top of page

 Hyper-Serial-Music 

 

 Concept 

The traditional Serial music began from 12-tone technique of Schönberg in about 100 years ago. It has been evolved to the Serialism, by René Leibowitz and Pierre Boulez. In the history of music technology, Hyper-Serial-Music will add innovation to the principle of Serialism three-point: "structural", "complex" and "noisy". Hyper-Serial-Music is the algorithm music generated by state-of-the-art technology such as Artificial Intelligence than by native human intelligence only.

History and Context 

In summary, I believe that the innovation of core technique in the 600 years of music history is the process of making the structure of the music more complex. For example, Monophony of Middle Age turned into Polyphony, and Polyphony is completed into Tonality, and finally Tonality collapsed into Atonal, 12-tone, Serial, New Complexity and Noise. 12-tone technique and Serial technique appeared in the works of Schönberg in early 20th century and was inherited by Anton von Webern and Alban Berg, it was further enhanced by as Olivier Messiaen, Boulez and Stockhausen. I believe 12-tone and Serialism are the most prominent technique in 20th-century art music history. I believe that 12-tone technique and Serialism have the strongest "geometric structure" of non random sound which do not use the same sound in a single cycle. 12-tone and Serialism are now old fashion technique. I find historical meaning to innovate 12-tone and Serialism by new technologies and new perspectives after 70 years of their birth. To innovate on Serialism regarding to the three-point of "structural", "complex" and "noisy", we have to create the artistic composing technique of computer algorithm, generated by Artificial Intelligence. Hyper-Serial-Music will be exactly this innovation.

 

 Structural Feature 

Traditional 12-tone technique and Serialism is composed by the musical sound of 12 tones. On the other hand Hyper-Serial-Music is composed by the musical sound of 1728 tones generated by the algorithm of computer. This 1728-tone technique is constructed of three vectors,12 (playback speed) x12 (density) x12 (playback position). In the same way as Serialism, 1728 tones are evenly used.

Noise Feature

Traditional musical instruments could produce only sound of 40-5000Hz. Hyper-Serial-Music, by using a computer, become free from constraints of the conventional instrument, and could make sound below 40HZ or over 5000HZ including noise sound. By this thing, Hyper-Serial-Music can be composed by 1728 tones.

 

 Complexity 

With respect to “structural feature” and “noisy feature” mentioned above, let us say that one sound, a single melody with only one frequency is 1 point, and white noise, a melody of sounds equally distributed in all frequency is 100 points. Once “structural” and “noisy” of traditional Serialism is about 50 points, Hyper-Serial-Music can control the sound close to 100 points by the computer algorithm. Serialism alone is hard to wear contrast. Because of the extremely more complex sound, the contrast of Hyper-Serial-Music is small. But if it is practical in Trans- Ages-Music, it will wear more contrast mixed with other traditional sound. This Hyper-Serial-Music, along with the extension of the sound functions is one of the music techniques to realize the maximum of dramaturgy of Trans- Ages-Music.

bottom of page