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Electric Counterpoint

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‘Third Movement From Electric Counterpoint’ by Steve Reich
Background to Minimalism
La Monte Young and Terry Riley were experimental composers who made the most of minimal musical resources to create a piece, using drones and repetition. Young wrote ‘The well Tuned Piano’ which includes improvisation and lasts for 6 hours. Riley experimented with tape loops combined with delay and instrumental sounds. Reich was part of the ensemble for the first performance of Riley’s composition ‘In C’, which repeats short musical fragments along with a constantly repeating quaver C keeping the pulse.
Features of Minimalism
Drones - a long continuous note or constantly repeated note
Ostinato / loops - repeated musical ideas.
Cells - the shortest musical ideas
Phasing - two almost identical parts which go out of sync with each other and gradually, after a number of repetitions, come back into sync again
Metamorphosis - gradually changing from one musical idea to another, often by changing one note at a time
Layering - adding new musical parts, usually one at a time
Note Addition - beginning with a simple, sparse ostinato, after a number of repetitions notes are gradually added
Note Subtraction - beginning with a more complex ostinato, notes are gradually taken away
Rhythmic Displacement - varying the notes to be accented in a musical phrase, or starting the same phrase in a different part of the bar [as Reich does with ‘ostinato 1’]
Augmentation - Increasing the lengths of notes in a rhythmic pattern
Diminution - Decreasing the lengths of notes in a rhythmic pattern
Static Harmony - the piece seems to be based on one long chord which changes very gradually, if at all.
Non-functional harmony - the chord sequences do not follow the traditional tonic, dominant, sub-dominant patterns
Melodic Transformation - The melody gradually changes shape
Polyrhythms - Several interlocking rhythms happening at the same time
Steve Reich
Born in New York in 1936, Reich was initially in Riley’s ensemble and became fascinated with tape loops. ‘It’s Gonna Rain’ and ‘Come Out’ use phasing with tape loops of speech played on two different tape recorders at slightly different speeds. As the loops move out of sync they are heard as rhythms rather than speech. Eventually the loops come back into sync. The effect is trance-like. ‘Drumming’ and ‘Clapping Map’ are influenced by Reich’s studies of the African music of Ghana. His music is rhythmically complex with much repetition. ‘Tehillim’ was influenced by traditional Hebrew chanting.
Reich also composed ‘Music for 18 musicians’, ‘The Desert Music’ and ‘Different
Trains’ which uses recorded speech.

Background to Electric Counterpoint

‘Electric Counterpoint’ is the last in a series of 3 pieces for soloists playing along with pre-recorded multi-track tapes of themselves. The other two pieces in the series are
‘Vermont Counterpoint’ for flute and ‘New York Counterpoint’ for clarinet. ‘Electric
Counterpoint’ was commissioned by the jazz guitarist Pat Metheny to perform at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music’s ‘Next Wave’ Festival. Metheny recorded all 12 guitar and 2 bass guitar tracks himself. He then performed live backed by his own recording.

Movement 3: ‘Fast’

In the third movement the live guitar performs with 7 pre-recorded guitar and 2 bass guitar parts. The texture gradually builds up with the guitar parts entering in the following order:

Section A:

1
Guitar 1 [repeats a one-bar ostinato]
Live guitar [starts with 3 notes of the ostinato. One note addition technique leads to full ostinato by bar 6]
Guitar 2 [ostinato 1 played a crotchet later: rhythmic displacement]
Guitar 3 [note addition used to build up ostinato 1. The ostinato displaced by 5 ½ crotchets]
Guitar 4 [ostinato 1 displaced by 2 1/2 crotchets]. Reich calls this a ‘four-part guitar canon’. The live guitar starts to play the resultant melody [a melody using a combination of the notes played on the other guitars]. The piece is in triple metre [3 beats in a bar] and suggests the key of E minor.

2
Bass guitars 1 and 2 emphasize the triple metre
A 2 bar ostinato is introduced gradually using note addition. The tonality of E minor becomes clearer. The bass guitars are panned to the left and right speakers. The live guitar continues to play the resultant melody.
3
The live guitar introduces a new idea by playing percussive strummed chords, changing the texture.
7 Guitar 5 [introduces the sequence C, Bm, E5]
8 Guitar 6 [introduces the sequence C, D, Em]
9 Guitar 7 [introduces the sequence C, D, Bm]
There is a new rhythmic counterpoint between guitars 5, 6 and 7 and the live guitar as they play cross rhythms.
4
The live guitar returns to playing a resultant melody

Section B:

5
The first big change of key to C minor. The texture is the same as in section 4.

6
The key returns to E minor. The metre changes to 12/8 for all guitars except guitars1- 4. The bass guitars play a new ostinato. The metre changes back to 3/2. The bass guitars change back to ostinato 2. Bass 1 is inverted and has an additional note.
7
Return to C minor. The metre changes every 4 bars.

8
Return to E minor. The tension increases as changes in key and metre become more frequent. Guitars 5-7 and the bass guitars begin to fade out, gradually at first, then quickly at bar 113.

9
Live guitar plays resultant melodies accompanied by the four-part canon of ostinato 1.
Shifts in key and metre continue until the music settles in E minor.
The piece ends dramatically with a crescendo to a final E5 chord played together in all 5 remaining parts.

Tonal Ambiguity:

It is uncertain whether the music is in the unrelated keys of E minor or C major until near the end.

Modal:

The piece uses the E Aeolian mode.

Texture:

The first section begins with a sparse texture with one guitar, gradually building up until there are 5 layered parts. The parts are imitative, building up a fourpart canon with the live guitar part playing a resultant melody. The texture is mostly contrapuntal / polyphonic. The texture builds up gradually and thins out towards the end. Once all parts have been introduced, the texture remains fairly constant. Clever panning and interweaving rhythms give the impression of changes in texture.

Changes of Rhythm and Metre:

In this piece rhythmic development is just as important as melodic development. There are changes in metre between 3/2 and 12/8 in section B. To the listener it feels as if the piece is in 3/2 metre with interesting cross rhythms occurring. The counterpoint was composed with quaver rests to enable a rhythmic counterpoint when the two parts were played out of sync with each other [not phasing because they stay out of sync]. The interplay of the bass parts adds rhythmic interest.

Resultant Melody:

The live guitar part plays a resultant melody. The interweaving guitar 1-4 parts seem to share a melody when played together. The live guitar plays a melody derived from their combined notes on one guitar. This is a technique used frequently by Reich.

Panning:

A recording studio technique to make instrumental sounds seem to come from different speakers. The 3 strummed guitar parts and the bass guitar parts are separated with panning.

The Reason For The Name ‘Electric Counterpoint’

The piece is written for electric guitar
The texture is mostly contrapuntal
All but one track was recorded on tape
It makes use of studio effects

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