Steve Reich's "Piano Phase" played by Blair McMillen and Stephen Gosling

[hellothereitsanna]

I've always wanted to play this for two marimbas... I don't even know what to expect the music to look like. does one player do the exact same thing at the same time? and is it written in tempo changes or does it modulate when it phases?

[DoenerToEat]

minimal musik<3333

[dieterturner]

erinnert mich ein bisschen an idoser. jetzt noch einer mit na beruhigenden stimme und ich bin high



[palavamontana]

This is one of the best performances I've heard of this piece.

Reich first did a phase piece called 'It's gonna rain' in 1966. He used 2 reel to reel tape recorders each playing the same looped spoken phrase. He very gradually slowed one down and almost imperceptible fraction of a second to get them slowly out of sync and to start to 'phase'. The results are staggering and too raw and unnerving for many people.

[A7XLicksMyNuts]

wtf kind of piano is that?

[JTVAL08]

@A7XLicksMyNuts It's two grand pianos back to back. One of the covers is open, and the other is completely removed. Search for Anderson & Roe Piano Duo, a number of their performances are filmed from a higher angle and you can see how the pianos are arranged.

[pestoman]

12 notes. I've tried to play this. its like juggling and reciting the alphabet backwards. you get bout 2 mins in and realise you have no idea which sounds are coming from you or the other piano, and then you lose it. every time.  its fkin impossible. brilliant performance.

[moonunitenar]

@pestoman lol theres one video here of one guy playing both parts on two different pianos at once. It's a total mindfuck :P

[IndigoVanguard]

@moonunitenar It must be "Piano Phase (solo) - First solo performance ever" ;-)

[tomchivalette]

krÃss_súcht_mÁl_nach:_geldeasy­_âüf_góóglê

[BertisWorldYT]

0:13 you could barely hear that he stepped in...

[thallocub]

That's a brilliant execution. U can crearly hear the resulting patterns and the shift during the phase process

[humbleu]

wow, I thought it was for single interpreter 

[cellocraze]

These two need to learn how to stay together...

[Edazer]

@cellocraze I hope this is a joke...

[afsalvo]

Anyone know how this is performed? The timing I mean. Seems like the tempo would have to be just slightly different for each performer. Hmmm.

[sttsaxophone]

@afsalvo Yeah. They both start out at the same tempo and then one of them increases in tempo very slowly until he's playing exactly and eighth note ahead of the other guy. Then they stay there for a while and then do it again and again. It's really hard.

[wh1sk3rs]

I've listened to a lot of techno, trance, house, progressive, minimalism, classical, electronic, etc.; I've DJed myself, I've learned the minor chords on the piano... I know this is simple and theoretical but yet it's so complex and it's the 3rd time I listen to it in the past 2 days. This and the violin phase.

[NICOLAS000099990000]

Simplicité au niveau de l'écoute avec de légers changements imperceptibles qui font le charme de cette musique troublante et enivrante

La mise en place ne doit pas être simple donc bravo aux interprètes !

Quel plaisir pour nos oreilles avec 5 notes seulement au départ mi fa# si do# ré! teintés du la et du mi à la fin !(7'35'')°

[thesir27]

4:17 is the best part

[sk88rdude999]

this would be so hard to perform...

[gargh]

is that a double ended piano? That's so cool, I want one.

[nepalnt21]

@gargh im not sure if its how this was done, but i have seen in piano duos that they just put the two pianos adjacent to eachother. it looks like one double ended piano only because they fit together.

[negativethoughts]

great performance...i know minimalism is simple, but great complexity can be made out of simple things! i see these as a musical experiment more than music... still great stuff!

[mobscene9305]

@negativethoughts When did minimalism start being simple? I must have missed that :P

[moviesmyway]

@negativethoughts I, too, refuse to see minimalism as simple. I hate atonal music frankly. I'm at school for a degree in music composition and I am being forced to write and explore atonal music whereas the public hates it, and we aren't even looking into minimalism. it's quite stupid. I want to be a film composer. That's far from atonal unless it's a horror movie

[S3bz3r0]

@moviesmyway there's a lesson to learn in this

but hey, we were forced to learn random useless stuff at school all of our lives, that's normal, at least, this is music related

[zyxonian]

@moviesmyway

The public hates a lot of good music and likes a lot of bad music. If you haven't found a taste for atonal yet, I recommend Webern's String Quartet Op. 5. That's what began my appreciation for atonality

[moviesmyway]

@zyxonian I don't think there's any really BAD music. it's more of an opinion thing. I know lots of work goes into atonal music, but sometimes it sounds as if the borderline between noise and sound is disappearing. To me it's scary because anyone, then, can be a musician. pieces like this here seem like more of an experiment of what can be done with sounds rather than put in an order to form an actual final piece. I have found taste for more atonal things now though =]

[moviesmyway]

@moviesmyway I meant borderline between noise and music** sry

[Vivendium44]

@moviesmyway Why would anyone being able to be a musician scare you?

[moviesmyway]

@Vivendium44 Well anyone can be considered a musician. but music like this, like I said, in my opinion is like an experiment of patterns and sounds rather than music to be listened to for emotion or other things like that.

[Vivendium44]

@moviesmyway You said: "sometimes it sounds as if the borderline between noise and sound is disappearing. To me it's scary because anyone, then, can be a musician." Why is that scary?

[moviesmyway]

@Vivendium44 because noises and music are two different things.

[Utschigutschi]

das hat so ne hypnotische wirkung...

[Divanegi]

JUST.....I....like.....it

[xylemicarious]

This piece always makes my mind go into time-warp mode... Those 10 minutes went by like half that.

[crazykeyman]

@xylemicarious I'll have to remember this next time I want a hard boiled egg. :)

[negativethoughts]

@crazykeyman haha! lol...

[deadheadchemist]

Just incredible.Thank you!

[MegaDelivery]

Excelent!

[Bryantkh13]

He was messing with tape, slowing down a tape machine, cutting tape, etc.

[specialheadsup]

Is that a finger slip @ 6:57 or is it just weird assonance/dissonance from the phase? Amazing video btw

[amistrymister]

Do you really have time to notice an assonance seriously?!

[tjarsun]

I think it was a mistake.. that note is a G4, so it's out of the scale used by Raich (E4, F#4, B4, C#5, D5)

[SpawnofHastur]

Honestly, if it is a slip, I think it sounded great anyway.

Adds to the process feel of it!

[bobgreen623]

I wonder where Steve Reich's phrases for these piano phases come from? Can he kind of hear in his head what might happen to a phrase as it goes out of phase, or does he have to discard 95% of his ideas? whatever, I love this kind of stuff. Also worth checking out is Terry Riley's 'Rainbow in Curved Air'

[DerJayger]

Maybe he knew that some phrases are better suited for phasing than others, checked the interference at some critical spots and picked the one which he liked.

That's one possibility, I don't know how he really composed them.

[crazykeyman]

As a keyboardist My guess is that is that it came to him as he was experimenting playing 2 pianos at the same time. Even though these pianist are playing 2 handed it isn't necessary to use 2 hands to play it. Steve plays it on 2 pianos all by himself.

[amistrymister]

No he doesn't. He can't do that.

[crazykeyman]

@amistrymister You obviously have not watched the video in which he does exactly that.

Put this in your YouTube search window

Unique performance of Steve Reich - 1 musician on 2 pianos

[amistrymister]

I meant Steve Reich himself. Not Peter Aidu, who this video is. In fact that video is the reason I love Steve Reich.

[crazykeyman]

@amistrymister Yes you're right I noticed right after I sent you the message. Of course I have no knowledge of how he composed it. I used to sit between 2 pianos in my college days and messed around with left hand right hand stuff, Nothing quite on the order of this. I was thinking it could have been doing something similar that inspired the piece. Too bad we can't ask him.

[RabiesJr]

This idea came from electronic or 'tape' music, where Reich played two tapes of the same phrase at slightly different tempos. He later then just transposed it to pianos being actually played live for instrumentalists

[wrzlbrmpf123]

@bobgreen623

I think he just wrote this phrase down and tried what would happen if one of them gets faster. He just knew that there would develop some new different "melodies". I'm pretty sure that nobody of this planet can imagine how it sounds by just seeing the sheets.

[PhantomXYZ777]

@bobgreen623 if anything, I think he just simply took a "melody" and just phased it from there. I've "micked" this idea and got something pretty cool out of it. But there are a lot more complicated things going on in this, and it makes it all the more cool.

[WTFman024]

@bobgreen623 agree. Terry Riley is equally mind blowing in my opinion

[xxxslayerxxx666]

@bobgreen623 all you have to learn is how to write music, once you do that write on scale, then write the same exact scale under it and then shift the bottom(you mainly just need to know how to write rhythm down since there isn't any notation at all that you have to remember, then you take it slow as shit, like bored to death slow, until both hands can smoothly play this....i suggest starting with clapping music, watch the video with the animation to it!

[ownpwnry]

@bobgreen623

I've heard that the story behind the phase idea started while Reich was a student at Harvard law. He was trying to listen to two recordings on two separate reel to reel players, but because their calibration wasn't exact, one player was slightly was slightly faster to the other one, so they phased the recording. Shortly after, he dropped out of school and decided to be a composer. I can't attest to how true this story is, but if you listen to "early works" it seems supported.

[sakotakanonosue]

crazy? Love? That is Minimal music!!

[justgrey68]

So what ? It is still music, and it expresses feelings!

[sakotakanonosue]

Sorry, what I had said meant that I wanted to express my amazing to this music and performance. I NEVER made of this clip ,so you don't misunderstand me. Because I love and respect for Reich and other contemporary musicians!

[justgrey68]

Oh, I'm sorry I misunderstood you. : )

[DerangedRanger1]

Maybe it expresses no feeling. Maybe it causes each individual listener to experience feelings that they might not have otherwise which would be an even more open way of creating art. It seems to me that may have been more the goal of the "phase" experiments to Reich, but I could be wrong. Having played in a gamelan I can see how Reich may have thought that way.

[bochwawa]

The Idea was a musi without feelings! A "landscape" of music.

[pyromohanzed]

But there are feelings here ;; @bochwawa

[Mastermindmindmind]

crazy

[trunks2861]

LOVE IT