It's not too surprising that people (especially Jewish people) with that surname would want to avoid the proper German pronunciation, given that word's 20th Century associations.
It's not surprising @@Hydrocorax, but Americans also have a unique way of pronouncing names from Slavic languages. In Britain people tend to Anglicise including respelling, so Grin becomes Green for example. What is important here is the way Steve pronounces it - /raɪʃ/ - as it's his name.
Became introduced to Steve Reich by some college friends that took me to a performance at LeMoyne College in Syracuse NY around 2007. Lo and behold, the gentleman in the ballcap sitting next me prior to the performance was Steve himself! Was treated to a supercool performance of Piano Phase on electronic drum pads, with a recording projected onto a translucent sheet and the live percussionist backlit so it looked like the arms of Shiva. Great night.
A few years ago, here in Warsaw, Poland, I was lucky, and privileged, to see an amazing performance of 'Music for 18 Musicians' by a group of very talented musicians (I can't fully remember but I got last minute free tickets somehow, I won them perhaps, or most likely my wife was an invited guest but she couldn't go because she was off overseas somewhere at a film festival, but whatever, it was sold-out so I was very, very lucky to be there, but I digress). Seeing this video has reminded me that I really want to repeat that experience someday, I'd love to be at another performance of that piece, not only is the music wonderful, but watching it being performed live was truly something else.
I LOVE this video about me! Alas, the only flaw is that I have recently changed my last name's pronunciation so that it is actually "Ryshhhhh" and not "Ryke" as you have stated here. Otherwise, magnificent! Cheers from the Reich mansion
“Reich mansion” 😅😅😅 I must say I am sick of all these musicians selling out and going minimalist and raking it in. Turns out really sparse atmosphere instrumental music just rolls the 💰💰💰in like crazy!! Pour one out for the poor brothers and sisters starving at their pop and dance music 5:18 while the minimalists party with models.. 😢😢🫗🫗😔
I love the minimalist composers. The first piece of Steve Reich's I got to hear in the 80's was Violin Phase. I remember the first time hearing Philip Glass was the soundtrack to the amazing film Koyaanisqatsi, also in the 80's. They changed music forever!
I've been blown away by Reich ever since I first heard Different Trains back in the early 90s. I describe the experience of listening to Systems/Minimalist music as food for the head and the heart in equal measure. I love stepping in and out of the aesthetic and almost mathematical modes of appreciation and then pulling them back together for possibly the most satisfying artistic experience available. Gorgeous.
@@ImpliedMusicHi Chris. I have just bought a very interesting guitar microlooping pedal which when tweaked with finess provides some wonderful Reich/Glass moments. Check it out ruclips.net/video/ewy5ToYchR0/видео.htmlsi=tb81QMnhABpBKyOy. Hope you like it.
I flipped when I saw this title on YT. I studied some of Steve Reich's music in 4th-semester Music Theory taught by Augie Wegner III from Eastman School of Music. (him not me...) I still listen to Reich's "Tehillim The Desert Music". (Thanks for correcting the name pronunciation.) We played Terry Riley's " In C" in class and it was a thrill to have the class all play it together. This music changed me from a bad computer science major to an A music student.
Minimalism a la Glass, Reich, and Terry Riley, along with Minimalist-inspired Mike Oldfield, saved me as a 70s teenager who just couldn’t get into standard radio fare or traditional classical. Reich fascinated me for his adherence to a plan while still creating beautiful textures and soundscapes. Fans of the movie, Risky Business, will hear Reich’s influence in the Tangerine Dream score.
@@ImpliedMusic I was trying to make sense of the syncopation and the part about the 16th notes to 8th notes to quarter and unison made everything click in my head.
I've always liked the music of Steve Reich! I found music by him, Philip Glass, Pete Namlook and Klaus Schulz all at the same time. So glad to see an analysis of his work here! I think there's a lot of us who would enjoy seeing more analysis of Reich, Glass, and other minimalist composers. There is so much unexpected richness in their work, and for me at least, knowing more about it adds to the pleasure of listening.
I discovered Steve Reich around 1984. I definitely got my money's worth out of my copy of Music For Eighteen Musicians, along with several of his other albums as well. Although they are often lumped together, I could never get into Phillip Glass. Steve's stuff always just seemed more musical, somehow. I consider Steve to be one of the foundational influencing artists of my own (strictly amateur) composing career, and I have actively emulated him in at least a few pieces.
I loved this video and the one on Philip Glass and interlocking arpeggios. I’m currently studying composition and as of lately have been studying spectralist and minimalist composers, because these practices align with the music I already make by getting the most out of a single note or chord with variations in timbre or writing riff or melody that could go on forever. I’m hoping that by next year I can start writing sheet music to bring some ideas I have to life and perform them live with accompanying musicians.
@@ImpliedMusic thanks Maestro for kindly approving of my comment. Here is the precise example I am talking about where i play different metrics on top of a steady 11/8 backbone. (voice in 8/8) That kind of stubborn steadyness is dirrectly inspired by Steve Reich's music ( i must say, though, that Michael Nyman's "intense relentlessness sound" is also a great inspiration for that tune as well ). enjoy: (ruclips.net/video/a0utBvhTPy8/видео.html
Admittedly TODAY is the first I have ever heard of you or Steve Reich and your works and educator videos... I am grateful and my takeaway from this first encounter has already stirred some things in my head about how I can apply some new ideas in my writings.... Thank you!
Surely a fan of minimalism! Classically schooled pianist here and played much Debussy, Chopin and Bartok but now enjoying all kinds of minimal music as well, mostly ones bridging neo-classical with electronic music, like Olafur Arnalds or Grandbrothers but also enjoy minimal house and techno music.
Many thanks 👍. I became slightly obsessed with minimalist music after hearing Michael Nyman as a teenager. Originally a classical guitarist I'm now trying to apply this to modular synths.........love it 🙏🎶🎶
Just found the channel!! So much fun! Reich was the artist who really got me into contemporary classical music. John Adams is another brilliant composer of this generation that includes Reich, Glass, Adams etc. Keep up the great work!! 🙏
Very enlightening. I've been listening to Steve Reich for decades. But I am trying to create some of these techniques in electronic music that I create. Thanks.
Thanks so much - so interesting. I practice and play electronic music and love the work of the pioneers Glass / Reich / Riley - love to use the inspiration of their patters in my music
Interesting video but Phasing only appears a small part in ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ - there’s a rhythmic figure which Glass first used that features a lot in Reich’s music where he takes this idea to its nth degree - really cool.
I'm supposed to compose a minimalist piece for my theory class, but I keep second guessing myself while I'm brainstorming. What I get sort of worried about is when the line is drawn, and it goes from being minimalist to regular music (hopefully I'm making sense). I feel like if I write something with harmony that actually travels in a direction, it might not sound minimalist. My teacher wants us to put a lot of effort into these pieces, but I feel like the more effort I put into something, generally the harmony and melodies become more rich, with more defined contour and direction. I guess I'm just having trouble breaking away from starting out my compositions with harmony. Here's my most recent idea that I might work with: I was thinking about writing for piano and electric guitar. I want the piano to simulate a constant drone by using the pedals, and sustaining notes for as long as possible. And I want the guitar to start with triplets, and then maybe it changes to quarter notes, staying steady with the pulse. There will be no real time signature, because the pulse will be constant, but the rhythm values will change so often that it becomes hard to find a real time signature. I'm not sure if I'll be able to accomplish this, but hopefully I can. And hopefully I explained that well enough. I'd really appreciate any advice from any composers who might see this comment. Thank you for reading this. :)
Casey, you've put your finger on what's challenging about working in minimalism. there's a distinction to make between rich harmonic sonorities, as we find in Reich and John Luther Adams, and functional harmony, the narrative arc of tonic dominant relations. What appeals to me about minimalism is the separation of the two components. structural process, the division of time, or horizontal construction, is independent of the vertical arrangement. i think the best minimalist compositions build rich vertical harmonies AND linear structures from the simplest of premises. is this any help? now i'm curious to hear how the assignment progresses.
@@ImpliedMusic yes that actually does help a lot. I'm going to move as far away as possible from dominant/tonic function for this. Maybe I'll choose a pentatonic scale to work with (maybe one of those cool Asian ones). That way there's not a lot of pull in the scale. Because when you stick to 5 note scales, sometimes it's hard to find a tonic (thinking only about melody here). I'm thinking note-wise, it can just sort of float around on that scale, and I can possibly make the rhythms the star of the composition. I'll try to remember to leave you another comment once I post it, because I plan on posting all of my music from this semester on my RUclips account. I just got done with a string quartet, and we actually paid for a real professional quartet to perform my class's music. So I'll probably be posting that video as well. I'll definitely try to remember to notify you.
Your comment about the drone reminded me of Reich’s Four Organs, which creates a drone-like quality by holding a note for an increasingly long time. It also shows how the music can grow sonically complex just from the interplay of the instruments playing very simple phrases.
Fascinating video and analysis! I’m a huge fan of Steve Reich and Music for 18 Musicians in particular is one of my very favorite pieces of music. I’m also quite fond of the work of Terry Riley, La Monte Young and John Cage. Some truly gorgeous breathtaking work. I love music of all genres and definitions and have yet to immerse myself completely in “proper” minimalist music, but I would love to do so some day. Anyway, I just thought I’d comment and let you know I really enjoyed the video and would love to see further videos about Steve Reich or minimalist composers / compositions in general!
This was so great - thanks for sharing. I recently embarked on learning piano and music theory and Reich’s catalogue has been such a rich source of motivation and inspiration. The more I understand Reich, the more I seem to understand music more generally.
I'm a few months late, but I really appreciate the honest enthusiasm you displayed through the video. Great stuff mate. Might like to sometimes have as little bit more time to hear the music without talking before commentary comes back in, but I appreciated everything you said, and I now have some music to check out because of this. Cheers!
Composing some minimal music on my Yamaha Tenori On right now, and loving it. It's a bit robotic but as I love electronic dance music I think it's great that way. Loving these naive bell and marima like sounds, good stuff. Really digging your positive, mellow vibe! ❤
I'm pretty sure Korot did not work on 'Different Trains', there is no video accompanying the music. 'Different Trains' is the first official use of SR's speech melody technique though. Their first collaboration is 'The Cave'.
Dude, how do you habe over 800 videos but only 9k subscribers. Just found your channel and subscribed straight away. Love the minimalist theory analysis videos ❤❤❤
I just found minimalism after 20 years of producing and I feel like I finally found my jazz. That set you did was awesome, such great listening. After this comment I’ll look if you have a link to some music of yours. If you don’t have it then please share it :)
Just a fan of music and this sort of work, so interesting to hear it analysed, I’m a big Jazz fan as well and it’s certainly peculated across to that idiom as well. Have hit subscribe!
Thank you for the inspiration. Myself, undisciplined digital piano player - with percussion/drumming background - post-punk rock and street Samba. So *easy* on a computer, so difficult to play, especially solo on a keyboard?
You’ve got plenty of transferable skills. Piano is intrinsically hard. It’s the individual finger thing. But apparently it’s possible. It’s rewarding in the way stupidly difficult things are rewarding.
Great video! I've been exploring minimalism in my electronic music lately and these concepts are good to know. You demonstrate them in a clear and elegant manner.
Great video, thanks so much for sharing. I make (currently bad) dub techno. I just learned about minimalism, and there is a lot of it already in the genera. Probably, due to the technology being dependent on loops. Anyway, I'm plumdering minimalism for ideas for my own compasitions and you are making it easier!
I’m on it. We were just talking about doing a sample library of his instruments! Remains to be seen if they’ll give us access. Btw, Rainbow in Curved Air is , I believe, a Terry Riley album.
@@ImpliedMusic ack you are of course correct about Terry Riley. Doh! 40 years later my brain isn’t accessing those circuits as it once did. Love them both. Also really appreciate your Philip Glass content.
The phasing melodies bit was kind of a mind blower! I really love this video! I'm also pretty obsessed with the concept of vocal pitch transcription from speech. I've never heard Different Trains, but this has severely sparked my interest and I intend to very soon. Trains came out in '88. The Man from Utopia (Frank Zappa album) came out in '83, and he uses the same technique on the song The Jazz Discharge Party Hats and also the The Dangerous Kitchen. Is there any earlier example of someone using this technique. I always tell people Zappa pioneered this technique, but I also talk out of my ass frequently! I hope I'm right (won't be surprised if I'm not).
@@ImpliedMusic Update: Different Trains is mindblower. An out of body experience. Wow is all I can say. So personal, so moving, so intricate concocted and performed.
I love many, many types of music but Minimalism, more than any other, creates interference patterns across my brain that excite and delight….a modern version of tribal rhythms, the sounds of the chaotic ripples of modern life creating new transcendent brain states
I want to better understand this technique so I use in making music, and what I'm not sure about is the phase changes happen because I shift one phrase of two in the timeline or I put the two phrases on sperate tracks with one a bit faster so they keep changing offset constantly? Please anyone can explain would be greatly appreciated ❤❤❤
great question. just offsetting two identical phrases will generate a new sound, but it won't continually evolve. Reich's innovation was to explore the second of your two options... one of the phrases a bit faster than the first, so that they only re-sync after a considerable time. it's possible to create similar effects with phrases of the same speed (beat) but different lengths. i.e. a phrase of 4 against a phrase of 5 beats will re-sync after 20 beats.
Hello Chris, my way to Steve Reich was through techno and house ;) I make electronic music myself and would like to play around with his compositions. **Do you know a source, where I can download MIDI-files with his compositions?**
@@ImpliedMusic Thank you for your reply. I just had the idea, because you showed some notation papers in your video. I already searched the web but was not lucky. All the best from Germany, mo.
@@mosonic apparently there are some available, though they seem to be behind paywalls or in forums that require log-ins. i'm lucky in that i'm comfortable reading and transcribing things. published scores are readily available, and i believe there may be software tools for MIDI conversion...
Besides compound meters he's also a big fan of changing time signatures often, and very often subdivides the rhythm within those time signatures. It's very rhythmic!
I think ai will make us re-evaluate music like this. I think ai is far from generating any highly inspired music - e.g. the music of classical greats like rachmaninoff, or even present-day electronic artists who seem to capture something deep within their souls and crystallize it in music. But ai has no trouble churning out immense amounts of this kind of minimalist and formulaic music... in milliseconds. Why should humans pursue a style of music which a machine can disgorge, at indistinguishable quality and at arbitrary volumes... and in a single click and within milliseconds? If a machine - which does nothing but follow rules - can produce musical examples of indistinguishable quality, doesn't it prove that humans producing this kind of music are simply following primitive rules and nothing more? Doesn't it prove that there is no human inspiration in this kind of music? I do really admire the passion of the presenter.
thanks for your observations. respectfully, i couldn't disagree more that some large language (in this case musical language) model of minimalist composition could produce a masterwork that's indistinguishable from the work of Reich, Terry Riley, Lamonte Young, John Adams, Philip Glass, et al. Regarding your questions about proof of slavish adherence to primitive rules, i'll simply observe that this type of music may just not be your cup of tea.
@@ImpliedMusic Thanks for the reply! I agree that a genre may simply not suit everyone - but I don't dislike the music those composers have created! I just feel that it is based almost entirely on simple rules, and has plenty of room for redundancy (e.g. around 3:00, I find the E -> F# -> B -> C# -> D sequence could be rearranged in any other order, or swap the F# for an A, etc. and the musical effect of the piece remains quite the same). I feel inclined to call the most creative/inspired elements of minimalism "music-adjacent" - e.g. interesting samples, vocal pitch transcription, prepared pianos, odd and beautiful choreography and visuals. I think it's easy to tell where else the persuasion of minimalist music is coming from; e.g. the scales are pleasant, polyrhythms keep our ears interested, repeating layers come and go. I suspect I could compile a short list of techniques and you (or anyone!) would have a hard time finding any moment within any minimalist piece of music which appeals to us for any reason not on the list! (I'm interested to know if you disagree here?) Because the list is short and the techniques on it are well-defined, it is fodder for ai (and not necessarily LLMs - as I understand, LSTMs and RNNs are more adapted to this kind of work). I believe I could write a short program that generates arbitrary amounts of midi with a comparable feeling to that shown in this video - agreeable tones, interesting polyrhythms, etc - and without even leveraging any ai techniques. Pursuits which are based on simple rules and allow for redundancy will be (and already are becoming) the earliest crafts indistinguishably fulfilled by ai. I don't dislike this music, I just think we'll re-evaluate it in the face of ai. The one thing humans have is a soul. If we create art only by picking from a limited and predefined basket of techniques, I don't think we are expressing our souls.
thanks. as you've noticed, i've made a choice on this channel to not use published sheet music. i sometimes will show my own transcriptions. as a commitment to the bulk of my subscribers who aren't musically literate, as you and i are, i usually end-run the sheet music (issues of copyright completely aside.) that said, it's not trivial to find scores from some composers, i get it. for this score, my own work, it happens there's no notated score at all.
RUclips videos of interviews with Mr. Reich pronounce his name with 'sh' not 'k'.
yes. i'm saddled with the pronunciation that was prevalent in the 70's... please see other comments above... but yeah...
It's actually pronounced "Reich"
Loads of American interviewers called Neil Peart of RUSH Neal Pert.
He had to make it clear several times that it was pronounced Peart, NOT Pert.
It's not too surprising that people (especially Jewish people) with that surname would want to avoid the proper German pronunciation, given that word's 20th Century associations.
It's not surprising @@Hydrocorax, but Americans also have a unique way of pronouncing names from Slavic languages. In Britain people tend to Anglicise including respelling, so Grin becomes Green for example. What is important here is the way Steve pronounces it - /raɪʃ/ - as it's his name.
Nice technique overviews, jostling ideas❤
Thank you! 🙂
Became introduced to Steve Reich by some college friends that took me to a performance at LeMoyne College in Syracuse NY around 2007. Lo and behold, the gentleman in the ballcap sitting next me prior to the performance was Steve himself!
Was treated to a supercool performance of Piano Phase on electronic drum pads, with a recording projected onto a translucent sheet and the live percussionist backlit so it looked like the arms of Shiva. Great night.
amazing.
A few years ago, here in Warsaw, Poland, I was lucky, and privileged, to see an amazing performance of 'Music for 18 Musicians' by a group of very talented musicians (I can't fully remember but I got last minute free tickets somehow, I won them perhaps, or most likely my wife was an invited guest but she couldn't go because she was off overseas somewhere at a film festival, but whatever, it was sold-out so I was very, very lucky to be there, but I digress). Seeing this video has reminded me that I really want to repeat that experience someday, I'd love to be at another performance of that piece, not only is the music wonderful, but watching it being performed live was truly something else.
yes! i had a chance to see it live this year, by the Colin Currie Group. transporting.
I LOVE this video about me! Alas, the only flaw is that I have recently changed my last name's pronunciation so that it is actually "Ryshhhhh" and not "Ryke" as you have stated here. Otherwise, magnificent! Cheers from the Reich mansion
“Reich mansion” 😅😅😅
I must say I am sick of all these musicians selling out and going minimalist and raking it in. Turns out really sparse atmosphere instrumental music just rolls the 💰💰💰in like crazy!!
Pour one out for the poor brothers and sisters starving at their pop and dance music 5:18 while the minimalists party with models.. 😢😢🫗🫗😔
▪ f e y
▪ m u c h ?
I can’t imagine how bored a guy would have to be to make that account. 😂
@@RaquelFoster To be fair, I was thoroughly entertained. In fact, I think I want to meet this person!
@@erikpielermusiclmao if my boy can get the bag, more power to him 😂
I love the minimalist composers. The first piece of Steve Reich's I got to hear in the 80's was Violin Phase. I remember the first time hearing Philip Glass was the soundtrack to the amazing film Koyaanisqatsi, also in the 80's. They changed music forever!
I've been blown away by Reich ever since I first heard Different Trains back in the early 90s. I describe the experience of listening to Systems/Minimalist music as food for the head and the heart in equal measure. I love stepping in and out of the aesthetic and almost mathematical modes of appreciation and then pulling them back together for possibly the most satisfying artistic experience available. Gorgeous.
Well said!
@@ImpliedMusicHi Chris. I have just bought a very interesting guitar microlooping pedal which when tweaked with finess provides some wonderful Reich/Glass moments. Check it out ruclips.net/video/ewy5ToYchR0/видео.htmlsi=tb81QMnhABpBKyOy. Hope you like it.
thanks for the great videos. learning a lot
Glad to help
I flipped when I saw this title on YT. I studied some of Steve Reich's music in 4th-semester Music Theory taught by Augie Wegner III from Eastman School of Music. (him not me...) I still listen to Reich's "Tehillim The Desert Music". (Thanks for correcting the name pronunciation.) We played Terry Riley's " In C" in class and it was a thrill to have the class all play it together. This music changed me from a bad computer science major to an A music student.
wow, cool story.
Thank you, I saw music for 18 Musicians in London recently. The silence at the end was so full, it made me realise what a journey it had taken me on
Minimalism a la Glass, Reich, and Terry Riley, along with Minimalist-inspired Mike Oldfield, saved me as a 70s teenager who just couldn’t get into standard radio fare or traditional classical. Reich fascinated me for his adherence to a plan while still creating beautiful textures and soundscapes. Fans of the movie, Risky Business, will hear Reich’s influence in the Tangerine Dream score.
Learning learning learning. So grateful. Adding this tool to my current project thanks. Thank Steve Reich. Thanks Chris
Glad it was helpful!
I saw music for 18 musicians performed by Orchestra Victoria last night. Im obsessed. Was dreaming about it last night.
it's so amazing to hear live!
@@ImpliedMusic I was trying to make sense of the syncopation and the part about the 16th notes to 8th notes to quarter and unison made everything click in my head.
I've always liked the music of Steve Reich! I found music by him, Philip Glass, Pete Namlook and Klaus Schulz all at the same time. So glad to see an analysis of his work here! I think there's a lot of us who would enjoy seeing more analysis of Reich, Glass, and other minimalist composers. There is so much unexpected richness in their work, and for me at least, knowing more about it adds to the pleasure of listening.
I discovered Steve Reich around 1984. I definitely got my money's worth out of my copy of Music For Eighteen Musicians, along with several of his other albums as well. Although they are often lumped together, I could never get into Phillip Glass. Steve's stuff always just seemed more musical, somehow. I consider Steve to be one of the foundational influencing artists of my own (strictly amateur) composing career, and I have actively emulated him in at least a few pieces.
I loved this video and the one on Philip Glass and interlocking arpeggios. I’m currently studying composition and as of lately have been studying spectralist and minimalist composers, because these practices align with the music I already make by getting the most out of a single note or chord with variations in timbre or writing riff or melody that could go on forever. I’m hoping that by next year I can start writing sheet music to bring some ideas I have to life and perform them live with accompanying musicians.
excellent. these ideas really come to life in actual performance.
It is so much possible to develop a polymetric mind with machines.. they're actually made for that!! .... ("Touratour" is my own Reichian tune)
I agree. We’re all much better at thinking and performing this stuff thanks to experience of hearing it from sequencing
@@ImpliedMusic thanks Maestro for kindly approving of my comment. Here is the precise example I am talking about where i play different metrics on top of a steady 11/8 backbone. (voice in 8/8) That kind of stubborn steadyness is dirrectly inspired by Steve Reich's music ( i must say, though, that Michael Nyman's "intense relentlessness sound" is also a great inspiration for that tune as well ). enjoy: (ruclips.net/video/a0utBvhTPy8/видео.html
Admittedly TODAY is the first I have ever heard of you or Steve Reich and your works and educator videos... I am grateful and my takeaway from this first encounter has already stirred some things in my head about how I can apply some new ideas in my writings.... Thank you!
Thanks Tom, and welcome!
Nice
Backing tracks is what I'm planning on selling on asset stores so this is a suuuuuuper duper awesome great way to approach it, many thanks again!
Really interesting stuff. I’m glad I found you. :)
Awesome, thank you!
So glad to be in a world with people like you in it, who share such wonderful ideas
Liked and subscribed 🎶 🌎 ☮️ ❤️
Great video!
Thanks!
Surely a fan of minimalism! Classically schooled pianist here and played much Debussy, Chopin and Bartok but now enjoying all kinds of minimal music as well, mostly ones bridging neo-classical with electronic music, like Olafur Arnalds or Grandbrothers but also enjoy minimal house and techno music.
Great, nice example, really clear to see what's happening.
Many thanks 👍. I became slightly obsessed with minimalist music after hearing Michael Nyman as a teenager. Originally a classical guitarist I'm now trying to apply this to modular synths.........love it 🙏🎶🎶
Just found the channel!! So much fun! Reich was the artist who really got me into contemporary classical music. John Adams is another brilliant composer of this generation that includes Reich, Glass, Adams etc. Keep up the great work!! 🙏
happy you mention Adams. he and i are neighbors... i get a kick out of seeing him at the grocery store.
I got a Sim city , Cities Skyline vibes here, love it. Thx for the upload I love this content let me tell you.
Glad to hear it!
Very enlightening. I've been listening to Steve Reich for decades. But I am trying to create some of these techniques in electronic music that I create. Thanks.
Thanks so much - so interesting. I practice and play electronic music and love the work of the pioneers Glass / Reich / Riley - love to use the inspiration of their patters in my music
steve reich has become one of my favorite composers and a huge influence in my composition approach. thank you for this
Keep It up man It's a Great Channel.
thanks!
Thanks for sharing the inspiration!
Thanks for watching!
Interesting video but Phasing only appears a small part in ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ - there’s a rhythmic figure which Glass first used that features a lot in Reich’s music where he takes this idea to its nth degree - really cool.
I'm supposed to compose a minimalist piece for my theory class, but I keep second guessing myself while I'm brainstorming. What I get sort of worried about is when the line is drawn, and it goes from being minimalist to regular music (hopefully I'm making sense). I feel like if I write something with harmony that actually travels in a direction, it might not sound minimalist. My teacher wants us to put a lot of effort into these pieces, but I feel like the more effort I put into something, generally the harmony and melodies become more rich, with more defined contour and direction. I guess I'm just having trouble breaking away from starting out my compositions with harmony.
Here's my most recent idea that I might work with:
I was thinking about writing for piano and electric guitar. I want the piano to simulate a constant drone by using the pedals, and sustaining notes for as long as possible. And I want the guitar to start with triplets, and then maybe it changes to quarter notes, staying steady with the pulse. There will be no real time signature, because the pulse will be constant, but the rhythm values will change so often that it becomes hard to find a real time signature.
I'm not sure if I'll be able to accomplish this, but hopefully I can. And hopefully I explained that well enough. I'd really appreciate any advice from any composers who might see this comment. Thank you for reading this. :)
Casey, you've put your finger on what's challenging about working in minimalism. there's a distinction to make between rich harmonic sonorities, as we find in Reich and John Luther Adams, and functional harmony, the narrative arc of tonic dominant relations. What appeals to me about minimalism is the separation of the two components. structural process, the division of time, or horizontal construction, is independent of the vertical arrangement. i think the best minimalist compositions build rich vertical harmonies AND linear structures from the simplest of premises. is this any help? now i'm curious to hear how the assignment progresses.
@@ImpliedMusic yes that actually does help a lot. I'm going to move as far away as possible from dominant/tonic function for this. Maybe I'll choose a pentatonic scale to work with (maybe one of those cool Asian ones). That way there's not a lot of pull in the scale. Because when you stick to 5 note scales, sometimes it's hard to find a tonic (thinking only about melody here). I'm thinking note-wise, it can just sort of float around on that scale, and I can possibly make the rhythms the star of the composition.
I'll try to remember to leave you another comment once I post it, because I plan on posting all of my music from this semester on my RUclips account. I just got done with a string quartet, and we actually paid for a real professional quartet to perform my class's music. So I'll probably be posting that video as well. I'll definitely try to remember to notify you.
Your comment about the drone reminded me of Reich’s Four Organs, which creates a drone-like quality by holding a note for an increasingly long time. It also shows how the music can grow sonically complex just from the interplay of the instruments playing very simple phrases.
@@piggly-wiggly cool! I've never actually heard that one before. I'm gonna look it up now.
Great video
Thanks for the informative as well as entertaining video! Glad I discovered your channel...🙂
Welcome!
Fascinating video and analysis! I’m a huge fan of Steve Reich and Music for 18 Musicians in particular is one of my very favorite pieces of music.
I’m also quite fond of the work of Terry Riley, La Monte Young and John Cage. Some truly gorgeous breathtaking work.
I love music of all genres and definitions and have yet to immerse myself completely in “proper” minimalist music, but I would love to do so some day.
Anyway, I just thought I’d comment and let you know I really enjoyed the video and would love to see further videos about Steve Reich or minimalist composers / compositions in general!
Love this guy 👌🏻
Thanks for sharing
This was so great - thanks for sharing. I recently embarked on learning piano and music theory and Reich’s catalogue has been such a rich source of motivation and inspiration. The more I understand Reich, the more I seem to understand music more generally.
that's great to hear. his work was a revelation for me.
I'm a few months late, but I really appreciate the honest enthusiasm you displayed through the video. Great stuff mate. Might like to sometimes have as little bit more time to hear the music without talking before commentary comes back in, but I appreciated everything you said, and I now have some music to check out because of this. Cheers!
thanks for the support. great note about letting the music speak for itself. i get over enthusiastic ... cheers.
Composing some minimal music on my Yamaha Tenori On right now, and loving it. It's a bit robotic but as I love electronic dance music I think it's great that way. Loving these naive bell and marima like sounds, good stuff. Really digging your positive, mellow vibe! ❤
Great technique
I'm pretty sure Korot did not work on 'Different Trains', there is no video accompanying the music. 'Different Trains' is the first official use of SR's speech melody technique though. Their first collaboration is 'The Cave'.
ah. i'm conflating, yes. you're right. thanks for that.
@@ImpliedMusic thanks for the nice video though 😉
Dude, how do you habe over 800 videos but only 9k subscribers. Just found your channel and subscribed straight away. Love the minimalist theory analysis videos ❤❤❤
Thanks. I found that really interesting. I am not a musician and knew something good happens in Reich's music. Your video helped explain it for me.
I just found minimalism after 20 years of producing and I feel like I finally found my jazz. That set you did was awesome, such great listening. After this comment I’ll look if you have a link to some music of yours. If you don’t have it then please share it :)
Thanks you soo much!
Concise, succint, and helpful. Immediately subscribed.
thanks Jorge. it's a topic close to my heart.
Really enjoying your videos.
Very inspiring!
Thank you! Also worth noting that these ideas can be a great starting point for beginning to compose.
❤
Just a fan of music and this sort of work, so interesting to hear it analysed, I’m a big Jazz fan as well and it’s certainly peculated across to that idiom as well. Have hit subscribe!
Thank you very much for this!
very good work! keep it comin´...
Thank you for the inspiration. Myself, undisciplined digital piano player - with percussion/drumming background - post-punk rock and street Samba. So *easy* on a computer, so difficult to play, especially solo on a keyboard?
You’ve got plenty of transferable skills. Piano is intrinsically hard. It’s the individual finger thing. But apparently it’s possible. It’s rewarding in the way stupidly difficult things are rewarding.
Great video! I've been exploring minimalism in my electronic music lately and these concepts are good to know. You demonstrate them in a clear and elegant manner.
Great video, thanks so much for sharing. I make (currently bad) dub techno. I just learned about minimalism, and there is a lot of it already in the genera. Probably, due to the technology being dependent on loops. Anyway, I'm plumdering minimalism for ideas for my own compasitions and you are making it easier!
Thanks for making this! Good video. I like doing Reich style phasing with looping delays
Rainbow in curved air was my first S.R. exposure. Have you ever done Harry Partsch on your channel?
I’m on it. We were just talking about doing a sample library of his instruments! Remains to be seen if they’ll give us access. Btw, Rainbow in Curved Air is , I believe, a Terry Riley album.
@@ImpliedMusic ack you are of course correct about Terry Riley. Doh! 40 years later my brain isn’t accessing those circuits as it once did. Love them both. Also really appreciate your Philip Glass content.
Was waiting for this! Great job
The phasing melodies bit was kind of a mind blower! I really love this video! I'm also pretty obsessed with the concept of vocal pitch transcription from speech. I've never heard Different Trains, but this has severely sparked my interest and I intend to very soon. Trains came out in '88. The Man from Utopia (Frank Zappa album) came out in '83, and he uses the same technique on the song The Jazz Discharge Party Hats and also the The Dangerous Kitchen. Is there any earlier example of someone using this technique. I always tell people Zappa pioneered this technique, but I also talk out of my ass frequently! I hope I'm right (won't be surprised if I'm not).
awesome info.
@@ImpliedMusic Update: Different Trains is mindblower. An out of body experience. Wow is all I can say. So personal, so moving, so intricate concocted and performed.
Fantastic videos! Which marimba are you using?
Soniccouture’s marimba
I love many, many types of music but Minimalism, more than any other, creates interference patterns across my brain that excite and delight….a modern version of tribal rhythms, the sounds of the chaotic ripples of modern life creating new transcendent brain states
agreed!
What is a bass technique that bounce notes between octaves? They did it in 90's music a lot.
Hey would you mind to do a video about the technics that nils frahm is using? He’s a one of a kind
great idea.
This lecture was ace! Thank you. Consider me subbed. :)
I want to better understand this technique so I use in making music, and what I'm not sure about is the phase changes happen because I shift one phrase of two in the timeline or I put the two phrases on sperate tracks with one a bit faster so they keep changing offset constantly? Please anyone can explain would be greatly appreciated ❤❤❤
great question. just offsetting two identical phrases will generate a new sound, but it won't continually evolve. Reich's innovation was to explore the second of your two options... one of the phrases a bit faster than the first, so that they only re-sync after a considerable time. it's possible to create similar effects with phrases of the same speed (beat) but different lengths. i.e. a phrase of 4 against a phrase of 5 beats will re-sync after 20 beats.
@@ImpliedMusic Thank you 🙏
Hello Chris, my way to Steve Reich was through techno and house ;) I make electronic music myself and would like to play around with his compositions. **Do you know a source, where I can download MIDI-files with his compositions?**
Excellent question. Not off the top of my head. Let me research this a bit.
@@ImpliedMusic Thank you for your reply. I just had the idea, because you showed some notation papers in your video. I already searched the web but was not lucky. All the best from Germany, mo.
@@mosonic apparently there are some available, though they seem to be behind paywalls or in forums that require log-ins. i'm lucky in that i'm comfortable reading and transcribing things. published scores are readily available, and i believe there may be software tools for MIDI conversion...
Can you point out some sites with paywalls. I would pay a certain amount.
@@mosonic i can't. i'm quoting a blog post i read after a brief google of the question. clearly, i'm easily deterred.
Thanks very much, are there perticular time signatures that Steve uses?
great question. inductively, he's partial to compound meters in various groupings. there plenty of 6's, for instance.
Besides compound meters he's also a big fan of changing time signatures often, and very often subdivides the rhythm within those time signatures. It's very rhythmic!
I think ai will make us re-evaluate music like this. I think ai is far from generating any highly inspired music - e.g. the music of classical greats like rachmaninoff, or even present-day electronic artists who seem to capture something deep within their souls and crystallize it in music. But ai has no trouble churning out immense amounts of this kind of minimalist and formulaic music... in milliseconds. Why should humans pursue a style of music which a machine can disgorge, at indistinguishable quality and at arbitrary volumes... and in a single click and within milliseconds? If a machine - which does nothing but follow rules - can produce musical examples of indistinguishable quality, doesn't it prove that humans producing this kind of music are simply following primitive rules and nothing more? Doesn't it prove that there is no human inspiration in this kind of music?
I do really admire the passion of the presenter.
thanks for your observations. respectfully, i couldn't disagree more that some large language (in this case musical language) model of minimalist composition could produce a masterwork that's indistinguishable from the work of Reich, Terry Riley, Lamonte Young, John Adams, Philip Glass, et al. Regarding your questions about proof of slavish adherence to primitive rules, i'll simply observe that this type of music may just not be your cup of tea.
@@ImpliedMusic Thanks for the reply! I agree that a genre may simply not suit everyone - but I don't dislike the music those composers have created! I just feel that it is based almost entirely on simple rules, and has plenty of room for redundancy (e.g. around 3:00, I find the E -> F# -> B -> C# -> D sequence could be rearranged in any other order, or swap the F# for an A, etc. and the musical effect of the piece remains quite the same).
I feel inclined to call the most creative/inspired elements of minimalism "music-adjacent" - e.g. interesting samples, vocal pitch transcription, prepared pianos, odd and beautiful choreography and visuals.
I think it's easy to tell where else the persuasion of minimalist music is coming from; e.g. the scales are pleasant, polyrhythms keep our ears interested, repeating layers come and go. I suspect I could compile a short list of techniques and you (or anyone!) would have a hard time finding any moment within any minimalist piece of music which appeals to us for any reason not on the list! (I'm interested to know if you disagree here?) Because the list is short and the techniques on it are well-defined, it is fodder for ai (and not necessarily LLMs - as I understand, LSTMs and RNNs are more adapted to this kind of work). I believe I could write a short program that generates arbitrary amounts of midi with a comparable feeling to that shown in this video - agreeable tones, interesting polyrhythms, etc - and without even leveraging any ai techniques.
Pursuits which are based on simple rules and allow for redundancy will be (and already are becoming) the earliest crafts indistinguishably fulfilled by ai. I don't dislike this music, I just think we'll re-evaluate it in the face of ai.
The one thing humans have is a soul. If we create art only by picking from a limited and predefined basket of techniques, I don't think we are expressing our souls.
@@gershommaes902 thanks for this.
I wish you would show real notation instead of piano roll.
thanks. as you've noticed, i've made a choice on this channel to not use published sheet music. i sometimes will show my own transcriptions. as a commitment to the bulk of my subscribers who aren't musically literate, as you and i are, i usually end-run the sheet music (issues of copyright completely aside.) that said, it's not trivial to find scores from some composers, i get it. for this score, my own work, it happens there's no notated score at all.
One of my favorites, too.