Other Audio Obscura
Happy Birthday in the style of Steve Reich [disquiet0249]

Well I tried to make my track as true to a Steve Reich - 80 years old this week - track as my limited talent allows. I first found out how to play the Happy Birthday tune and recorded that. I used the loop brace in Ableton to find a nice loop of the piano and started opening up extra tracks, putting it each loop a few fractions of a second further along in time - I am guessing the phasing technique works in fractions of seconds? This worked but started sounding muddy after a few too many layers. Anyway I messed around and got the first 2 minutes or so done in under an hour. For reason I then added a field recording at the start of the piece, just some leaves rustling in the wind as I have been doing a lot of field recording this week. Well after that I thought about the classic Steve Reich tape works of the 1960s and so I recorded a voice message which comes in about 2 and a half minutes, I couldn't resist giving a nod to Reich's "Its Gonna Rain"! After playing around with the voice and adding loads of extra layered loops I brought the piano back in and further fragmented the loops, trying to make some classic sounding rhythmic phasing just you here on the great Reich pieces. I had a total of 30 channels running which is the most I had open and all playing at once. I did a mixdown and then opened up 5 versions of this mix and started putting a few short sections of these mixdowns a few fractions of a second apart creating another level of phasing. That was it. It took about 3 hours in total.

Disquiet Junto Project 0249: 80 Phases
Wish the minimalist composer Steve Reich a happy birthday.

Project Steps:

Step 1: October 3 marked the 80th birthday of composer Steve Reich. Prepare to record a tribute to him.

Step 2: Select a short segment of sound or music that can be looped and, per Reich’s own technique, “phased.” Fortunately, the song “Happy Birthday” has entered the public domain. Consider using it.

Step 3: Take the segment from Step 2 and play it on repeat, layering the loop with slightly different timing to create a phasing effect. Play around with this, editing the loops until you have some successful or interesting sounds/accidents.

Step 4: Add some extra sounds or textures if you think the piece needs it.