The Use of Density Groups in Electroacoustic Music

Abstract

While the recent explosion of affordable software has placed powerful electronic music production tools within reach of anyone with a smart phone or a tablet, there are important aspects of music composition that technology has failed to address. In fact, much audio software subtly encourages prefabricated aesthetic solutions via the user interface, resulting in a cookie-cutter approach to music creation. As a result, much of the electronic music we hear today rarely ventures into new territory by exploring new structures. One solution could be to employ a compositional tool that enables a composer to generate new and unusual structures derived from mathematical relationships such as the Fibonacci series, the Golden Ratio or other mathematical patterns found in nature. Luckily, such a tool exists and is part of a vast system of music composition created in the twentieth century by the visionary music theoretician and composer Joseph Schillinger. In this article the author explores a Schillinger technique called ‘composing with density groups’ which can be used to create unique musical structures on paper or in any digital audio workstation (DAW).