Day Four: The Tone Row Exercise

A highly useful technique for using the 12 tones.

The 12 tone row exercise helps us practice experiencing a unity of form. When we sit down to write one, our goal is to guide the ear away from a fundamental note and return back home to it. This is essentially what we do in any piece of tonal music. The practice comes from uniting all of the different elements and understanding how each of the parts relate to one another. Since this exercise has so many restrictions, it is easy to focus and become extremely creative within the boundaries that are set. 

Each interval in a melody or tone row contributes to the line of musical tension, the line of attention that runs through relating all of the notes in the phrase to a single point musically furthest away from the beginning and end.

The goal is to guide the ear away from a starting pitch and eventually return back to it using all 12 tones and remaining in 1 octave. You want to arrange the tones so that the entire journey is as smooth as possible.

Example 1. 

Figure 1. Intervallic analysis

Each tone row can be researched in the following way.

1. Where is the high point? The journey away and back always has a point that is furthest away. In our case, that point will be a single note. In the case of Figure 1, where do you think the point furthest away from C is? 

2. How are the notes phrased? The ear will hear the 12 pitches form smaller groups of 2 and 3 notes. These groups will in turn form larger groups that are connected in different ways . How are these groups organized? 

3. What are the underlying harmonies? Where does the cadence start?

Figure 2. Analysis shows the high point and phrasing.

Example 2. The cadence clearly starts on the A, exactly one note after the high point. But the exercise doesn’t always follow this pattern.

Example 3. Always try and find any underlying harmonies in your tone rows. In this one, the first five notes clearly outline a C major triad (C-E-G), then the next triad that is heard is Cb major (Cb-Eb-Gb). My goal with writing this one was I was relying on the F in the cadence since it's so strongly a cadential note for C so I wanted to use it very early on.

Example 4. In example four, the yellow notes are all notes close to C. The blue notes form a harmony around F# minor (F#-A-C#). The red indicates the turning point, and also highlights an interval of a diminished 7th. 

Example 5. In this example the fifths are introduced in a much different way. Even though the tonic is C the first harmonic group that we hear is built around Ab. 

Here are 2 more examples to analyze in the following way.

What is the high point? How does it leave C and then eventually return?

What are the underlying harmonies? 

How are the notes grouped together in terms of phrasing? Where does the energy need to (on what note) in order to live the phrase as a one?

A word of advice! In your writing, do not start all of your tone rows on C. Start on different pitches, you will find other newer, fresher intervals. Make sure that you spell the notes correctly based on the interval you wish to express. 

Here is one of my most favorite and melodic rows.

I like it because the tritone appears so close to the end and has a role in bringing us back despite it being such a dissonant and unstable interval. Because of this, the Eb has a great task in bringing the ear back to Ab with just one interval. The high point for me is the B double flat, and so the whole tone row uses the tritone not to increase the overall tension, but to bring us home. 

The exercise shows that even though the intervals are concrete musical relations, their significance is entirely dependent on everything that proceeds before and after it.

This post is part of 14 Days of Harmony, a free course for musicians who want to deepen their understanding of harmony, and learn how to develop their connection with sound as a result. You can view the entire course here.

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