Posted: September 16th, 2017

: Composing with Five Tones and Silence

:  Composing with Five Tones and Silence

Note:  There are three parts to this assignment, based on the class work.   See the bottom of the page for a review of the tones and their sonic values.  In your essay, please make sure to write directly about your composition, referring to it as you would any other text, quotes identified by the lines in which they appear.

Part One:  Using the five tones introduced in class, construct an original notated composition.  Work to create structure, meaning and feeling in your piece. Try to retain an idea from the previous assignment (composing with sound, motion and silence) to re-cycle and develop.  Give your composition coherence by having a clear structure (form) and a clear relationship from one phrase to the next.  Organize the tones in a distinct metric grouping.  Adopt a modality (mode) by giving important tones emphasis, using duration, repetition, variation, melodic prominence or any other successful strategy.
Practice your piece and introduce changes to improve its structure and message.  You might want to perform your piece for someone else, or perhaps have them read and perform so you can listen.  Create a final version of the notation that is easy to read and that has all the information you need to perform it.  Consider a title for your piece.

Part Two:  Record the best version of your composition that you can, performed on voice or instrument.  Recordings may be submitted on cd or by email.

Part Three:     Write a short essay (between one and two pages) about your composition and the structures and meanings that are inside.  Which tones or combinations appear most often, and why?  What part do the silences play in your piece, and how have you created form (the larger architecture) in your piece?  Explain your strategy for sequencing the tones and how your composition changed as you worked on it.  Discuss your composition critically from both the logical (rational) and the artistic (intuitive) points of view, and include any other information that is relevant and that will help explain your creative choices.  Attach the titled composition to your essay to be handed in.

The Tones — Make your composition using the five tones (or their octave equivalents) and silence.   If your melody exceeds the middle range shown here, indicate these excursions with a dot above or below the number to indicate the higher or lower octave.  Use bar lines to organize the pulse into metric groups.