MINIMALISM

Steve Reich Electric

Counterpoint
Parallels can be drawn between
minimalism in music and minimalism
in art - the use of minimal (very few)
resources makes us experience the
work in a different way, getting
drawn into a world of the
composer's/artist's creation.

People tend to react to this quite
strongly, either positively or
negatively.

Minimalist art
Minimalist art
Minimalist Music
Minimalism builds music out of loops
Loops are constantly repeating patterns which are
short and simple
However, the final music can end up rather
complicated!
Theres no real tune you cant sing along to
minimalist music!
Harmonies are made by layering patterns on top of
each other
The most famous Minimalist composers are Steve
Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley

Minimalist Techniques

Music technology plays a big part in minimalism
The repeated loops were played using old fashioned tape
recorders
The tapes were literally cut and then pasted together
again and then played round and round
Sometimes loops were made out of words and other
noises a bit like the modern day sampling
The different tracks were put together using multi track
recording
Even live recordings often used
these recordings


Minimalist Techniques
The different ways that these loops can be changed
are:
Notes gradually added or taken away (this is called
additive melody)








Sometimes a note is replaced by a rest

Minimalist Techniques

phasing - two almost identical parts -which go out of sync
with each other and gradually, after a number of repetitions,
come back into sync again


metamorphosis - gradually changing from one musical
idea to another, often by changing one note at a time


layering - adding new musical parts, commonly one at a
time. The parts will often interact with each other forming a
complex texture key - the texture is equally as important as
the key in defining the structure of a piece


Steve Reich
Reich was born in New York in 1936
He gained a degree in philosophy and then
studied composition with the modernist
composer Berio
His music is influenced by jazz and non-Western
ideas such as African drumming and Balinese
Gamelan
After meeting the minimalist composer Terry
Riley in the 1960s, Reich began writing
minimalist music
Steve Reich
His best known work is Different Trains
It was written in 1988 and is a reaction the
Holocaust. It has samples of talking, then
imitates their voices with instruments
New York Counterpoint for clarinet and pre-
recorded tape
Another of his works is Clapping Music. This
is a great example of phase shifting (where a
pattern moves by one quaver every few bars)

Electric Counterpoint
Electric Counterpoint was written for the jazz
guitarist Pat Methany in 1987
It has three movements you only need to
know about the third movement
The whole piece should be performed by a
single guitarist they play along with a multi-
track recording of the other parts made
before the performance

How is it produced?
Pre-recorded onto a
Tape loop which is then
Overdubbed (recorded on top of one another)
using
Multi-tracking in a studio to build up the
Layers. Then a
Live performer plays over the top of the
recording

Electric Counterpoint points to
encounter!
The music is repetitive
The same loops are repeated in the ensemble
parts this makes the music sound hypnotic
Four of the ensemble parts play the same riff
throughout the piece
They come in at different times in a canon (like
a round)
It is called counterpoint because the parts are
independent of each other but all work together
harmonically


How is it built up?
The piece begins with guitar one playing a one
bar ostinato:







How is it built up?
Guitar 2 enters in bar 7, playing ostinato 1, but
one crotchet later.
Guitar 3 enters in bar 10, building up ostinato 1
using note addition
Guitar 4 enters in bar 16, playing ostinato 1
displaced by two and a half crotchets.
Reich calls this a 'four-part guitar canon' - guitar
4 doubles the live guitar part.
When all the parts have entered, the live guitar
starts to play the resultant melody.




How is it built up?
The bass guitar parts are introduced at bar
24,reinforcing the feeling of a triple metre.



Note how the two bass guitars are panned to
the left and right speakers - it would normally
be considered bad practice to pan a bass
guitar to one side, but one instrument on each
side balances the sound.


Instrumentation
The timbre (tone colour) doesnt change much
because its all guitars which all blend
together.

There are 7 electric guitars and 2 electric bass
guitars as well as a solo guitar part

Melody
Theres no real melody you cant sing
along to minimalist music!

Rhythm and Metre
The third movement is 140 bars long and
lasts about 4 and a half minutes
It is in 3/2 time (3 minim beats per bar), but
at some points a few guitars play in 12/8
whilst the others stay in 3/2 (this is called
polyrhythmic)
It is made up of short patterns or riffs that
are repeated lots of times
A repeated pattern like this is called an
ostinato

Tonality and Harmony
The piece changes between E minor and C minor
The first modulation happens about halfway
through the piece, but there are another 13
before the end of the piece!! These key changes
happen more frequently as the piece builds
There is tonal ambiguity (its not certain what the
key is)
The harmony is quite static the chords dont
change very often


Tonality and Harmony
Like much minimalist music, although we can say
the piece is in E minor, it is actually modal - in the
key of E minor we would expect to hear D#,
allowing for the chord of B major (the dominant
triad), but because Steve Reich's music does not
depend on perfect cadences, he does not need
the major chord V (B major).

As such, the music is in the aeolian mode
transposed to E (E-aeolian).


Aeolian Mode
the Aeolian mode is the sixth mode of the
major scale and has the formula
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7



From the point of view of its relative major
key, the aeolian tonic chord is the submediant
minor triad (vi).
Texture
As well as the canonic one-bar riff, Reich
builds up another canon between the solo
part and the ensemble guitars. They play a
repeated strummed chord sequence

The texture is polyphonic two or more
independent parts playing at the same time


Dynamics
There are lots of changes in dynamics too
mainly in the solo part which fades in and out
during the piece
The four ensemble parts playing the first riff
stay at a constant mf throughout but the other
parts have some diminuendos
It finishes with a fortissimo (ff) climax from
the solo part