Phase music

For other uses, see Phaser.
Example of rhythm phasing with sixteen parts. The first part plays the rhythm half note quarter note half note quarter note and the other parts play the same rhythm faster by 101%. 102%, 103%, ..., 115%. Played on harmonics: the first eight parts play the first eight harmonics, and the second eight parts play the same harmonics transposed down an octave.

Phase music is a form of music that uses phasing as a primary compositional process. It is an approach to musical composition that is often associated with minimal music, as it shares similar characteristics, but some commentators prefer to treat phase music as a separate category.[1] Phasing is a compositional technique in which the same part (a repetitive phrase) is played on two musical instruments, in steady but not identical tempo. Thus, the two instruments gradually shift out of unison, creating first a slight echo as one instrument plays a little behind the other, then a doubling effect with each note heard twice, then a complex ringing effect, and eventually coming back through doubling and echo into unison.

Phasing is the rhythmic equivalent of cycling through the phase of two waveforms as in phasing. The tempi of the two instruments are almost identical, so that both parts are perceived as being in the same tempo: the changes only separate the parts gradually. In some cases, especially live performance where gradual separation is extremely difficult, phasing is accomplished by periodically inserting an extra note (or temporarily removing one) into the phrase of one of the two players playing the same repeated phrase, thus shifting the phase by a single beat at a time, rather than gradually.

Phasing was popularized by composer Steve Reich, who composed tape music where several copies of the same tape loop are played simultaneously on different machines. Over time, the slight differences in the speed of the different tape machines causes a flanging effect and then rhythmic separation to occur. For example,"Drumming" asks for percussionists to play in synchrony, with some gradually accelerating as others remain steady.

Other examples include Reich's Come Out and It's Gonna Rain. This technique was then extended to acoustic instruments in his Piano Phase, Reich's first attempt at applying the phasing technique to live performance, and later the change in phase was made immediate, rather than gradual, as in Reich's Clapping Music.

Music writer Kyle Gann has pointed out on later use of phase shifting technique: "Though not widely used in minimalist works per se, it survived as an important archetype in postminimal music (e.g. William Duckworth's The Time Curve Preludes, John Luther Adams's Dream in White on White, and Gann's own Time Does Not Exist)."[2]

  1. ^ Kostka, Stefan (25 July 2005). Materials and Techniques of Twentieth-Century Music (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall. p. 316. ISBN 9780131930803.
  2. ^ Gann, Kyle (1 November 2001). "Minimal Music, Maximal Impact". New Music USA.