12 tone chord progressions

[Odium]

I ran across a method of using all the 12 tones and grouping them into a row and then building 4 chords using theese 12 notes. Like this for example :

C D E
F# G# A
B D# F
G Bb Db

Seems like a great way to come up chord progressions since you have no tonal center but you can still avoid the atonality of strict serialism. Does anyone know any jazzbands that use this and do you have any views on good and bad things about this.

[David]

Bill Evans has a song called 12 Tone Tune, but it is more about the using the melodic 12-tone scale as opposed to the harmonic. A very interesting idea. There is also some modern classical music that explores the usage of 12-tone scales. I don't warm to it much, personally, but then again, I am not a big fan of modern classical music.

[king ubu]

wasn't there a Bob Brookmeyer composition on the first or second Thad Jones Mel Lewis Solid State record? (I don't remember the title, don't have the mosaic at hand)
I quite liked that!

ubu

[david rickert]

There's an album by Lyle Murphy called "Gone With the Woodwinds!" which is all 12 tone compositions. It's one of those Fantasy limited edition deals that never seem to actually go out of print( not that I'm complaining...

[Mnytime]

If your into tone music someone to check out is Joe Maneri. He breaks it down even more to 72 microtones. Myself I am not a big fan of tone music or Maneri but there are many on the JC who are huge fans on the point of worship almost. Some even here Ben Webster in his playing. I myself don't but what do I know.

He was trained by a student of Arnold Schoenberg who created the 12 tone system.

[Phil Kelly]

Originally posted by king ubu
wasn't there a Bob Brookmeyer composition on the first or second Thad Jones Mel Lewis Solid State record? (I don't remember the title, don't have the mosaic at hand)
I quite liked that!

ubu

I think the chart you're looking for is ABC Blues ..very interesting score, built on a 10 (?) tone row , as I recall ..

[btbowen]

Interesting...

I just finished writing a tune based a 12-tone row in the bass line. Don Thompson was telling our composition class about writing this way to produce interesting free tunes, but I have been trying to figure out ways to use 12-tone rows so that a piece sounds really tonal. The fun bit is that, since you're committed to a certain series of those 12 notes for the duration of the piece, the only thing you can really play with is the rhythmic figures, so I started with all 12 tones as quarter notes, then varied between halves and quarters, and by the end of the piece each bar implied a different chord because each of the twelve notes fell into a different spot, thus setting up a new tonal centre. So then I wrote out the chords that best fit each bar, tried to find common tones (or maybe guide tones, in a way) from chord to chord, and used that as a basis for my melody...

Funny about that whole album thing. I was starting to think about writing an album of 12-tone music too, and maybe write 12 pieces for it and call it something like "tribe" or "apostle."

anyhow. it does make your brain work hard, because essentially it has to write itself once you've picked your 12-tone row, and you have to decipher what's already there. Don was telling us that a common way to pick the 12 tones is to write each note on a separate piece of paper and throw them in the air; the order they land in is the order you then try to use them in. He's done a lot of experimentation with that stuff.

[Karl]

I've been experimenting a lot with "chords" and progressions made of three whole-tone or half-tone steps only, like CDE or FEG ... all of them could be interpreted as voicings for usual jazz-chords but used extensively they give an incredibly intense underground for improvisation; the problem with improvising is less to find the right notes for the chord but to find the right notes for what you play.

This is not based in any way on the classical theory about 12-tone-music but I'm trying to get the jazz away from boundaries of tonality, but I still want it to have a concept.

The improviser dictates the harmony this way, making the background mostly "sound" and less music. If you play alone on your piano this works out great, I love the sound of this kind of undefined harmony, I don't know how a band would get this going together. But I'll be trying something like this with my quartet when we rehearse next time ...

[btbowen]

Hi Karl...

can you elaborate a little? do you mean you're building triads using only close clusters? are you building chords based only on close tones? confused... does CED lead into FEG? what's the relationship from chord to chord? are those notes chord tones themselves, or are they extensions on the chords (e.g. b9#11#5)? is the point to be somewhat tonally ambiguous?

BT :confused2

[Valerie]

There's an album by Lyle Murphy called "Gone With the Woodwinds!" which is all 12 tone compositions. It's one of those Fantasy limited edition deals that never seem to actually go out of print( not that I'm complaining...

walter bishop, jr. wrote a book on this after studying for quite awhile with lyle "spud" murphy in the 70s. it's out of print now but you might be able to find a copy somewhere.

[Karl]

I am not quite sure what all this is. As said, these are experiments I found sounding very interesting when improvising on. I guess it's like what the played tones are is changing in relationship to what the improviser plays.
If you're playing CDE underneath and the soloist goes C Eb F# G C Eb C the listener will be likely to hear a C7/9 with the 7 left out; but if he goes G Ab B C it will sound like something completely different, harmonically, but still more like something than nothing.

You cannot simply put these "voicings" or whatever you call them in as if they were tonal chords as part of a progression; they will simply sound dissonant. I found them sounding very good played afterwards in a constant rhytmic pattern, using the pedal to let them sound as one.

You can also randomly or in a controlled manner throw in tonics in the bass to define the changing sound even stronger.
There is no other theoretical background to this than plain standard jazz-theory, and since I'm not a great fan of too much theory keeping you away from your instrument I'm not going to add more ...

I'll be recording some samples of what I mean in the near future, I'll post a link here when I'm done.

[Phil Kelly]

at the risk of being called a bad name:

I gotta remind you all once again, the 12 tone technique is all about AVOIDING triadic based harmony ( no matter how abstrused or disguised )and letting the "vertical sounds" occur as the basis of a coincidence of contrapuntal atonal linear ideas ..that are based on certain rules in their construction.

Along mentioned with the Spud Murphy OOP book ( if you can dig one up ) there is a very good book called "Twelve tone Technique" by George Tremblay
that is fairly accesible with some effort.

:violin :violin :violin

[btbowen]

Purist! :wink2:

I guess I'm somewhat misusing (abusing?) the term "12-tone," then, because I'm just using the form as a way to approach writing differently. I'm not totally sure that I like 12-tone music (in the aesthetic sense), really, though I do appreciate it (in the intellectual sense)... I guess in the end my ears are too steeped in the European classical tradition not to find 12-tone music jarring.

Could we argue, though, that appropriation of classical techniques for use in jazz necessarily implies that they don't need to be kept in their pure form as they are being applied in a wholly different context? It seems to me that one of the best things about jazz is that it builds on and subverts long-standing musical traditions...

[brucearnold]

Hello Everyone,
Great to see so much interest in 12 tone systems of composition in a jazz context. I've been composing and improvising with various 12 tone systems for about 20 years. You can find more information about the systems I use at:

http://www.arnoldjazz.com/workshop/FURTHER/trichords_for_fi.gif

or

in my book

http://www.muse-eek.com/books/musofba/lower.html

I will also be offering a course in these principles at the NYU Summer Guitar Intensive in 2006 please see:

www.nyuguitar.com

Best Regards,

Bruce