Much as I may believe in leaving room for some cough musical intuition, I like coming up with and using compositional processes of all kinds too. They can speed things up– although they invariably slow other things down at the same time. Mostly, though, they do accelerate decision-making for the horrifically-indecisive likes of me, and keep one from getting constantly lost in an infinite field of options (even as possibly narrowed down in scope by one’s cough musical intuition).

I’ve occasionally liked playing with ye olde serialized-pitch constructs, the kind you’d instantly think about whenever you see a picture of Arnold “Fun Machine Arnie” Schoenberg (provided you’ve ever been through any kind of formal concert-music study). Every couple of years I seem to do something old-school-serial in nature; it’s a fun system that’s ready to go off the shelf.

I thought heavily about using serialized pitch for my RPM now-part-of-my RCFA Challenge project, as I did want some kind of system to steer pitch elements somewhat out of my control. At the same time, though, I also wanted to be able to use a bit more arbitrary / systematically-unchecked personal choice than serialization in its usual form would really allow.

Besides, another thing I often dig is finding some way to incorporate “personal message encryption” into music – giving the finished product a “deeper” dumb meaning for me while totally obscuring that “meaning” for anyone else dumb enough to listen to the finished thing. I thought it might be fun to come up with a way to “encrypt” images into my pitch selection process for this project. Here’s what I’ve decided to go with.
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