[ contemporary music ]

PAUL AMROD
... CONTEMPORARY COMPOSER

THE USAGE OF MUSICAL UNITIES

Let’s begin by explaining what I mean by a musical unity. A musical unity is my description of a perfect inversion to a given note. It is within itself dependent upon this given note and structures derived from this technique, circulate to it. An example could be as simple as a chosen interval that is inverted to a beginning note. This could look as such; C-D followed by C-Bb. One can expand this technique as one wishes. An example of a triad would be C-Eb-B followed by C-A and Db. An example of a quadrad could look like this; C-F-Ab-B followed by C-G-E-Db. At this point one can create even more related notes by looking at each note of a chosen structure and inverting the structure from each member of the structure. For example we will take our quadradic structure and invert the structure from F, Ab and B.

This would give us three other related quadradic structures. F-Ab-B-and C would generate F-D-B-Bb. Ab-B-C-F would generate Ab-F-E-B. B-C-F-Ab would generate B-Bb-F-D. As in my entire technique we can either use these structures lineally or harmonically.

This form of hybrid generation actually is an infinite variation technique that can generate a never-ending row of related notes. We must simply, with each newly generated structure, continue to derive newer combinations by always inverting upon its different members. This form of inverted note derivation is audible in that our perception automatically recognizes symmetrical forms.

This form of pitch formation can as well be used for superimposition over the existing modes found in my thesaurus. In this thinking method it is also possible to bring the symmetrically constructed structures as sequences on the tritone and augmented triad into this form of usage. Because of their geometrical symmetry they can coexist with musical unities.

One can truly develop independently the schematics of these musical unities. One can conceive of transpositional schemes, perhaps related to the scheme of the original modal transposition, and freely superimpose these structures. The effect is that of what one might expect. Because of the inner unity of such structures they will ring independently from the chosen transposable modalities and not interfere with the independence of the modes themselves. We can as well utilize the symmetry of a given mode, as earlier stated in my paper on modal extension, as our home-base for the superimposition.

© Copyright by Paul Amrod

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