Jestin'

Audio

MIDI demo

View Score

Downloadable, not printable

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Duration

30-40 seconds

Level

Advanced

2016

Completed

April 2016

Composer's Notes

This entire piece is based on a short riff (pictured below in treble clef) from the piccolo and flute part in composer John Mackey’s wind ensemble piece “Redline Tango” (measure 267).

The piece is a serial (not to be confused with cereal), twelve-tone piece. I created my original row (if you don’t understand this, I suggest you read “About This Style of Music” below first) based on this short riff (from the B to the F-sharp). I modified it just a little, mostly by adding notes at the end, in order to use all twelve pitches. For example, the thought process was that I had to somehow get rid of the first two repeated Cs without sacrificing the sound or rhythm. If you count the number of different notes from the B to the F-sharp, you have B, C, D, B-flat, G-sharp, A, F, E-flat, and F-sharp. Since that’s only 9, I needed to add the other 3 notes (D-flat, E, and G) into the mix. I ended up here (in treble clef):

As you can see, the structure is the same, and, for the most part, the pitches are in the same spot as the original. Now that I had my home row, I was able to create my matrix showing the 48 possible options I had to transpose, invert, and reverse the row.

The next step was actually notating the music (which I did entirely in Finale). I did a combination of throwing different rhythms at the wall and using rhythms from various piano pieces I have played. The result is pretty cool, I think.

You’re probably wondering about the story behind the title, “Jestin.'” Once I finished my piece, I thought it sounded kind of humorous in a musical way (I’ll just assume you understand what I mean there). I thought of the word “jest” which means to speak or act in a joking manner. The piece is supposed to sound like a playful, musical joke. The present participle, “jesting,” is the act of speaking or behaving in a joking manner. Add some 21st-century laziness, omit the ‘g’, and you get “Jestin.'” It’s also cool because that’s basically my name (in case you didn’t already know that)!

If you have no idea what you just read, read below.

About This Style of Music

Again, this piece is a serial (NOT cereal), twelve-tone piece. Serial music is a sub-genre of classical music. Its modern, atonal (not written in a key) style gives this type of music a, sort of, random sound. In reality, there’s a lot of work and thought that goes into putting together a serial piece of music. While an inexperienced (and, many times, even an experienced) listener might only hear random pitches, there are always a lot of things that go on in a serial piece. Here‘s an example of a piece we analyzed in class. Believe it or not, there are things happening in the music.

When creating a twelve-tone piece, there are a lot of steps before one can begin the writing process. First, you must create your “home row”, or “P0” (that’s a zero). This will be the initial string of 12 notes that the entirety of the piece will be based on. There is no certain way to create your P0 row and, thus, is up to the composer. You might choose your 12 pitches completely randomly or with some level of reason. As stated above, my 12 pitches were taken from a measure in the flute part of John Mackey’s “Redline Tango” (click on the link and start at 8:16 to hear this specific part).

The next step after creating your P0 is to create what’s called a twelve-tone matrix or, simply, “matrix.” This is a chart that represents the possible inversions (I), transpositions (P), retrogrades (R—backward transpositions), and retrograde inversions (RI—backward inversions). All of these combined give you a total of 48 possible ways to write your original P0 row. I’m not going to go into detail on how to create a matrix but here’s what the matrix looks like for my piece:

Once you’ve created your matrix, you are now free to write the music. As always, it’s up to the composer to decide which rows they want to use, the rhythm of those rows, and anything else.

So these are the basic steps to creating a 12-tone piece. There are still more things that can go into creating a piece like this but these are the basic steps. Try to use the matrix above and follow along with the music to see if you can make sense out of what is happening. Or, just listen…that’s fine too.