log 4: Working list of Mutations to Existing Material
I, among some of my friends, am keeping a working list of possible mutations to existing compositional material (if nothing else than to prevent writers block). Every time I try to impliment one of the mutations from said list, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of fuck, I'm not even close to exhausting the potential of this which is enough motivation in itself to keep adding to it, and enough to break me out of my usual writing conventions (yikes). The goal of this is not to have it overtake creative decision making entirely (although, total serialism comes to mind), but to be supplimentary.
The Big Bad List so far is as follows, with the understanding that any existing phrase can be repeated with any inclusion of the following:
- Inversion, Retrograde, RI, Axis Flips and Fluctuations, and any dispersal of these methods in chunks (shuffled, ordered, patterned)
- Rhythmic Displacement
- Filters! (all of x becomes y; all pitches above E4 are displaced by x; all half notes become eighths; etc.)
- Augmentation/Diminution of either rhythmic or pitch material, or both
- Deriving longer forms from local rhythmic content, phrase structure, or harmonic progression, and vice versa
- Derive pitch from rhythm and rhythm from pitch
- Shuffle segments
- Remove and replace, or add a contrasting phrase
- Reduction or simplification
- Addition of pitches to build harmonic density, or emphasis of certain pitches in unision
- Addition of rhythms between existing spaces
- Tiling of rhytms offset by x bars
- Stretching of rhythms and/or phrase lengths by using ratios and informative bar lengths
- Retroactively apply microforms to existing phrases to inform new contiguous material
- Percieved Tempo Shifts, namely in the form of irrational meter, related to an adjacent rhythmic phrase
- Mapping (kind of like filters, but more as an additive than a replacement/displacement) (where x is, y is implimented, etc.)
tags: Composition, 2022