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Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." To do so, his music employs the technique of phase shifting, in which a phrase is slightly altered over time, in a flow that is clearly perceptible to the listener.
Terrence Mitchell "Terry" Riley is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notable for its innovative use of repetition, tape music techniques, and delay systems. His best known works are the 1964 composition In C and the 1969 LP A Rainbow in Curved Air, both considered landmarks of minimalism and important influences on experimental music, rock, and contemporary electronic music.
Piano Phase is a minimalist composition by American composer Steve Reich, written in 1967 for two pianos. It is one of his first attempts at applying his "phasing" technique, which he had previously used in the tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966), to live performance.
In C is a musical piece composed by Terry Riley in 1964 for an indefinite number of performers. He suggests "a group of about 35 is desired if possible but smaller or larger groups will work". A series of short melodic fragments, In C is often cited as the first minimalist composition to make a significant impact on the public consciousness.
Ambient 1: Music for Airports is the sixth studio album by Brian Eno, released in March 1978 by Polydor Records. It is the first of Eno's albums released under the label of ambient music, a genre of music intended to "induce calm and a space to think" while remaining "as ignorable as it is interesting". While not Eno's earliest entry in the style, it is credited with coining the term.
In music, tape loops are loops of magnetic tape used to create repetitive, rhythmic musical patterns or dense layers of sound when played on a tape recorder. Originating in the 1940s with the work of Pierre Schaeffer, they were used among contemporary composers of 1950s and 1960s, such as Éliane Radigue, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who used them to create phase patterns, rhythms, textures, and timbres. Popular music authors of 1960s and 1970s, particularly in psychedelic, progressive and ambient genres, used tape loops to accompany their music with innovative sound effects. In the 1980s, analog audio and tape loops with it gave way to digital audio and application of computers to generate and process sound.
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed.
Violin Phase is a musical work written by minimalist composer Steve Reich in October 1967.
Generative music is a term popularized by Brian Eno to describe music that is ever-different and changing, and that is created by a system.
Minimal music is a form of art music or other compositional practice that employs limited or minimal musical materials. Prominent features of minimalist music include repetitive patterns or pulses, steady drones, consonant harmony, and reiteration of musical phrases or smaller units. It may include features such as phase shifting, resulting in what is termed phase music, or process techniques that follow strict rules, usually described as process music. The approach is marked by a non-narrative, non-teleological, and non-representational approach, and calls attention to the activity of listening by focusing on the internal processes of the music.
Different Trains is a three-movement piece for string quartet and tape written by Steve Reich in 1988.
Discreet Music is the fourth studio album by Brian Eno, and the first released under his full name. The album is a minimalist work, with the titular A-side consisting of one 30-minute piece featuring synthesizer and tape delay. The B-side features three variations on Canon in D Major by Johann Pachelbel, performed by the Cockpit Ensemble and conducted by Gavin Bryars.
Drone music, drone-based music, or simply drone, is a minimalist genre of music that emphasizes the use of sustained sounds, notes, or tone clusters called drones. It is typically characterized by lengthy compositions featuring relatively slight harmonic variations. La Monte Young, one of its 1960s originators, defined it in 2000 as "the sustained tone branch of minimalism". Music containing drones can be found in many regional traditions across Asia, Australia, and Europe, but the genre label is generally reserved for music originating with the Western classical tradition. Elements of drone music have been incorporated in diverse genres such as rock, ambient, and techno.
Come Out is a 1966 piece by American composer Steve Reich. Reich was asked to edit down tape footage into a form of collage for a benefit for the Harlem Six and Come Out was a byproduct of the collage's production. The Harlem Six were six black youths arrested for a murder of Margit Sugar, a Hungarian refugee, in Harlem in the weeks following the Little Fruit Stand Riot of 1964. Only one of the six was responsible while the lead witness is generally considered the actual perpetrator. Truman Nelson, a civil rights activist and New Yorker who had asked Reich to compose a sound collage that was separate from Come Out, gave him a collection of tapes with recorded voices to use as source material. Nelson agreed to give Reich creative freedom with the tapes that he presented him for the sound collage. Come Out was a loop of four seconds from the more than 70 hours of tapes Nelson presented to Reich.
A Rainbow in Curved Air is the third album by American composer Terry Riley, released in 1969 on CBS Records. The title track consists of Riley's overdubbed improvisations on several keyboard and percussion instruments, including electric organ, electric harpsichord, dumbec, and tambourine. The B-side "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band" is a saxophone-based drone piece featuring tape loops and edits, drawing on Riley's all-night improvisatory performances in the 1960s.
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno, also known by the mononym Eno, is an English musician, composer, record producer and visual artist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to the ambient music and electronic genres, and for producing, recording, and writing works in rock, artistic pop and minimalist drone music. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has helped introduce unconventional concepts and approaches to contemporary music. He has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures. In 2019, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music.
(No Pussyfooting) is the debut studio album by the British duo Fripp & Eno, released in 1973. (No Pussyfooting) was the first of three major collaborations between the musicians, growing out of Brian Eno's early tape delay looping experiments and Robert Fripp's "Frippertronics" electric guitar technique.
In music, a tape phase is a recorded composition using a tape loop or its electronic simulation to produce and vary sounds. It is a form of tape music.
Phase music is a form of music that uses phasing as a primary compositional process. It is an approach to musical composition that is often associated with minimal music, as it shares similar characteristics, but some commentators prefer to treat phase music as a separate category. Phasing is a compositional technique in which the same part is played on two musical instruments, in steady but not identical tempi. Thus, the two instruments gradually shift out of unison, creating first a slight echo as one instrument plays a little behind the other, then a doubling effect with each note heard twice, then a complex ringing effect, and eventually coming back through doubling and echo into unison.
Reed Phase, also called Three Reeds, is an early work by the American minimalist composer Steve Reich. It was written originally in 1966 for soprano saxophone and two soprano saxophones recorded on magnetic tape, titled at that time Saxophone Phase, and was later published in two versions: one for any reed instrument and tape, the other for three reed instruments of exactly the same kind. It was Reich's first attempt at applying his "phasing" technique, which he had previously used in the tape pieces It's Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966), to live performance.
References
- ↑ Dayal, Geeta (September 11, 2014). "Steve Reich: 'Radiohead is my kind of music'". The Guardian .
- ↑ Steve Reich, Writings on Music: 1965-2000 (Oxford [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 19.
- ↑ Grimshaw, Jeremy. "It's Gonna Rain, for tape", AllMusic.com.
- ↑ "Will Wright and Brian Eno - Generative Systems". YouTube. June 26, 2006.
