# Urgynes



## Crudblud

Just under 35 minutes of music for piano, cello and accordion in five parts. Each part has its own 12-tone matrix (except for the fourth, which has two) but their use is not strict in any way, rather, by applying patterns, shapes, directions and other truncations/filters, I use them to generate material which is then combined with free writing. The extent to which the row underpins the music in a given part varies, but overall there is an even balance, and I employ many techniques which take serially generated material and transform it into something completely different.

To those who listen: I hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to ask any questions about the music that might be on your mind.

To those who come to bicker about serialism and their misconceptions thereof: *go away*

*Get it here* and wish you hadn't!

The first part is also available to *stream here* if you are so inclined.


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## Mahlerian

Jazzy and, as always, filled with unexpected twists. The superhuman effects you put on the piano part in particular were quite a nice surprise. You didn't let any technique get the best of you; you seem fully in control of your technique.

And I don't care how academically "classical" or "serial" it is.


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## Aramis

I've listened to the piece.

I THINK IT'S URGY xDDD xDDDDD xDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD


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## Crudblud

Mahlerian said:


> Jazzy and, as always, filled with unexpected twists. The superhuman effects you put on the piano part in particular were quite a nice surprise. You didn't let any technique get the best of you; you seem fully in control of your technique.


Thank you!

I think working on this piece has been something of a breakthrough for me. I'd always had trouble with 12-tone technique and writing for piano, but by the time I got around to this one I was no longer concerned with following the row or writing "pianistically," I was able to just work with those tools freely and confidently. I'm glad it shows in the music.

The way the piano effects ended up in the final piece is interesting in terms of its history. I had tried to use them in every part, but they just didn't fit. By the time another fifth part was deemed necessary (the original fifth part was subsumed into the fourth, which is why it has two rows) I got to a point where I was stuck, and all of a sudden these strange "minigun" sounds just seemed to fit naturally. They mirror the jazz piano sections in the first part, initially seeming like an abstraction but later becoming an integral part of conclusion, or at least that was how I intended it.


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## SergeOfArniVillage

The highlight of this is obviously the piano -- tasty jazz licks, controlled yet sudden sonic booms in bass accompanied by fleeting, "scuttling" high treble runs. I can appreciate serialist jazz.

But the inclusion of the accordion, I cannot reconcile. Its presence really, truly seems completely unnecessary. Almost every passage it plays is needlessly obnoxious. I had a sweet moment of bliss when the sonic boom at 3:28 seemed to silence the creature, but alas! it survived. In fact, this piece could be entitled, "How To Assassinate Weird Al Yankovich".


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## Crudblud

SergeOfArniVillage said:


> The highlight of this is obviously the piano -- tasty jazz licks, controlled yet sudden sonic booms in bass accompanied by fleeting, "scuttling" high treble runs. I can appreciate serialist jazz.
> 
> But the inclusion of the accordion, I cannot reconcile. Its presence really, truly seems completely unnecessary. Almost every passage it plays is needlessly obnoxious. I had a sweet moment of bliss when the sonic boom at 3:28 seemed to silence the creature, but alas! it survived. In fact, this piece could be entitled, "How To Assassinate Weird Al Yankovich".


Your comments give the impression that you have only listened to the first part, so I can't really offer up a detailed rebuttal. I suggest you listen to the whole thing, but for now...

The coming together of the instruments to make music is the highlight. The piano is integral, as is the accordion, as is the cello, as are the myriad ways in which they interact; a piece for piano, cello and accordion without piano, cello or accordion wouldn't be much of a piece at all. As in architecture, if all the components are not present and correct the piece is not structurally sound.


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## SergeOfArniVillage

"a piece for piano, cello and accordion without piano, cello or accordion wouldn't be much of a piece at all."

I may be more inclined to agree that the accordion is integral, if it wasn't given the unrepentant role of taking the dissonance to _unnecessarily_ dissonant levels.

I did only listen to the first part, so I downloaded the rest. Again, I just can't get over the accordion's _tone_ in the other pieces. I think if it were given unisons or open fifths to complete your serial construct, it could contribute something, but treating it like just another instrument, or a portable piano, with constant minor 2nds, just plain doesn't sound good.

The program notes are hilarious, on the plus side, giving yet more proof that Weird Al does, indeed, have a part in this piece (obviously the accordion player).

I can't help being an accordion bigot, I was raised that way.


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## Crudblud

Weird Al, although I do like some of his songs, never really entered my mind while I was working on the piece, and the liner notes owe more to Robert Ashley than anything.

As for the "unnecessary" dissonance, in this piece it is functioning predominantly as colour. It is also worth nothing that the piano has just as many if not more extremely dissonant parts than the accordion. Take for the instance the sequential truncations of the Grandmother Chord, the stabbing octave blocks, the incredibly dissonant section of the first part played in the bass register, which, by the way, you seemed to quite like on first hearing. You don't like the accordion tone, and that's fine, but to suggest the material I have written for it is out of step with the rest of the piece, that's simply not true.


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## SergeOfArniVillage

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree then ^_~

Until then, I will definitely be pondering just what Urgyness really is!


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## aleazk

I think this piece is definitely one of the most "Crudblud pieces" that Crudblud ever produced so far!. :tiphat:

I really enjoyed the piano writing.

Without the accordion, this wouldn't be a Crudblud piece.


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## Crudblud

Ah, you see, aleazk understands! The accordion is more than just an accordion, it is love. :lol:


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## Crudblud

*Note: This was originally written for Jfong's "Midnight Fantasy" thread in response to a question about serialism. I decided to post it here as it is directly related to this piece and the techniques used in making it.*



Jfong said:


> ah I see what you are talking about.
> Maybe due to my lack of musical knowledge, I just do not quite understand why you described my music as "algorithmic" while you compose using serialism(yes, I checked out Urgynes).
> Could you please tell me more about it so I can learn a bit more?


There are better people on this forum to ask about serialism than me, but I will try to explain some of the ways I used 12-tone matrices in _Urgynes_, since you have heard it. Here is the matrix from the second movement.


D#_*I*_↓_1
__2
__3
__4
__5
__6
__7
__8
__9
__10
__11
__12
__*P*_→_1
_08371*10
**6**2**4**11**5**9*_2
_4071152*10
**6**8**3**9**1*_3
_95041073*11
**1**8**2**6
*_4
_518063117*9
**4**10**2*_5
_1172609513*10
**4**8*_6
_*2
*1059308461*7
**11*_7
_*6**2
*91740810511*3*_8
_*10**6**1
*5118402937_9
_*8**4**11**3
*962100715_10
_*1**9
**4
**8
**2
*117350610_11
_*7
**3
**10
**2
**8
**5
*1911604_12
_*3
**11
**6
**10
**4
**1
**9*57280

The numbers along the outside detail the *Prime* and *Inverse* rows, so when I say "P[SUP]1[/SUP]1" I'm referring to the 0 at the very start of the matrix, when I say "I[SUP]2[/SUP]5" I'm referring to the 7 which is the second interval in P[SUP]5[/SUP].

From that matrix, or grid, there are endless possibilities for generating material. What I did, in addition to simply following a row in a straightforward manner, was to apply various patterns and shapes and non-standard (e.g.: diagonal) directions to movements about the grid, sometimes I would even jump from one instance of a number to another somewhere else (e.g.: reaching the 8 at P[SUP]1[/SUP]2 and jumping to the 8 at P[SUP]3[/SUP]9 and continuing in any direction). Deriving material in this way became a game, and I was often devising different rules for getting from one end of the board to the other and seeing what the resulting melodies, harmonies, chords etc. were, and naturally I would alter or discard the results I was not pleased with.

One technique I used throughout the piece was to apply shapes to the matrix, and the portions of the matrix above highlighted in bold red resemble a particular division I used in the very first movement; two large isosceles triangles from P[SUP]6[/SUP]1 to P[SUP]12[/SUP]7 and I[SUP]6[/SUP]1 to I[SUP]12[/SUP]7. Within these triangles I used all my other techniques to generate more limited melodic material while I derived chords from the space in between them. In the final movement I used isosceles triangles again, this time to form eight equal divisions of the matrix which operated independently of each other.

Of course, the whole time I was combining all of this serially derived material with free writing and applying transformative techniques independently of the matrix. So ultimately my work was not serial in the strict sense, the matrix was only one tool of many used to reach the end result. I did not apply any complex mathematical processes to the matrix, certainly nothing like Set Theory, which I must confess I do not understand, so for me at least working with serialism was nothing close to an algorithmic kind of composition.

I hope that answers your question, but if it doesn't, feel free to ask more and I will try to explain.


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## mmsbls

Crudblud, I'm fascinated with the idea of constructing a formalism to generate music. I read in detail how Xenakis used constructs that initially seemed "far away from" music but were then used to produce compositions. To me I imagine the composer would not know how some of the music will sound until it is actually produced. This procedure appears far removed from the more traditional method of deciding how a composition should sound and then writing music. I hope my questions are not too naive.

How did you construct the matrix above? Other than each row and column consisting of a 12 tone row, does it have specific patterns? If so, did you create them with musical ideas in mind (other than eventually it would be used to produce parts of your piece)? 

Now this is the most difficult question to ask (and maybe answer). Hopefully I'm asking something sensible here. Once you had worked through much of the piece, did you think you could have created a "better" matrix? In other words would a different matrix have generated less music that you had to discard? Or is that not the point? In other words the matrix let you play with pre-set musical ideas that you were free to accept (and work with) or reject and move on?


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## Crudblud

mmsbls said:


> Crudblud, I'm fascinated with the idea of constructing a formalism to generate music. I read in detail how Xenakis used constructs that initially seemed "far away from" music but were then used to produce compositions. To me I imagine the composer would not know how some of the music will sound until it is actually produced. This procedure appears far removed from the more traditional method of deciding how a composition should sound and then writing music. I hope my questions are not too naive.
> 
> How did you construct the matrix above? Other than each row and column consisting of a 12 tone row, does it have specific patterns? If so, did you create them with musical ideas in mind (other than eventually it would be used to produce parts of your piece)?
> 
> Now this is the most difficult question to ask (and maybe answer). Hopefully I'm asking something sensible here. Once you had worked through much of the piece, did you think you could have created a "better" matrix? In other words would a different matrix have generated less music that you had to discard? Or is that not the point? In other words the matrix let you play with pre-set musical ideas that you were free to accept (and work with) or reject and move on?


Each row was constructed differently, sometimes I wanted particular intervals to be emphasised, but some were almost created blindly. This row in particular is the most extreme example of doing it blind, I just asked friends in an IRC chatroom to call out numbers between 0 and 11 and wrote them in the order they came up, ignoring repeat numbers. If it had moved a little too predictably I would have scrapped it, but as it came out it seemed pretty interesting on paper. Initially I was not too happy working with it, however, so for most of the second movement I completely ignored it, but then I had something of an epiphany as I was working it back into the ending, then I went back and reset a lot of the material using the matrix as a guide and it sounded a lot better, more unified. So that one in particular was a case of having to get away from the row to write the music and then coming back to it later on. If I had rewritten the row, the movement would have become far too laborious a working process, and I think the end result would have suffered because of that.

The construction of the matrix itself is quite simple, all you need to do is invert the prime row to create the inverse row, then use each interval in the inverse row as the beginning of a transposed prime row. In that matrix I[SUP]1[/SUP]2 is 4, so P[SUP]2[/SUP] is the prime row transposed up two whole steps. The rest falls into place the same way: P[SUP]3[/SUP] is P[SUP]1[/SUP]+9 half steps, P[SUP]4[/SUP] is P[SUP]1[/SUP]+ 5 and so on until the entire thing is filled out. Every 12-tone matrix is crawling with patterns, whether intentional or accidental, just take a look at those two red triangles on the example I posted, notice how they are diagonal inversions of each other. P[SUP]1[/SUP]6 to P[SUP]7[/SUP]12 (10, 10, 11, 9, 10, 7, 3) is I[SUP]6[/SUP]1 to I[SUP]12[/SUP]7 (2, 2, 1, 3, 2, 5, 9) inverted, the same is true of all those left-to-right diagonal lines. The right-to-left diagonal lines offer up some interesting prospects as well: I[SUP]8[/SUP] to P[SUP]8[/SUP] is 2, 10, 7, 6 followed by its own retrograde inversion 6, 5, 2, 10, and the same is true of all diagonals in that direction. Simply put, using the left-to-right line of 0s as a dividing line, the left side is the inverse of the right. There are lots of other recurring figures, in this one the relationship between 7 and 3 is strongly emphasised, in most instances you can find a 3 right next to a 7, whether straight or diagonally. I think it's an exciting feature of the 12-tone matrix, the way patterns inevitably emerge, recur, invert and transpose each other etc.

Awareness of the results one will get from a matrix, that's something Milton Babbitt talked about, I think in the documentary _Portrait of a Serial Composer_, and he's lamenting composition students trying to use serial techniques without considering the musical outcome of the rows they create, their lack of understanding means they end up scrapping a lot of unsatisfactory pieces. Of course, Babbitt was very strict in his application of serial organisation, to the extent that the piece was determined by the rows before it was composed (if he was answering your question about patterns, I have no doubt he would talk about planning them out meticulously when he constructs a row), so when he talks about that awareness it is within the context of strict application, my applications are much looser and do not underpin the entire work so much as supplement it. Each movement begins with an exploration of the row but is soon enough suffused with free writing, so the construction of the row itself is not so important as the application from then on, but even in those initial explorations the vertical spacing and ordering of the notes makes all the difference, some sections will benefit from a more lyrical treatment while others will require large leaps from one register to another and so on.

I'll leave it there before I start rambling (even more) incoherently, but do let me know if there's anything you want me to be clearer on.


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## mmsbls

Crudblud said:


> Simply put, using the left-to-right line of 0s as a dividing line, the left side is the inverse of the right.


I see how given the initial row everything else follows. I should have seen the symmetry around the diagonal 0s, but I guess I wasn't expecting to find so much order. Silly me.



Crudblud said:


> Of course, Babbitt was very strict in his application of serial organisation, to the extent that the piece was determined by the rows before it was composed (if he was answering your question about patterns, I have no doubt he would talk about planning them out meticulously when he constructs a row), so when he talks about that awareness it is within the context of strict application


This is what always seemed so incredibly difficult to me. The original row could be straightforward, but the variations start to get rather complicated (at least it seems). I guess that might be what separates good serial composers from lesser ones. As I understand it, others here at TC have said that in many cases the vertical structure is more important than the horizontal "melodies" so there can be less emphasis on the specific intervals.



Crudblud said:


> ...my applications are much looser and do not underpin the entire work so much as supplement it. Each movement begins with an exploration of the row but is soon enough suffused with free writing, so the construction of the row itself is not so important as the application from then on, but even in those initial explorations the vertical spacing and ordering of the notes makes all the difference, some sections will benefit from a more lyrical treatment while others will require large leaps from one register to another and so on.


This makes perfect sense. Using the matrix but deviating where appropriate or desired can produce a nice blend of structured and free form music. I guess the trick is to use the structure as a guide but leave it aside when it becomes too constraining. When I first encountered serial music, it seemed almost non-sensical from a musical standpoint, but the more I learn about it, it just seems like a relatively modest variation of more traditional methods.

Thanks for you thoughts and thanks for posting the piece.


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## aleazk

mmsbls said:


> Crudblud, I'm fascinated with the idea of constructing a formalism to generate music.


I wouldn't say "to generate music". I think a better description would be "to generate musical material which can be used by the composer when composing a piece".

In general, it works in this way: the composer has some musical material (that he invented, can be a tone row, a melody, some chords, etc.). The "formalism" is in fact a series of transformations that can be applied to that material in order to generate new musical material.
Of course, the composer is supposed to have some familiarity with the formalism in order to have some idea of the kind of things that can result from its application. 
Once you got this, you are free to use all of that in the way you want.

But this is nothing very new, in fact. Bach used it, as it's well known. Not only in harmony, but also in rhythm (augmentation/diminution canon).
Modern music is more abstract than romantic music, in which a "nice melody" does the job. Much of modern music relies on transformation of patterns, structure, textural evolution/transformation, etc., and in this sense is more close to Bach. That's why it's more common to find these kind of approaches in modern music.

Of course, some systems like integral serialism also provide (more or less) a way of actually organizing the notes in the composition.
But, if you ask me, I think that kind of devices are really a dead end. I think the best way to use these systems or formalisms is in the way Crudblud used them in this piece, which is the way I mentioned in the first part of this comment.

In my own pieces, I also have some transformations (mainly rhythmic) which I apply to the material in order to generate new rhythmic material.

One has to be careful and select good material, i.e., with good potential for transformations.

Moral: the "ear" of the composer *is* everything.


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## mmsbls

aleazk said:


> I wouldn't say "to generate music". I think a better description would be "to generate musical material which can be used by the composer when composing a piece".
> 
> In general, it works in this way: the composer has some musical material (that he invented, can be a tone row, a melody, some chords, etc.). The "formalism" is in fact a series of transformations that can be applied to that material in order to generate new musical material.


Yes, I agree and understand this, but that is a better way to describe the output. When I wrote the following, I was thinking along those lines.



mmsbls said:


> When I first encountered serial music, it seemed almost non-sensical from a musical standpoint, but the more I learn about it, it just seems like a relatively modest variation of more traditional methods.


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## Crudblud

aleazk said:


> But, if you ask me, I think that kind of devices are really a dead end. I think the best way to use these systems or formalisms is in the way Crudblud used them in this piece, which is the way I mentioned in the first part of this comment.


In general I just find "prescribed" composition kind of boring to work with, but I suppose that comes from my general aversion to following instruction. There was a period when I was experimenting with integral serialism, but ultimately I just didn't have enough of an investment in hearing the results to patiently place all the notes for even a five minute piece. I think in future there may be a place in my work for serialisation of elements besides pitch, but I doubt I would ever use them in a way other than I have here.


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## violadude

Hey Crudblud,

Somehow, this is the first piece I have heard by you. I am very impressed and enjoyed it a lot! Thanks for sharing. I was about to ask what your process in writing this was but it looks like you've gone over that plenty throughout the thread. 

I have been in a bit of a compositional slump lately but this has inspired me  Thank you!


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## Novelette

The accordion is an interesting accompaniment. It gives a fine atmosphere to the cycle, but I think the cello is my favorite contributor to the musical conversation.

Very much enjoyed indeed!

The accompanying notes are a characteristic component in their own right.


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## Crudblud

Novelette said:


> The accordion is an interesting accompaniment. It gives a fine atmosphere to the cycle, but I think the cello is my favorite contributor to the musical conversation.
> 
> Very much enjoyed indeed!
> 
> The accompanying notes are a characteristic component in their own right.


Ah, it's good to hear from you! I'm glad you liked the cello, I was actually somewhat worried that, although integral to the piece, the lyrical writing for the cello would not go down so well, but then I always expect a poor reception for some reason. I'm glad you liked the notes, too, they're by no means essential, nor would I attempt to design them so, but it amuses me to write a little accompanying literature for my pieces that people can take or leave. In this case, the notes offer cryptic clues as to the form or a large element within each of the parts. Thank you very much for listening!



violadude said:


> Hey Crudblud,
> 
> Somehow, this is the first piece I have heard by you. I am very impressed and enjoyed it a lot! Thanks for sharing. I was about to ask what your process in writing this was but it looks like you've gone over that plenty throughout the thread.
> 
> I have been in a bit of a compositional slump lately but this has inspired me  Thank you!


It's I who should be thanking you for such a lovely comment. Really, I could never have expected or hoped to inspire someone else with my work, but I am very glad to hear that you have taken so much away from listening to it. You are of course welcome, but sincerely: thank you!


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