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Hands across the pond

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I received a nice email from John Lay (of Silver Lake Regional High School in Kingston, MA) complimenting the playing of the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble and asking for details of one of the arrangements so that his own school guitar ensemble could play it. Flattered on behalf of the pupils, I emailed the score, parts and play-along midi files as a gift and look forward to telling the ensemble of our new found trans-Atlantic friends.

Aural, Concepts, Connectedness, History, IT, Listening, Midi files, Musical Grammar, Rhythm, Technology, Uncategorized, Video, YouTube links

Piano Phase

While looking into YouTube for illustrative material, I came across an accidental learning network which took me from vague understanding of a piece to one sufficient to recreate the piece from its DNA. Let me explain.

The piece concerned is Steve Reich‘s Piano Phase. (Part 1 on YouTube here – Part 2 here).

Reich, probably the best known minimalist composer, stumbled upon phasing technique by accident. He explains in this clip (at 2:30) from a South Bank Show special. The same recorded musical fragment was copied onto two separate tape loops (it was the 60s after all). Both machines were started simultaneously but, because few such machines run at exactly the same speed, one began to edge in front of the other – creating (the impression of) new rhythms and melodies emerging. Eventually they would end up back in sync.

Piano Phase, the first live phasing piece, begins with a 12-note fragment which you can see at 5:46 in the clip. This was a real find – the DNA of the piece. I decided to construct a version of the piece from that. The musical motif is to be played simultaneously by two pianists. Then one will edge ahead of the other. A live human performance would allow one person to make tiny, almost unnoticeable adjustments. Using score writing software – I had to choose specific durations and decided that the size of step I would take would be half the length of the notes themselves. This means that, following the initial exposition of the theme, the music would move through 24 noticeable changes before returning to synchrony. In the following midi file (which really represents a portrait of the piece, as opposed to the piece itself) the piano on the right edges forward while the one on the left holds to the original pulse. Each edging forward takes place after 4 repetitions.

Piano Phase 

Having seen the outcome of this, I realised that the apparent simplicity of this music belies the incredible difficulty in performing it. Reich himself in the South Bank Show interviews, stressed how this requires listening at an intense level. Various phasing pieces ensued over Reich’s career. Some are played by two or more people and some by one person against a recording. This amazing and beautifully shot film of (parts of) Piano Phase features Peter Aidu playing solo, on two pianos:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/qKXy1FPTdvg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I was pleased at having learned so much about the piece and the compositional techniques but ended up being more interested in the following question: if you were taking part in such a piece would you prefer to play with/against:

  • another live musician?

  • a recording?

  • yourself?

Here are some other versions of Piano Phase on YouTube:

video phase      with dancers      DJ remix

Steve Reich also has a MySpace, which includes the entire South Bank Show documentary as well as extracts from My Name is Daniel Pearl; Fast; Music for 18 Musicians; Different Trains; & Electric Counterpoint.

 

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Articulation

When I was younger, so much younger than today, a friend said that it was his choice not to read music as he felt it would remove feeling from the picture. I wonder how he would have coped with the assertion that, as a result of playing along with a computer, pupils would more quickly approach the right feel of a piece – even although the computer-generated file was devoid of dynamic variation (see Thoroughly Modern Midi) and flexibility of tempo. But such is the paradoxical world of IT and instrumental music. In a situation where the file will not only produce the written parts but also play-along audio files, it’s important to be fussy about articulation. Many pupils do not acknowledge written articulation but very few do not intuitively go along with it – if it’s contained in, say, a Sibelius or midi file. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising in a subject where the ears of many take in more than the eyes.

What is surprising is that, seated in a mixed group, most pupils will pick out the appropriate feel for their part even in a passage of mixed articulations, such as the one between 0:33 and 0:48 of this midi file-  Jealousy – where the legato notes of the tune and bass parts sandwich the detached notes of the three harmony parts; or between 1:03 and 1:55 where there are three simultaneous articulations:

  • legato tune

  • bass and lowest harmony part employing full-length notes, rests and detached notes

  • upper harmony parts restricted to on detached notes

Also surprising is that when discussing the (as yet unnamed) phenomenon of articulation in lessons, if you ask what aspect of music is being discussed, hardly anyone will guess correctly. Some will suggest, “rhythm” until you point out that, whether this aspect is observed or not, the notes all start at the right time, which is what many people consider rhythm to mean. However, when I say, “I’ll start to spell it out on this laptop screen and you try to guess before I get to the end of the word,” I rarely get passed “articu——”

Many pupils, baffled by the whole idea of articulation, find a way in through the following analogy:

  • detached notes – detached houses

  • legato notes – terraced houses

  • over-laping notes (chords or broken chords) – flats

The reason this topic occupies my thoughts at the moment is that yesterday, in the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble’s rehearsal for the Showcase Concert* I was delighted to see the group knock our arrangement of the Jacob Gade‘s 1925 tango tune, Jealousy into shape in pretty much one go – articulation and all – pretty impressive for a Friday afternoon! Ironically, it has more varied articulation per part than the other two pieces put together. Sometimes things just work out on their own.

* East Lothian Showcase Concert – Friday 27 March at 19:30 in Musselburgh Grammar School.