Well, for my english class my teacher wants me to compose piano music that is the "opposite" of twelve tone (long story we're reading this book called Body and Soul which is basically all about music). It should be pretty simple, nothing too difficult, and probably like a 1-1.5 pages long.

I play several instruments, violin, piano, and drums, but I've never really composed anything. (I've tried, they dont come out very well).

I suppose the opposite of 12 tone would be like music with a strong anchor... My main problem is, since my main instrument is the violin, I'm not really sure how to write harmony on the base clef. Also, I understand what 12 tone is, but I'm not very clear on what the opposite would be. I think meditation by massenet would be like an example of this, but I'm not sure.

So if anyone has any suggestions that'd be appreciated. Or someone could write it for me :P

thx

12 tone is Serialism - that's atonal, so anything that is tonal would be the opposite of it :) (Heh, I wrote that Serialism is the opposite of 12 tone before - serves me right for not checking ;))

Anyways, heres my piece so far.

It's basically my first ever composition so bear with me. Its going to be longer and maybe with a violin part when I'm finished, but this is basically the gist of it.

And also, whenever I compose I'm always afraid I'll unconciously put it something from another peice i've heard somewhere. For instance, that part in the middle/end of it seems to be really familiar to me, but hopefully I'm just paranoid. Also, I think it doesnt transition too well.

Any advice would be great.

Eh? I'm confused . . cause your piece sounds normally tonal . . so are you supposed to write something normally tonal or atonal? Because my personal opinion is that both would be the opposite to 12-tone, hehe.

Anyways, yeah some more length will be good. I might have more comments later on when you're completely finished. As for the middle part, it's just a chord progression that's commonly used by almost everybody, so no worries about your paranoia.

Yeah i made a seperate thread with the finished version of this. Tell me what you think.

Tsk tsk, you should only keep one thread for yourself =P I think a mod might merge your threads together or whatever.

So anyways, I'll be replying here: What happened to the violin part you were going to add? *shrugs* . . well your music is nice. Good harmonies, clear melodies. Try not to use block chords though, or else they'll sound repetitive and strained. Instead, break them down into arpeggios or whatever. And expand your ending!

Yeah... I made a different thread becasue the topic was like getting help here and there it was showing my music... iono maybe they will be merged.

and I ended up not adding the violin part becase i think it would sound better just by itself on the piano.

Btw what are block chords? (sry I'm a violin player dont know much about chords except their a pain to play)

Block chords? Um . . like triads. Three (or more) notes played simultaneously together to form harmony.