Dig if u will my research paper Chapter 5

[Geoff Smith <geoff.smith15@btopenworld.com>]

Chapter 5
Steve Reich ­ A Revolution in Repetition and Structure
Although Steve Reich does not fit my definition of Live-Looper, his work 
has
been so crucially influential upon the Live-Looping movement that I feel it
would be wrong not to include discussion about his music and its relevance.
Reich befriended Riley during 1964 through playing and organising concerts
of In C at the San Francisco Tape Music Centre. Reich was clearly massively
influenced by Rileyıs In C and also his tape based compositions, around 
this
time ³Riley remembers showing his new friend two tape recorder pieces of
mine, loops of mine that I was working with² . Although Reich has always
stated the influence that In C had upon him, the similarities between
Reichıs breakthrough piece Its Gonna Rain and Rileyıs tape work should also
be shown. Reich was present at the showings of Riley tape based text piece
She Moves Me (1963) which was played alongside In C in Rileyıs early
concerts. Riley also made several other text pieces for tape including I
(1964), Its Me (1965), Thatıs Not You (1965). These pieces were made of
short text phrases that had been manipulated in various ways to create
structure through the layering and movement the individual fragments of
text. This is essentially what Reich accomplished with Its Gonna Rain 
(1965)
with one subtle difference, Reich had discovered Phasing as a system to
generate musical structure.
To clarify this issue I asked Terry Riley the following question; during
1963-65 you created a number of pieces using text that were processed via
tape manipulation, the ŒTime-lag-Accumulatorı. I am talking about She Moves
Me, I, Its Me and Thatıs Not You. Your work with small fragments of text 
and
tape clearly had a massive influence on Steve Reich's early work such as 
Its
Gonna Rain and Come Out. Did any of your text pieces you created use the
technique of phasing or anything similar to generate any of the material?
Riley replied,
Steve himself, has acknowledged a debt to my early tape pieces and I think
that being said, he subsequently went on to a very unique and personal
development quite independent of my work.  I think phasing of course
occurred in my works that were composed before his.  What I did that was
important to him I think was to run two or more identical loops
simultaneously.  He systematized this to a degree that made it his own.
So although the content of Reichıs early pieces were essentially the same 
as
Rileyıs, the way in which they were created was different. Reich under the
influence of Rileyıs In C and tape experiments strove to find a new way of
working with repetition as a musical technique. Through watching Rileyıs
creative process Reich discovered the phasing system of creating very long
structures of music evolving out of very small fixed phrases. Reich would 
go
on to develop this technique for live performance in what I believe to be
his finest work Piano Phase.
    Steve Reich pieces such as Come Out, Its Gonna Rain, and Piano Phase
were revolutionary in their structure. They contained two static looped
elements and through the process of phasing the perception of those 
elements
disappeared. The phasing process causes the listener to hear only the
changes in the interference patterns losing the sense of the original
musical phrase. This process or Œsystem musicı as Brain Eno would go on to
call it was unique because once it was set in motion it would go on to
create beautiful music that requires no further intervention. It was a
fascinating concept that such a simple system could produce a wide variety
results. This would go on to inspire and influence many other musicians
interested in looping including Brian Eno.