Not heard of 'Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am sitting in a room’. I was vaguely aware of Steve Reich use of tapes but not really listened to his stuff, that was one of the influences of Flak, so how did you mix that with the Ramones?
we mixed it all together using our secret weapon - incompetence! I guess our song “#1” was sort of influenced by that stuff by using different meters. We realized the piano part was in 6 and the bass part was in 8, and the way we solved the dilemma was by having the three string guitar play in 7. Ramones part was easy. simple guitar parts with lots of distortion hammering on the beat.
I’m sitting in a room is a pretty interesting piece. He records someone (himself?) talking in a room, and then plays back the tape in the same room and re-records it. It gets up to many, many generations and sounds pretty wild.
Just realised that Madlib used the ‘Come out’ refrain in his work when he was sampling with his sampler Emu Emulator II. So what comes out is usually recycled some way or other. What’s new is old!
ah - I just found out about Madlib when news of MF Doom’s passing hit a few months ago. Which of course reminds me of Grateful Doom. Which is pretty good if you like MF Doom and know the music of the grateful dead. Grateful Doom - 02 - Ladies by drumaddikt | drumaddikt | Free Listening on SoundCloud
Yes MF Doom was one of the best Rappers around, he talked a lot of sense and was very relevant, he didn’t talk about cars n guns like Travis Scott-Kardashian Rapper and his ilk! Really love that mash up style as a great way to go with music!!
Steve Reich talks about It’s Gonna Rain in the second episode of Tones, Drones and Arpeggios. They also talk about tapes in both episodes.
1 Like
Omri made a cover of this in VCV, using Sound Stage for the room:
1 Like
haha, nice!
I got it on this re-issue:
1 Like
2 Likes
Thank you, I have never listened to JM Jarre until I started with VCV Rack a year ago during the 1st UK Lockdown. I have now become a devotee!! I would love to be able to create such majesty!
Thank You for the tip!
It’s very interesting to listen what Jean-Michel Jarre talks about. It’s a fascinating part of electronic music history.
I’m listening his works since the release of the ‘Oxygène’ album, decades ago.
I remember hearing Reich’s “Come Out” and It’s Gonna Rain" in something like 1973 or so, and at the time I think that I had read that Reich had devised a tape player that had several playback heads mounted on a rotating disk. I’m not sure how many heads, maybe four.
The disk itself rotated at a rate that was indirectly proportional to the rotation of the drive capstan, such that the transport of tape across any of the heads at was some fixed speed. If the transport slowed down, the heads spun faster. If the transport sped up, the heads slowed down. Only one head was in contact with the tape at a time. This allowed him to loop short sections (of varying lengths) of the tape without cutting and splicing, and to slowly advance the looped section along the tape, resulting in a slightly different loop each time through. The pitch was unchanged from normal playback.
Does this sound at all historically correct? I’ve never again been able to find a description of such a machine to corroborate it since Intarwebs came along. Even so, if you listen from 00:30 to about 01:30 of “It’s Gonna Rain”, it sounds exactly like what such a machine could do, particularly with the gradual advances through the tape.
Certainly any sampler module with a CV-controlled Start and Length could do that.
On the positive side, I finally found out the proper name of a piece. I had been looking for “Organ Phases”, but it was actually called “Phase Patterns for four electric organs” (1970). It’s wonderful to hear in a large room. Another Reich factoid (it may even be true) is that he preferred to use percussionist for many of his keyboard pieces. (Never mind that Philip glass is one of the performers here.)
I’d better stop before I drift even further off topic in a wave of nostalgia.
Thanks for the great info, Nysthi Sussudio will do the multi tape effect on audio, so that would be a good starting point for a Reichian tape loop piece. But as you say all Nysthi’s and other samplers should be able to do the Start/length trick.
Much appreciated
I think you are wrong. There is an excellent album from 1970 (yes, I have the original French LP). On one side is “Four Organs” and on the other side is “Phase Patterns”. Phase Patterns was always my favorite, but I think Four Organs was the more liked by most. Both pieces are played by a small ensemble of Farfisa Organs. Triva note: Philip Glass is one of the organ players on “Four Organs”.
I suppose the looks aren’t that important and a row of 4 or 5 AS Trigger Mark I modules will do the trick.
I have the CD. It helped me a lot with my rendering of Clapping Music and Piano Phase.
So the AS Triggers trigger the samples, is that your take on the multi head tape set up? I would like to see a patch of that if you can find time. Thanks for another way of doing this.
Four Organs was originally intended for four pipe-organs, but a concert hall with four organs couldn’t be found. And then there was the Orgelpark in Amsterdam. When they asked Steve Reich’s permission to play the Four Organs, he was delighted. I, on the other hand, was slightly disappointed. I find Four Organs rather boring. I don’t think Steve Reich handles the organ very well. I wasn’t very fond of his Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ either.
Not today! It’s my birthday! 
I’ll have a look tomorrow.