Class 6 Music as a Process / Music as a Pattern > from Music as a Gradual Process by Steve Reich (1968) > > I do not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, literally, processes. > > The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note (sound-to-sound) details and the over all form simultaneously. (Think of a round or infinite canon.) \... > Performing and listening to a gradual musical process resembles: > pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest; turning over an hour glass and watching the sand slowly run through the bottom; placing your feet in the sand by the ocean\'s edge and watching, feeling, and listening to the waves gradually bury them\... # Listening List: - Steve Reich: *Piano Phase* - Terry Riley: *In C* - Ann Southam: *Simple Lines of Enquiry* - Frederic Rzewski: *Les Moutons de Panurge* - David Lang: *So Called Laws of Nature, Cheating Lying Stealing* - Jason Treuting: *Go* # Transformation - Iteration Process music is often described as repetitive music, but a better word is *iterative.* A process **transforms** the material step-by-step, one **iteration** at a time. Often a small amount of materials, and a simple plan for how they transform over time, can be used to create a whole piece. We may employ metaphors of machines, algorithms, computer programs, or we can model our ideas on nature, which is full of gradual transformations. It is a more 'objective' type of music: non-expressive, external, organized, self-justifying, self-sufficient (not needing constant human intervention.) Examples ### Reich: Rotation In **Steve Reich\'s** phasing music, the transformation is **rotation.** One sequence of pitches rotates against itself, one position at a time: ![[piano phase.mp3]] ![[PUBLISH/media/music-as-process-media/image2.png]] ### Glass: Addition/Subtraction In **Philip Glass**\' music, the transformation is often **addition or** **subtraction:**  ### Lang: Mixed/Improvised **David Lang** employs **mixed strategies** of transformation, including rhythmic shifts, number games, traveling rests, isorhythmic cycling, and others. Consider this passage of music for teacups from *So Called Laws of Nature.* It\'s easy to see how the notes travel around the bar in an iterative way, but there\'s also an improvisation to it. There\'s no single logic that determines every move in this sequence, except maybe: \"one 8th note must move by one position per bar.\" ![[so called laws.mp3]] ![[PUBLISH/media/music-as-process-media/image3.png]] > **David Lang: \[Processes are\] strategies for me how to take up a certain amount of time\... If you know where you\'re gonna go in a piece, like if the point of a piece is to start in one place and end in another place what\'s to keep you from just going there in twenty seconds? You have these games. I use these mathematical processes as a way of slowing down this process.\"**[^1] Should we hear the process? > **\"I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.\" - Steve Reich** > > **\"I don\'t want people to hear the process.\" - David Lang** ### Southam: Organic Iterative transformations form the grammar of Ann Southam's gorgeous *Simple Lines of Enquiry,* but the transformations aren't linear or predictable. They remind me of organic processes -- growing, adapting, evolving. ![[simple lines.mp3]]  ### Rzewski: 'People Processes' In **Frederíc Rzewski\'s** *Les Moutons de Panurge*, the performance instructions direct a process that unfolds a piece from two lines of notation:![[moutons de panurge.mp3]] ### Tenney: Gradual **James Tenney\'s** *Having Never Written a Note For Percussion* is experienced like a process piece. A clear and simple sonic trajectory, extended over a long period of time (often \>10 minutes), reveals subtle worlds in the instrument\'s sound that you would normally miss. Process music is often intended to explore psychoacoustic effects.  ### Pärt: Mirrored Arvo Pärt\'s **Spiegel im Spiegel** is a beautiful example of a piece composed around a process. The melody moves through an additive process, starting with two notes and increasing to 9. Each phrase happens twice, the second time mirrored (*spiegel:* \'mirror\'). The systematic unfolding of a scale reminds us of an *alap*. ![[spiegel.mp3]] ![[PUBLISH/media/music-as-process-media/image6.png]] The melody is harmonized and punctuated by Pärt\'s signature \'tintinnabuli\' (church bell texture).  ### Practice Write a short bit of material, and try working it out through one of these strategies, and then another. ## Extra Reading **Music as a Gradual Process** by Steve Reich (1968) I do not mean the process of composition, but rather pieces of music that are, literally, processes. The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note (sound-to-sound) details and the over all form simultaneously. (Think of a round or infinite canon.) I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music. To facilitate closely detailed listening a musical process should happen extremely gradually. Performing and listening to a gradual musical process resembles: pulling back a swing, releasing it, and observing it gradually come to rest;\ turning over an hour glass and watching the sand slowly run through the bottom; placing your feet in the sand by the ocean\'s edge and watching, feeling, and listening to the waves gradually bury them. Though I may have the pleasure of discovering musical processes and composing the musical material to run through them, once the process is set up and loaded it runs by itself. Material may suggest what sort of process it should be run through (content suggests form), and processes may suggest what sort of material should be run through them (form suggests content). If the shoe fits, wear it. As to whether a musical process is realized through live human performance or through some electro-mechanical means is not finally the main issue. One of the most beautiful concerts I ever heard consisted of four composers playing their tapes in a dark hall. (A tape is interesting when it\'s an interesting tape.) It is quite natural to think about musical processes if one is frequently working with electro-mechanical sound equipment. All music turns out to be ethnic music. Musical processes can give one a direct contact with the impersonal and also a kind of complete control, and one doesn\'t always think of the impersonal and complete control as going together. By \"a kind\" of complete control I mean that by running this material through the process I completely control all that results, but also that I accept all that results without changes. John Cage has used processes and has certainly accepted their results, but the processes he used were compositional ones that could not be heard when the piece was performed. The process of using the I Ching or imperfections in a sheet of paper to determine musical parameters can\'t be heard when listening to music compsed that way. The compositional processes and the sounding music have no audible connection. Similarly in serial music, the series itself is seldom audible. (This is a basic difference between serial (basically European) music and serial (basically American) art, where the perceived series is usually the focal point of the work.) What I\'m interested in is a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing. James Tenney said in conversation, \"then the composer isn\'t privy to anything\". I don\'t know any secrets of structure that you can\'t hear. We all listen to the process together since it\'s quite audible, and one of the reasons it\'s quite audible is, because it\'s happening extremely gradually. The use of hidden structural devices in music never appealed to me. Even when all the cards are on the table and everyone hears what is gradually happening in a musical process, there are still enough mysteries to satisfy all. These mysteries are the impersonal, unattended, psycho-acoustic by-products of the intended process. These might include sub-melodies heard within repeated melodic patterns, stereophonic effects due to listener location, slight irregularities in performance, harmonics, difference tones, etc. Listening to an extremely gradual musical process opens my ears to it, but it always extends farther than I can hear, and that makes it interesting to listen to the musical process again. That area of every gradual (completely controlled) musical process, where one hears the details of the sound moving out away from intentions, occurring for their own acoustic reasons, is it. I begin to perceive these minute details when I can sustain close attention and a gradual process invites my sustained attention. By \"gradual\" I mean extremely gradual; a process happening so slowly and gradually that listening to it resembles watching a minute hand on a watch\--you can perceive it moving after you stay with it a little while. Several currently popular modal musics like Indian classical and drug oriented rock and roll may make us aware of minute sound details because in being modal (constant key center, hypnotically droning and repetitious) they naturally focus on these details rather than on key modulation, counterpoint and other peculiarly Western devices. Nevertheless, these modal musics remain more or less strict frameworks for improvisation. They are not processes. The distinctive thing about musical processes is that they determine all the note-to-note details and the over all form simultaneously. One can\'t improvise in a musical process\-- the concepts are mutually exclusive. While performing and listening to gradual musical processes one can participate in a particular liberating and impersonal kind of ritual. Focusing in on the musical process makes possible that shift of attention away from he and she and you and me outwards towards it. [^1]: quoted in Brown, Galen. Process as Means and Ends in Minimalist and Postminimalist Music. *Perspectives of New Music,* SUMMER 2018, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 180-192. [^2]: Chomsky, Noam. *Syntatic Structures.* (1957) [^3]: