Bryan Fusilier

It’s going to be a while before I get to any of these “Advanced Theories”, but I wanted to at least give a contrast between the Tonal Diatonic music that I’m going to be spending the majority of the time describing and the more modern techniques of writing music that isn’t concerned with Key Centers at all. Just so you know, at the beginning of this century, there was an opera writer from Germany named Richard Wagner. He wrote music that stretched and obscured the “rules” of tonal music that I’m discussing in the “Intermediate Theory” lessons so much that the entire idea of organizing music by tonal ideas became somewhat almost pointless. His music, for many, destroyed the validity of basing music on key  centers and constraining yourself to the rules of music that is based on keys. Long story short, Academic music (college type orchestral black tie kind of music) took a major detour in the early 1900′s and a lot of very interesting new types of music began to emerge. It is those types of music that I want to talk about in the Advanced Discussion.

I’m starting in no particular order, but I am going to start with my favorite things that came out of this revolution against the “Key”. The official term is Aleatoric music, but I like its original name better, Chance Music. It’s the complete opposite of traditional composition, which is entirely based on order. All of theory I’m talking about is nothing but ordering sound. Methodically and rigidly ordering sound according to something that really amounts to nothing more than maintaining “traditions”. There were some “serious” folks back in the day, who really wanted to destroy musical traditions and create something completely different. Chance music was one of the outcomes of those ideas. It’s literally the notion of ordering “non-ordered” sounds.

I plan on discussing this technique in a lot of detail later. But for now I just want you to listen to some music that relies heavily on Aleatoric techniques. I warn you in advance that it ain’t gonna have a good beat, and you ain’t gonna be able to dance to it, but listen to the difference between Tonal music and non-tonal music. We’re so used to hearing stuff like this because of movies and TV that it won’t sound as “how dare you?!” as it did back in the day, but you will immediately see that it defies sing-ability and the ideas of melody and harmony and are completely rendered unimportant. But what a disturbing and dark vibe it creates.  You fans of horror and suspense will find yourselves finally at home. So this is just for listening fun and an introduction. I’ll get into all the gory details after I’m done with the basics of the Intermediate Theory section.

Threnody to The Victims of Heroshima

Get ready to hide under the covers and cower in absolute terror. This is, IMO, the grand Pooh Bah of Aleatoric music. The title pretty much sums up the subject matter. This piece is bone chilling and, to me, unbelievably beautiful. And I will talk about this piece in great detail in a future lesson.

Fast Tube by Casper

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Here’s one you might be more familiar with. This is easily my favorite Spielberg/Williams collaboration. This score is just awesome! And it really defines the creepy laid back feel of this movie. And it’s mostly written using aleatoric techniques. This is obviously a rip-off video and I apologize for that, but I couldn’t find this any other way  and I really wanted to show you what kind of vibe this style creates by showing you how the actual movie opens and how it sets the feel for  everything that’s going to come. You only need to watch the first 1:33 seconds to hear what I’m talking about (really the aleatoric vibe of the opening is only taken over by the sounds of the dessert winds and stays aleatoric until Mr. Williams resurrects tonality at about 4 minutes in, but even that quickly dissolves into a wonderful Aleatoric mix that defines the feel of this movie ), but you might forget and keep watching for a while because this is a really great movie!

Fast Tube by Casper