Atonal music theory

1. What does atonal mean in music?
2. How do you analyze atonal music?
3. What does atonality do for a work of music?

What does atonal mean in music?

: marked by avoidance of traditional musical tonality especially : organized without reference to key or tonal center and using the tones of the chromatic scale impartially.

How do you analyze atonal music?

ANALYSIS Segmentation: The first step to any analysis of atonal music should be to identify the pitch sets by identifying chords, melodic figures, or motives that are important. This process is known as segmentation. segmentation -- the process of identifying and labeling the pitch sets in a composition.

What does atonality do for a work of music?

Atonal music is, broadly speaking, music that doesn't follow the rules of tonality. These rules work to create tonal hierarchies, or systems in which certain notes are more important to the music than others. Composers interested in atonality work to break these rules by making all notes more equal in importance.