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.
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.
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?
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