Boulez Pitch Multiplication

Define two pitch-class sets using PC Set nodes. Set A might be a trichord like [0, 1, 4] and Set B another trichord like [0, 3, 7]. Connect both to a Pitch Multiply node. The multiplication works by transposing each pitch of Set A by every interval derived from Set B, then taking the union of all resulting pitches.

The result is a larger pitch field that contains the intervallic DNA of both source sets. Run the output through Sort to arrange pitches registrally, or through Unique to remove duplicates. This technique, developed by Boulez for works of the 1950s and beyond, produces harmonically rich fields from small generating cells — the compositional equivalent of multiplying two numbers to get a product that contains both factors.

Experiment with different set combinations: multiply a whole-tone fragment by a chromatic cluster, or multiply two segments of a tone row. The results vary dramatically depending on the intervallic content of the source sets.