The song sounds like garbage but the music theory behind it is kinda cool.

The concept that I was assigned to compose around was the 12 tone row. The idea behind that is that I needed to create a sequence of 12 notes that hit every note at least once. So in my case, my row was:

F, G, Ab, Bb, A, F#, D, C#, B, E, D#, C
(5, 7, 8, 10, 9, 6, 2, 1, 11, 4, 3, 0)

The fun thing about 12 tone rows is that once you've got your first row, you can manipulate it and use those new rows. For example, the row could start on a new pitch, so if I, say, took my row and started it on F# instead of F, every other note would shift up a semitone/half step. Or I could retrograde it, which is just a fancy way of saying that I'd play it backwards. I could also invert it around a new number. So let's say I wanted to invert it around the number 7, that first pitch, F (5), would become D (2) because 5+2 equals 7. (That's a huge oversimplification but I only have so much space and I don't want to imbed a whole music theory lesson). On top of all that, I could even retrograde an inversion if I really wanted to. This piece makes use of basically every different way at least once that I could manipulate that prime row that I started with.

Next week will actually be pleasing music. By coincidence, it's another solo piano piece, but I swear it'll actually be good.