret.

This just seems so messy for what shouldn't be too complicated of a process. None of these are the right tools for the job:

-Supercollider is written mostly for real time synthesis and I'm completely focused on NRT: its NRT tools are pretty bad.

-Midi is a pain to work with, there don't seem to be great tools for what I want to do and soundfonts are really terrible when you want to serialize timbre especially.

-I find it really difficult to do more complex things in musescore. And honestly I find it difficult to work in standard notation because of the way that both key and the uniform division of time is built into it. I honestly think of music purely in terms of numbers, pitch set classes and time intervals: here is where my lack of formal training really comes through, I think.

-I honestly hate writing in lilypad. I can do a lot of nonstandard stuff inside of it but it's still a pain and still doesn't allow that much freedom for weird-looking scores. I could write a python interpreter maybe that would take an array of notes and time-intervals written in p.c. notation and then spit out lilypad code. I really want to avoid doing that though.​
Does anyone know of any good tools for doing the things I want to do, to help streamline my process? It would be quite helpful if anybody has any advice at all. I can answer some more questions for the sorts of stuff I want to do if I wasn't super clear.

The eventuality might me be just having to make some tools or plugins of my own built on top of existing software - while I'm not a terrible programmer I do want to avoid that!


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

There's this thread with some good suggestions: Resources on integral serialism?

You might try searching Google using this format: serial atonal composition site:talkclassical.com

This should always be done prior to creating a new thread since there is a high likelihood that the topic you want already as one or more threads, with a number of helpful posts.


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## composingmusic (Dec 16, 2021)

Regarding of key and time signature in a score, there’s definitely ways around that. A lot of modern and contemporary music doesn’t use key signatures. As for time signatures, one way around that would be to just not have a time signature, or to use something like dotted bar lines to indicate longer rhythmic units. I’d also look up options like graphic scores, or maybe try using a different kind of process to sketch before trying to put it into score form? 

Another thing you could look into is durational notation: something could be expressed in relative durations of notes, with a longer section marked 30 seconds, for instance. I’ve seen quite a few examples of this in contemporary work; Saariaho’s Petals comes to mind, as do a number of Jennifer Walshe’s works, and James Tenney’s Form pieces. I’ve also used this a few times in solo pieces. Some graphic scores that I’d recommend checking out include Cage and Tenney’s work, and I think you’ll find Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail’s notation quite interesting too. 

Going back to what I said about sketching, something I sometimes do is figure out what I’m doing rhythmically, and then figure out how I want things to work in terms of time signature. I should say that I do a lot of sketching on paper, and I tend to write on paper as well. Once I’ve written the piece, that’s when I transfer it to notation software.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

From what I've seen of the capabilities of SuperCollider, it is much easier to generate unsynchronizing polyrhythms than it is to notate them in standard notation, especially when you nest functions inside other functions, which is only one line of code, but when notated, is much more complex. Also how would you notate the random generations, when they change for each run, when you don't even know which values are picked? (or is there a way to find out?) Also what would you specify for the different instruments and timbres? You would be spending way more time notating than the actual composing or music making.


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

SanAntone said:


> There's this thread with some good suggestions: Resources on integral serialism?
> 
> You might try searching Google using this format: serial atonal composition site:talkclassical.com
> 
> This should always be done prior to creating a new thread since there is a high likelihood that the topic you want already as one or more threads, with a number of helpful posts.


I made that other thread, I know it well! But that was focused mostly on literature not on software, which I think is a different concern. I did do a forum search before hand but I didn't find any threads specifically focused on notation and software.


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

composingmusic said:


> Another thing you could look into is durational notation: something could be expressed in relative durations of notes, with a longer section marked 30 seconds, for instance. I've seen quite a few examples of this in contemporary work; Saariaho's Petals comes to mind, as do a number of Jennifer Walshe's works, and James Tenney's Form pieces. I've also used this a few times in solo pieces. Some graphic scores that I'd recommend checking out include Cage and Tenney's work, and I think you'll find Gérard Grisey and Tristan Murail's notation quite interesting too.


I was thinking of graphic scores but I'm honestly not sure what to use? Would I just have to typeset my own svg files in inkscape or something? I'm honestly not sure. I know people have done interesting things with pure data and that there is some IRCAM software for this I think? Looking around for ideas like that seems like a great starting point though.

I'm pretty sure saariajo uses OpenMusic which seems interesting - I need to learn how to use it though, I find graphical programming much harder to understand than just written out code. Tenney used HMSL which doesn't exist anymore afaik.


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

Phil loves classical said:


> From what I've seen of the capabilities of SuperCollider, it is much easier to generate unsynchronizing polyrhythms than it is to notate them in standard notation, especially when you nest functions inside other functions, which is only one line of code, but when notated, is much more complex. Also how would you notate the random generations, when they change for each run, when you don't even know which values are picked? (or is there a way to find out?) Also what would you specify for the different instruments and timbres? You would be spending way more time notating than the actual composing or music making.


It is much easier to write the music than it is to notate it though. I usually don't work with random generations as much as I work with indeterminate ones - so once I only have to worry about music that already exists. For different timbres I've been trying to write different "shapes", since my timbres are discretized I can have different symbols correspond to different things. I agree, it's a lot more time spent notating than actually music making - I really do want some way to precisely specify and visualize the music that isn't a line of code though. That too, I still think that the process of making the music itself isn't great - supercollider isn't really built for what I want it to do - it seems much more focused on making the things that make music rather than making music itself. It's still the best tool I could find though.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

How about Ableton Live and Max (for Live)? I think that some composers use it.


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> How about Ableton Live and Max (for Live)? I think that some composers use it.


That may not be a bad idea, but I do admit to having a certain allergy against non-FOSS software, especially for music making...


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

I think there is an old FOSS version of Max somewhere. I would spend some money though, but not as much as me...


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## pkoi (Jun 10, 2017)

Kjetil Heggelund said:


> I think there is an old FOSS version of Max somewhere. I would spend some money though, but not as much as me...


Isn't Pure Data pretty much the FOSS-version of it, considering both of them were developed Miller Puckette, even though they are not absolutely similar (I have only limited experience with Max).


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

pkoi said:


> Isn't Pure Data pretty much the FOSS-version of it, considering both of them were developed Miller Puckette, even though they are not absolutely similar (I have only limited experience with Max).


I'm pretty sure it is yeah. I've had a decent amount of experience using pure data. And while it's really nice for aleatory composition I find it quite difficult to do more serial things with it. But this probably is really just due to my comfort level composing functions which feels pretty natural versus the modular synth rack view that things like pd provides. I guess I could look into making visualizations and images within supercollider directly?


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## pkoi (Jun 10, 2017)

Opisthokont said:


> I'm pretty sure it is yeah. I've had a decent amount of experience using pure data. And while it's really nice for aleatory composition I find it quite difficult to do more serial things with it. But this probably is really just due to my comfort level composing functions which feels pretty natural versus the modular synth rack view that things like pd provides. I guess I could look into making visualizations and images within supercollider directly?


I've personally done some serial stuff with pure data but my methods for doing that are much more old school than yours. Recently I've been trying out my own version of Stockhausen's Studie I, where I built a row based on the partials of a certain sound. With pure data I realised the sounds but did the calculation of pitches via Spectre (A free synthesis tool, which analyses the harmonic spectrum of a sound and resynthesises it, one can then see the exact frequencies of each partial etc.). Then I made each partial into a .wav file of approx 15s and did the adjustments of attack, sustain & release for each sounds manually in a DAW according to the row's properties. Very time consuming and not the way I compose normally, but I found it useful and fun.


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## Opisthokont (Dec 16, 2021)

pkoi said:


> I've personally done some serial stuff with pure data but my methods for doing that are much more old school than yours. Recently I've been trying out my own version of Stockhausen's Studie I, where I built a row based on the partials of a certain sound. With pure data I realised the sounds but did the calculation of pitches via Spectre (A free synthesis tool, which analyses the harmonic spectrum of a sound and resynthesises it, one can then see the exact frequencies of each partial etc.). Then I made each partial into a .wav file of approx 15s and did the adjustments of attack, sustain & release for each sounds manually in a DAW according to the row's properties. Very time consuming and not the way I compose normally, but I found it useful and fun.


Oh thank you! That's very clever I wouldn't have thought to compose in such a manner. Although it does sound absolutely painful to actually do - much more painful than even what I do. It does seem like there are a lack of really great tools here as much as it's always going to require using a bunch of different stuff and putting it together in a time consuming way. I have no aversion to putting in hard work as much as I have an aversion to feeling like I'm trying to screw in a nail with a toaster.


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