I am just about to finish writing a small section of my latest piece, so I decided to share some of the thinking behind it.

Despite the challenging rhythm of the piece (which I am not going to reveal today, but which you will be able to hear soon), the guiding policy behind it is: sound, first.

In these past months I became fascinated with combining intervals to create a kind of closed-voicing cluster, and analyzing the quality of their sound. So I cooked up what I call a table of sounds.

Here is how it works:

1. Choose your starting note.

2. Go up as indicated. T = tone, S = semitone, 4 = fourth, M3 = major third, and so on.

3. In the bass, play the perfect fifth built from the notes relative to the starting note.

Example: starting note = C.
S.T.T = C, Db, Eb, F
7/4 = Bb, F (Bb is the seventh of C, and F is its fourth)

Here is an excerpt of the table of sounds I built with these ideas, analyzing S.T.T, S.T.4 and M3.S.T:

Note that the 7 is considered flat unless otherwise indicated.

As you can see, the first sound (S.T.T) with 7/4 in the bass has a minor, Dorian quality. Impose 2b/#4 instead and you hear a typical Lydian sound. Impose 3m/b6 and you hear a dominant (7) or a major-7 sound, and so on.

There are some nice relationships between the clusters I analyzed:

1. The S.T.T and S.T.4 clusters are very close to each other, because going from S.T.T to S.T.4 only one note changes. So they keep more or less the same sound.

2. The S.T.4 and M3.S.T clusters contain the same notes. For example:
S.T.4 = A, Bb, C, F. Take the F at the bottom: F, A, Bb, C.
F, A, Bb, C = M3.S.T. So S.T.4 and M3.S.T are made of the same notes, but it is interesting that they create different sounds. Same notes, different interval order, different sound. Where S.T.4 gave a typical Dorian sound, M3.S.T gives a typical Lydian one.

I love the M3.S.T interval, which I also call the "Oh when the saints" cluster. Play it and you will find out why. In particular, M3.S.T with the 2/5 fifth in the bass is great, because you can superimpose any remaining note and it will sound good.

Of course I analyzed more clusters in the full table, such as T.T.S.T, T.T.M3, M3.S.M3, T.S.T and others.

Thanks for reading.

If you have questions, email me at music@mikerubini.com.