California Tones, Drones and Arpeggios: The Magic of Minimalism


California

Similar Content

Browse content similar to California. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!

Transcript


LineFromTo

SIMPLE BEAT STARTS

0:00:020:00:04

COMPOSITION SLOWLY BUILDS

0:00:040:00:07

This is ground zero of a musical revolution.

0:00:110:00:15

In C, written and first performed by Terry Riley in 1964,

0:00:180:00:23

ushered in a whole new musical form.

0:00:230:00:26

Arguably the most important musical form of the 20th century.

0:00:260:00:31

Believe me, I've tried in this whole lifetime

0:00:310:00:33

to come up with another idea, that could be that simple and inclusive,

0:00:330:00:37

and I haven't been able to do it either.

0:00:370:00:40

Minimalism's power lay in repetition,

0:00:400:00:43

in transcendence and in technology.

0:00:430:00:46

And it changed the face of music instantly.

0:00:460:00:49

From 1958 to 1976,

0:00:520:00:55

minimalism was the last big idea in classical music.

0:00:550:00:59

Born in California before exploding in New York,

0:01:010:01:04

minimalism kicked down the barriers between rock and roll

0:01:040:01:07

and the concert hall

0:01:070:01:09

and influenced some of the biggest albums and bands of the era.

0:01:090:01:12

I'm a minimalist. Come on!

0:01:120:01:15

Four revolutionary composers changed what we thought of as music.

0:01:160:01:21

I love it. Are we rolling?

0:01:220:01:24

I mean, he was all on the stuff, learning to write music.

0:01:260:01:29

I mean, that's really good.

0:01:290:01:32

I'm very unusual. There's no doubt about it.

0:01:320:01:35

But I have talents that are beyond compare.

0:01:350:01:39

And this is the story of the two Californians,

0:01:390:01:42

La Monte Young and Terry Riley, who kicked it all off.

0:01:420:01:46

Nothing would be quite the same again.

0:01:470:01:49

MUSIC: G Song by Kronos Quartet

0:01:580:02:01

California - land of freedom, opportunity

0:02:040:02:08

and the home of minimalism.

0:02:080:02:10

This is an exploration of the impact

0:02:150:02:17

of the two Californian pioneering wizards in minimalism.

0:02:170:02:21

La Monte Young and Terry Riley.

0:02:210:02:23

What they shared was a love of eastern influences, of drones,

0:02:230:02:27

and the blissful absorption of chaos and transcendence

0:02:270:02:31

through repetition.

0:02:310:02:33

Riley and Young were prophets without honour,

0:02:330:02:35

visionaries who pre-scored the road ahead.

0:02:350:02:38

Their music had a new sensuality and freedom.

0:02:380:02:41

It prefigured the adventure, love and sheer subversive fun

0:02:410:02:45

that was shortly to sweep right across West Coast '60s America.

0:02:450:02:50

Late '50s America was optimistic.

0:02:530:02:55

It was the end of the Eisenhower era.

0:02:550:02:58

A time of post-war economic boom, 2.5 children,

0:02:580:03:01

shiny new suburbs and white picket fences.

0:03:010:03:05

And in California, a flowering world of freedom, new possibility

0:03:080:03:13

and sunshine,

0:03:130:03:14

with a soundtrack of cool jazz.

0:03:140:03:17

Minimalism had to start in California.

0:03:180:03:20

I think if it hadn't started in California,

0:03:200:03:23

it might not have started at all.

0:03:230:03:25

Barriers were breaking down.

0:03:250:03:28

Fun was being had in the traditional world of classical music.

0:03:280:03:32

DRUM CRASH

0:03:330:03:34

One Californian throwing down a gauntlet to the music establishment

0:03:340:03:38

was pre-minimalist composer John Cage.

0:03:380:03:41

Seen here turning the pages on his own work.

0:03:430:03:47

He was out there...

0:03:540:03:55

..yet deadly serious.

0:03:560:03:58

In terms of a minimalist piece, it doesn't get more minimalist

0:03:580:04:03

than 4' 33" - the silent piece of 1951.

0:04:030:04:07

That same sense of freedom and the kind of limitlessness

0:04:100:04:14

of what you could be as a composer.

0:04:140:04:16

Not even the sounds you could come up with

0:04:160:04:18

but what it meant to be a composer.

0:04:180:04:20

Cage had given them that freedom.

0:04:200:04:23

Cage's outrageous work was all about challenging

0:04:250:04:28

what the world understood as music.

0:04:280:04:31

In 1952, he scandalously declared that Beethoven was wrong.

0:04:310:04:35

An utterance that would sow the seeds of minimalism.

0:04:350:04:39

Pretty much since forever, music has been linear.

0:04:430:04:45

It's been goal-oriented.

0:04:450:04:47

A melody will be broken up into, sort of, subsections

0:04:470:04:50

but each one building on the last one - taking you somewhere.

0:04:500:04:53

Usually in groups of three, by the way. Look at this.

0:04:530:04:55

HE PLAYS "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" Setting out its stall.

0:04:550:04:58

Little bit of development and then, third phrase,

0:04:590:05:01

we get emancipation

0:05:010:05:03

and everything is aiming to there.

0:05:030:05:05

Now, along comes the amazing,

0:05:050:05:08

iconoclastic, avant-garde composer John Cage in the 1950s

0:05:080:05:11

and he says, maybe that's all wrong.

0:05:110:05:14

Maybe there's another way of making music

0:05:140:05:16

which is about vertical slices of time,

0:05:160:05:18

about the eternal now, about perhaps very, very intense repetition.

0:05:180:05:22

So, perhaps... REPEATS SEQUENCE OF NOTES

0:05:220:05:25

The whole piece could just be about that.

0:05:250:05:27

One element from Happy birthday or many other opportunities besides

0:05:270:05:31

and the minimalists took that idea to the Nth degree.

0:05:310:05:34

It was just the idea of repetition.

0:05:390:05:41

That you could hear a process going on

0:05:410:05:43

and you could get drawn into something very subtle

0:05:430:05:46

after years in which music had had a kind of kitchen-sink approach

0:05:460:05:51

where you were supposed to use everything in the world.

0:05:510:05:54

Big brass sections, big percussion sections.

0:05:540:05:56

Every piece was supposed to do everything

0:05:560:05:58

and all of a sudden you had these little pieces

0:05:580:06:00

that would just hammer on one sound for a while

0:06:000:06:03

and you would hear something really interesting going on

0:06:030:06:06

and it would just capture your attention

0:06:060:06:08

and you couldn't stop listening to it.

0:06:080:06:11

RHYTHMIC CLAPPING

0:06:110:06:13

MUSIC: Facades by Philip Glass Ensemble

0:06:180:06:21

It was one of Cage's disciples who invented minimalism

0:06:270:06:32

by slowing down time.

0:06:320:06:34

La Monte Young is a mysterious shaman, now in his 80s,

0:06:380:06:41

who lives in New York, and I've come to find him.

0:06:410:06:44

So, behind this door lives the man

0:06:510:06:53

known as the grandaddy of minimalism.

0:06:530:06:55

A somewhat mystical figure,

0:06:550:06:57

so I don't really know quite what to expect.

0:06:570:07:00

You can't buy his music, he doesn't release it,

0:07:000:07:02

it fetches enormous sums when bartered over online,

0:07:020:07:05

and he's never, ever been on the BBC before.

0:07:050:07:08

We shall see.

0:07:080:07:09

Here you go.

0:07:090:07:11

This is the only known performance footage of La Monte Young,

0:07:190:07:23

performing The Well-tuned Piano in 1987.

0:07:230:07:27

La Monte, he was the most dramatic.

0:07:320:07:35

In those days, he was dressed in leather, leather boots,

0:07:350:07:38

like a biker's, and chains.

0:07:380:07:42

He wasn't misleading you.

0:07:420:07:44

I mean, the clothes went with the man.

0:07:440:07:46

They weren't just assumed.

0:07:460:07:48

There was always a strong feeling of authenticity about La Monte,

0:07:480:07:52

no matter what you thought of the music and whatever.

0:07:520:07:54

It didn't matter, he was for real.

0:07:540:07:56

Young was born in 1935 and grew up in the Golden State.

0:07:570:08:02

Can I take you back to growing up in California and what impact that

0:08:040:08:08

landscape and that environment had upon your development?

0:08:080:08:10

Well, you know, as Gertrude Stein said it,

0:08:100:08:12

that no matter where you are,

0:08:120:08:14

the environment has a big effect on you.

0:08:140:08:16

In California,

0:08:180:08:20

people think nothing of driving eight hours across town

0:08:200:08:22

to visit a friend,

0:08:220:08:24

then they spend eight hours there,

0:08:240:08:26

and then they have to drive eight hours back,

0:08:260:08:28

sometimes they wait till the next day.

0:08:280:08:31

The sense of time gets really...

0:08:310:08:33

..stretched out, and it's just quite the opposite in New York City,

0:08:350:08:39

where everything is jammed together.

0:08:390:08:41

Time was an important part of the California experience.

0:08:410:08:45

Young's Trio For Strings of 1958 was written in the lofty compositional

0:08:500:08:55

style that held sway at the time, serialism,

0:08:550:08:59

invented by the great Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg.

0:08:590:09:02

The idea is that you create melodies

0:09:050:09:07

through using all 12 of the semitones

0:09:070:09:09

that lie within an octave.

0:09:090:09:10

Yeah? 12 semitones.

0:09:130:09:14

And the rule is you can use all of those semitones,

0:09:140:09:17

in fact you must use all of them, in whatever order you like,

0:09:170:09:20

but you can't repeat one until you've had all of the others,

0:09:200:09:22

and thus whole pieces of music were created.

0:09:220:09:25

So, to give you an example, this is from a waltz in the 1920s

0:09:250:09:28

of Schoenberg which is purely serial.

0:09:280:09:30

Now, that strange, capricious little melody has all 12 semitones,

0:09:360:09:42

but in a very particular order,

0:09:420:09:43

and then the joy of the piece is in how he can develop that row

0:09:430:09:47

of notes, but again, without ever repeating one

0:09:470:09:50

until he's had all of the others.

0:09:500:09:51

But what made La Monte Young's Trio For Strings the first work of

0:09:550:09:58

minimalism was the length of the notes.

0:09:580:10:01

Nominally, it started with a 12-tone string trio

0:10:030:10:06

that La Monte Young wrote in 1958

0:10:060:10:08

that was just the only thing that differentiated it from any other

0:10:080:10:13

12-tone chamber piece was

0:10:130:10:15

it was extremely long and the notes were held for a really long time.

0:10:150:10:20

SINGLE NOTE PLAYS

0:10:200:10:25

It's an hour-long piece almost,

0:10:250:10:29

I think there are about 88 notes in it.

0:10:290:10:31

And the first sound lasts for four and a half minutes.

0:10:350:10:38

And then there's a silence, and then it goes on to the next.

0:10:410:10:44

The Trio For Strings was probably the first...

0:10:510:10:54

..work in the history of music that really...

0:10:540:10:57

..laid out long, sustained tones.

0:10:580:11:00

The Trio is only an hour, but five or ten years ago,

0:11:020:11:06

I made a version that was, I think, three hours

0:11:060:11:10

that was probably what I could have,

0:11:100:11:13

should have done in the beginning...

0:11:130:11:15

..but I was a very...

0:11:160:11:19

You know, you're very constrained by the performance possibilities.

0:11:190:11:23

Like all music students in the 1950s,

0:11:240:11:26

La Monte Young was taught that serialism

0:11:260:11:29

was THE compositional style of the day.

0:11:290:11:32

But music such as Alban Berg's Chamber Concerto belonged

0:11:350:11:38

to an austere European past

0:11:380:11:40

and spoke little to a forward-looking, modern America.

0:11:400:11:44

This music is probably past its peak,

0:11:480:11:51

it's on the way down, you know.

0:11:510:11:53

We're really talking about the endgame,

0:11:530:11:56

though it carried on for another 40 years.

0:11:560:11:58

No-one stopped them, and so they kept on going.

0:11:590:12:01

But the brilliant music was pretty much composed by then.

0:12:010:12:04

La Monte Young's Damascene moment occurred when he visited Darmstadt

0:12:050:12:09

in Germany in 1959 for a composition seminar

0:12:090:12:12

with Karlheinz Stockhausen.

0:12:120:12:14

And it was there that he met the American composer John Cage -

0:12:140:12:17

the towering daddy of post-war American experimentalism.

0:12:170:12:22

So under his tutelage,

0:12:220:12:23

Young's compositions strayed further from pure notation and became much

0:12:230:12:27

more about conceptualism.

0:12:270:12:29

How was it meeting John Cage, did that resonate for you?

0:12:300:12:33

Well, John was interested in me

0:12:330:12:35

because he was one of the first people who

0:12:350:12:38

was well-established who really promoted me.

0:12:380:12:41

La Monte's Compositions 1960 are unusual,

0:12:430:12:47

some of them even frankly unperformable.

0:12:470:12:50

But each of them explores a certain supposition

0:12:500:12:52

about the nature of music and art and carries ideas to the extreme.

0:12:520:12:58

One instructs, "Draw a straight line and follow it."

0:12:580:13:02

Another simply states that the piece is a little whirlpool,

0:13:060:13:10

out in the middle of the ocean.

0:13:100:13:11

Piece Number 2 from Compositions 1960

0:13:150:13:18

is pretty remarkable.

0:13:180:13:20

Here are the instructions.

0:13:200:13:22

"Build a fire in front of the audience,

0:13:220:13:25

"preferably use wood,

0:13:250:13:26

"although any combustibles may be used as necessary

0:13:260:13:29

"for starting the fire or controlling the kind of smoke.

0:13:290:13:32

"The fire may be of any size, but it should not be the kind which is

0:13:320:13:36

"associated with another object such as a candle or a cigarette lighter.

0:13:360:13:41

"The lights may be turned out.

0:13:410:13:43

"After the fire is burning,

0:13:430:13:44

"the builder may sit by and watch it for the duration of the composition.

0:13:440:13:48

"However he, they,

0:13:480:13:49

"should not sit between the fire and the audience

0:13:490:13:52

"in order that its members will be able to see and enjoy the fire."

0:13:520:13:55

Young was influenced by conceptual art of the time -

0:13:580:14:01

groups like Fluxus, a collection of artists, poets,

0:14:010:14:04

and musicians whose shared impulse was to integrate life into art and

0:14:040:14:08

bring about social change.

0:14:080:14:10

An artist such as La Monte Young,

0:14:120:14:13

and he's very much involved with the Fluxus movement

0:14:130:14:17

about the idea of art of all kinds as performance,

0:14:170:14:20

how an audience reacts to it when they're in the room with it

0:14:200:14:24

at any given time.

0:14:240:14:25

So, for example, the piece

0:14:250:14:27

where he builds a fire and the music is really...

0:14:270:14:31

..the sounds and the spectacle of this fire happening at very close

0:14:310:14:35

quarters, all the fear that that engenders,

0:14:350:14:38

all the worry for the equipment,

0:14:380:14:39

cos he says that the fire has got to be close-miked,

0:14:390:14:42

that is all part of it.

0:14:420:14:45

Those links with the visual art world are not accidental.

0:14:450:14:48

It's because of the freedom of thought that's happening,

0:14:480:14:50

and the Fluxus movement, and the connections that John Cage

0:14:500:14:53

had already established.

0:14:530:14:54

There was a freedom of thought there which certainly the institutional

0:14:540:14:57

classical music culture simply didn't have.

0:14:570:15:00

He's expanding the consciousness of everyone, right?

0:15:000:15:02

The visual art world through sound,

0:15:020:15:05

the classical music world, well, I mean, it just...

0:15:050:15:07

..it blows that apart into a kind of cosmic harmony.

0:15:070:15:11

Of Young's Compositions 1960,

0:15:130:15:16

it's Number 7 that has retrospectively become known

0:15:160:15:19

as having the most significance for minimalism.

0:15:190:15:23

It consists simply of two notes to be played together and held

0:15:230:15:27

for a very long time.

0:15:270:15:29

Simply a B...

0:15:290:15:30

..and then an F sharp, which is exactly five notes above it.

0:15:310:15:34

There's the F sharp.

0:15:360:15:37

Those two notes together, what's known as a perfect fifth.

0:15:370:15:41

And the one, by the way, inextricably linked,

0:15:410:15:43

almost umbilically bound to the other.

0:15:430:15:46

If I show you what I mean...

0:15:460:15:48

If I was the place down the B silently so that

0:15:480:15:51

the string is ready to resonate, and I just strike the F sharp...

0:15:510:15:54

..you can hear that resonating in the B,

0:15:560:15:59

so the F sharp is in the B already,

0:15:590:16:01

it's completely, inextricably linked.

0:16:010:16:04

This is an endless open suggestion.

0:16:040:16:07

That gave rise to a headline, I believe, in The New Yorker,

0:16:100:16:13

which said, "When La Monte Young says, 'Take it from the top,'

0:16:130:16:17

"he means last Wednesday."

0:16:170:16:18

That's the kind of timescale we were talking about.

0:16:180:16:21

Long hypnotic tones.

0:16:300:16:32

A wide sense of space.

0:16:330:16:35

La Monte's work slowed the world down.

0:16:380:16:41

Young's ever-evolving masterpiece is The Well-Tuned Piano,

0:16:460:16:51

a work conceived in 1964,

0:16:510:16:53

not yet finished or indeed published by the composer.

0:16:530:16:56

A nod to Bach's Well-Tempered Keyboard,

0:16:570:16:59

the piano is tuned to Young's own inventive tuning.

0:16:590:17:04

He's still working on it now,

0:17:040:17:05

and a performance of it will typically take

0:17:050:17:08

five or six hours out of your life.

0:17:080:17:10

Minimalism is a music that imposes its own listening mode

0:17:130:17:18

by the fact that events happen less frequently than you expect.

0:17:180:17:24

So there is a slowed down progression of information,

0:17:270:17:32

and the normal left-brain processes

0:17:320:17:35

with which we listen to pop music or classical music get

0:17:350:17:40

frustrated and have to give up.

0:17:400:17:42

And if the music works, then it's all the more enjoyable

0:17:420:17:46

because you quit keeping track of time, you quit all of that logic,

0:17:460:17:51

syntax stuff and you surrender to the music.

0:17:510:17:53

-How's that?

-HE LAUGHS

0:17:550:17:59

And you're still working on The Well-tuned Piano, right?

0:18:050:18:08

-That piece is unfinished?

-Yeah, I mean, I will play it if I'm given

0:18:080:18:11

the right circumstances,

0:18:110:18:13

but you have to understand that it's not a joke.

0:18:130:18:16

I began to realise that, the more I got into music,

0:18:180:18:23

that music requires its own time.

0:18:230:18:26

And, I was not suited to this world.

0:18:260:18:30

But I am suited for the world I have created.

0:18:310:18:34

La Monte's use of long tones was a world within itself

0:18:350:18:39

at the turn of the decade.

0:18:390:18:40

But it would alter the shape of popular music in 1965

0:18:400:18:44

when a student of his, viola player John Cale,

0:18:440:18:47

took the technique into his own band, The Velvet Underground.

0:18:470:18:51

# And what costume shall the poor girl wear?

0:18:540:19:00

# To all tomorrow's parties. #

0:19:030:19:08

Like minimalism, this was music that was based in the art world.

0:19:080:19:11

The Velvet Underground started life

0:19:110:19:14

as the house band of Andy Warhol's Factory.

0:19:140:19:16

When you listen to, like, you know, old classics,

0:19:190:19:21

like say Velvet Underground,

0:19:210:19:22

can you hear, can you sense that much-lauded connection

0:19:220:19:26

between, you know, La Monte Young influencing John Cale,

0:19:260:19:30

and therefore influencing that music?

0:19:300:19:34

It feels just like All Tomorrow's Parties or something,

0:19:340:19:37

you've got that kind of viola rhythm...

0:19:370:19:39

..droning away in the background.

0:19:400:19:42

I guess that that must have come from

0:19:420:19:45

him working with La Monte Young.

0:19:450:19:47

And that's also probably what set off an audience

0:19:470:19:51

to get into minimalism as well because...

0:19:510:19:54

..they've kind of absorbed it through The Velvet Underground

0:19:550:19:58

and stuff that came from there, you know.

0:19:580:20:00

Enter our second wizard of minimalism.

0:20:090:20:12

Terry Riley studied composition at the University of California in

0:20:120:20:15

Berkeley with La Monte Young, but rather than writing for traditional

0:20:150:20:20

instruments, Terry experimented with cutting-edge technology.

0:20:200:20:24

In particular, early synthesizers and tape recorders,

0:20:240:20:27

pieces of kit that would play a crucial role

0:20:270:20:29

in the story of minimalism.

0:20:290:20:31

You've heard his influence everywhere.

0:20:370:20:39

From Pete Townsend's 1971 homage Baba O'Riley...

0:20:390:20:43

MUSIC: Baba O'Riley by The Who

0:20:430:20:47

..to the opening notes of one of the '70s biggest albums -

0:20:510:20:54

Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells.

0:20:540:20:57

MUSIC: Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield

0:20:570:21:00

OK, Lucy, let's go.

0:21:050:21:06

Terry is one of my all-time favourite composers,

0:21:100:21:13

and I'm off to visit him

0:21:130:21:15

on his ranch, five hours outside San Francisco.

0:21:150:21:17

Terry is kind of a mystic, he's a really...

0:21:190:21:22

..open-minded,

0:21:230:21:25

just beautiful musician

0:21:250:21:27

whose music feels like he's still sort of 50 years in the future,

0:21:270:21:31

and the rest of us are still catching up.

0:21:310:21:34

The first time I heard Terry Riley's music, I was really young.

0:21:340:21:36

I mean, I was like sort of nine or ten. I was obsessed with the organ.

0:21:360:21:39

An old groovy kind of hippie music teacher in my primary school had a

0:21:390:21:42

record called A Rainbow In Curved Air,

0:21:420:21:45

which is the most insane,

0:21:450:21:46

psychedelic, trippy, looping,

0:21:460:21:49

organ overdubbing music,

0:21:490:21:51

which Terry made, I think, so the story goes,

0:21:510:21:53

in the course of one week in a studio in 1969.

0:21:530:21:57

And I'll never forget being sat down by this cool primary school

0:21:570:22:01

hippie music teacher and being introduced to this music.

0:22:010:22:05

But Riley's story began long before 1969.

0:22:240:22:27

And the musical journey he took to A Rainbow In Curved Air

0:22:280:22:32

is what I want to talk to him about.

0:22:320:22:33

Great to meet you last!

0:22:330:22:34

-Thanks for coming all this way.

-Thank you.

-Good to meet you too.

0:22:340:22:37

Thank you for having us. Really, really good to be here.

0:22:370:22:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:22:390:22:40

-Would you like to take a look around?

-Yeah.

0:22:400:22:44

I went to school with La Monte Young,

0:22:470:22:48

graduate school, which was a real big event in my life,

0:22:480:22:53

meeting La Monte, and we would sit around and talk.

0:22:530:22:55

And La Monte's main concern when he...

0:22:550:23:00

He didn't really have to have this concern cos it's already happening,

0:23:000:23:03

but he wanted to be the most original composer ever.

0:23:030:23:06

And I also felt like what La Monte was saying was something I felt for

0:23:060:23:12

myself, too, that I didn't want to just do music, I wanted to find

0:23:120:23:16

a way...

0:23:160:23:17

..to really get into who I was.

0:23:190:23:21

So, this influenced you in that it made you want to slow down as well?

0:23:210:23:26

Did you find yourself adopting some of the same?

0:23:260:23:29

It made me start hearing details in what I was doing like, say,

0:23:290:23:33

even if it's a tape loop,

0:23:330:23:35

how does the landscape of the tape loop change

0:23:350:23:37

every time it's replayed?

0:23:370:23:39

We know it does if we sit there and listen to it.

0:23:390:23:42

Can be, you know, a short loop, maybe one, two, three seconds.

0:23:420:23:45

If you play that for an hour,

0:23:450:23:47

you will continually hear new things in that landscape.

0:23:470:23:51

And it's a psychological property of music.

0:23:510:23:55

When did you first actually discover the possibility of tape?

0:24:020:24:05

This was probably 1960,

0:24:050:24:07

got a Wollensak tape recorder and I was working...

0:24:070:24:11

La Monte and I were both working with Anna Halprin, this dancer,

0:24:110:24:14

very visionary dancer that lives in Marin County,

0:24:140:24:17

and she kind of made us her musical directors,

0:24:170:24:20

so I was making pieces for her out of tape loops,

0:24:200:24:24

and I only had a monophonic single machine,

0:24:240:24:27

so I had to do sound-on-sound.

0:24:270:24:30

Obviously, very quickly, you build up tremendous amounts of noise,

0:24:300:24:34

and that started becoming interesting to me.

0:24:340:24:37

I see, so the noise is like hiss and other forms of distortion

0:24:370:24:40

-on the tape?

-Yes, hiss and hum.

0:24:400:24:42

Yeah, limitation actually changed kind of a direction in my thinking,

0:24:420:24:47

so it changed the way I thought about music.

0:24:470:24:49

MUSIC: So What by Miles Davis

0:24:490:24:51

In the late '50s, the USA was in the grip of the sound of jazz,

0:24:580:25:02

and the Miles Davis classic So What...

0:25:020:25:05

..was the basis for one of Riley's early tape experiments.

0:25:070:25:11

Played by the West Coast jazz great Chet Baker.

0:25:130:25:16

Got to work in RTF, the French radio studios,

0:25:190:25:22

so they arranged for me to work with Chet there,

0:25:220:25:27

and Chet had a quintet, so then I asked them to all

0:25:270:25:31

record So What as a group,

0:25:310:25:35

and then I asked them to record their solos separately.

0:25:350:25:37

More or less the same as they had been playing in the full

0:25:370:25:40

-ensemble?

-Yeah, and then I took it upstairs and I put those together,

0:25:400:25:44

I looped them and then I recombined it all.

0:25:440:25:47

So, it was... The first thing,

0:25:470:25:49

the ding for me was, "This can be

0:25:490:25:51

"an instrumental music process of writing."

0:25:510:25:54

Music For The Gift, as the Baker experiment became known,

0:26:090:26:13

was a crucial game-changer in minimalism's development.

0:26:130:26:16

It pioneered the idea of electronic manipulation of time,

0:26:240:26:28

a technique Riley would describe as time-lag accumulation.

0:26:280:26:33

Electronic repetition was a key element in Riley's minimalist work.

0:26:330:26:37

To understand what this means,

0:26:400:26:42

I've enlisted the help of Portishead's Adrian Utley

0:26:420:26:45

and two tape machines for an old-school experiment.

0:26:450:26:48

REPETITIVE, ECHOING TONES

0:26:480:26:51

So I don't really understand how this is working.

0:27:130:27:15

Um...

0:27:150:27:18

It's like an internal looping or delay effect, isn't it?

0:27:180:27:22

-Yeah.

-But how does it actually work?

0:27:220:27:24

It's got one reel on one tape machine,

0:27:250:27:28

the tape goes like this along to the next tape machine

0:27:280:27:32

which is playing it,

0:27:320:27:34

so that is our distance of delay.

0:27:340:27:37

So record it here, wait,

0:27:370:27:40

play. And that's what's happening.

0:27:400:27:42

So with the regeneration of feeding it

0:27:420:27:44

back into the first recorder, you get this endless delay.

0:27:440:27:49

The recording machine not only picks up the guitar being played,

0:27:570:28:01

but also the sound from the machine playing it back,

0:28:010:28:05

creating a seemingly endless echo.

0:28:050:28:07

And that's why there's quite a lot of hiss on it as well because...

0:28:090:28:12

Yeah, it's building up hiss.

0:28:120:28:14

-It's building up hiss.

-Yeah.

0:28:140:28:15

Which is lovely, actually, it's sort of warm.

0:28:150:28:17

I think we like that sound because it's not clinical.

0:28:190:28:22

Did Terry Riley call it the ghost in the machine?

0:28:220:28:25

Right.

0:28:250:28:26

It's a build-up of atmosphere that you couldn't...

0:28:260:28:31

..get from an acoustic instrument.

0:28:320:28:33

Effectively, what you've set up here, then,

0:28:410:28:43

is what Terry Riley I think called his time-lag accumulation technique.

0:28:430:28:48

Yeah, I guess that's it.

0:28:480:28:49

The artistic climate in San Francisco in 1961

0:29:070:29:11

was ringing with new ideas.

0:29:110:29:13

A number of adventurous composers including Terry Riley,

0:29:130:29:16

Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick and Pauline Oliveros decided

0:29:160:29:20

to create their own improvised electronic music studio -

0:29:200:29:24

the San Francisco Tape Music Center.

0:29:240:29:27

Now a dance studio,

0:29:290:29:31

this unremarkable building on Divisadero Street

0:29:310:29:34

was once the nexus of a group of visionaries who dragged the past

0:29:340:29:37

into the future in front of an audience essentially of themselves.

0:29:370:29:42

The Tape Music Center was a kind of countercultural little hall where...

0:29:440:29:49

Nothing like any concert hall,

0:29:490:29:51

it really was just kind of a small room.

0:29:510:29:53

They had a radio station, KPFA, that

0:29:530:29:56

had the room right next door, and a lot of really interesting things

0:29:560:29:59

started happening there.

0:29:590:30:01

If you've enjoyed electronic music's rich tapestry

0:30:060:30:09

since Kraftwerk emerged in the '70s...

0:30:090:30:11

..then consider the pioneers who were exploring it

0:30:150:30:18

over a decade earlier.

0:30:180:30:19

The Tape Music Center's gift to the future of minimalism was the first

0:30:230:30:27

complete synthesizer.

0:30:270:30:28

And this is it, the original Buchla 100,

0:30:310:30:35

commissioned by composer and Riley peer Morton Subotnick.

0:30:350:30:39

It has become important partly

0:30:390:30:41

because it may have been the first

0:30:410:30:43

complete system that you would have that would do everything

0:30:430:30:46

you wanted it to do,

0:30:460:30:48

not just something to add on to something else,

0:30:480:30:51

which would make it the first total analogue synthesizer.

0:30:510:30:54

The sequencer was originally conceptualised by me...

0:30:560:31:01

..to be a sequence of events.

0:31:020:31:06

MELODIC BEEPS

0:31:060:31:09

While Riley and the San Fran Tape Center

0:31:460:31:48

were experimenting with electronics,

0:31:480:31:51

in 1960 La Monte Young moved from California to New York

0:31:510:31:54

to pursue an ambitious vision -

0:31:540:31:57

a light and sound installation designed with his partner,

0:31:570:32:00

the artist Marian Zazeela,

0:32:000:32:01

where minimal music could exist multi-dimensionally,

0:32:010:32:04

24 hours a day.

0:32:040:32:06

A Dream House,

0:32:120:32:15

and it still exists to this day in the same Chamber Street loft.

0:32:150:32:19

On my visit, I was immediately immersed in a striking collection of

0:32:200:32:24

audiovisual works created by long-time La Monte Young disciple

0:32:240:32:28

Jung Hee Choi.

0:32:280:32:29

The concept of a Dream House

0:32:320:32:34

was invented by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in 1962,

0:32:340:32:38

and Jung Hee Choi is the only artist

0:32:380:32:40

that we have ever given long-term installations

0:32:400:32:44

in our Dream House.

0:32:440:32:45

She is our senior disciple.

0:32:450:32:47

she performs with us in all of our performances

0:32:470:32:51

and appears with us in all of our presentations.

0:32:510:32:55

In the early '60s, Young's work was centred around drones.

0:33:000:33:03

Sparse, sustained tones continuously sounded throughout most

0:33:030:33:08

or all of a piece.

0:33:080:33:10

At first, it just sounded like one big buzz,

0:33:100:33:13

or tinnitus amplified

0:33:130:33:14

or something, you know.

0:33:140:33:17

But there were loads and loads of speakers all over the place,

0:33:170:33:20

and it seems like they were all just doing different tones.

0:33:200:33:23

They probably just create those tones all the time.

0:33:230:33:26

But the amazing thing and the thing that I always will remember about it

0:33:260:33:30

was suddenly realising... You know, at first, "All right, OK,

0:33:300:33:33

"there's a big buzz, whatevs, sounds like a giant bee, whatever."

0:33:330:33:37

But then when you start to walk through the room,

0:33:370:33:40

so then you're nearer to one speaker than another,

0:33:400:33:42

you get all these kind of weird wobbly patterns happening

0:33:420:33:45

actually inside your head because you've got the interference

0:33:450:33:48

of this note just a bit lower than this one, so you get that...

0:33:480:33:51

-RAPID VIBRATING NOISE

-Then you turn your head a bit, and it goes...

0:33:510:33:54

SLOWER VIBRATING NOISE

0:33:540:33:55

And so suddenly, it became the most fascinating thing

0:33:550:33:58

in the world because you think,

0:33:580:33:59

"Well, what if I put my head like this?"

0:33:590:34:02

And you could be like walking through and then,

0:34:020:34:04

"Oh, that's good, that one."

0:34:040:34:06

So you become really active in it and explore this...

0:34:060:34:08

You could stay in that room forever

0:34:080:34:10

because just a tiny tilt of your head

0:34:100:34:14

creates a completely different experience.

0:34:140:34:16

And you kind of look at other people in the room,

0:34:160:34:19

but obviously they're not hearing what you're hearing at all.

0:34:190:34:22

It's really... It was a unique thing and I keep meaning to...

0:34:220:34:26

I wish I could go back.

0:34:260:34:29

What was so interesting about you putting forward the idea of

0:34:290:34:32

drone music in Western culture?

0:34:320:34:35

Drone music had been there since the beginning of time.

0:34:350:34:38

But in the West not so much?

0:34:380:34:40

Well, yes, it's true that I introduced it in a way

0:34:400:34:44

that really made waves,

0:34:440:34:46

and I did it because I liked it,

0:34:460:34:48

and I wanted the world to have that experience.

0:34:480:34:52

You have to kind of not expect big events, and then you start wondering

0:34:560:34:59

whether you're just imagining things that are happening,

0:34:590:35:02

and I think that's one of the interesting things

0:35:020:35:05

about La Monte Young's music.

0:35:050:35:06

Is that you think nothing's happening,

0:35:060:35:08

you think it's a static thing, but then suddenly...

0:35:080:35:12

..after maybe 20 minutes, you realise that

0:35:130:35:15

what you're listening to is totally different to what

0:35:150:35:18

you started off listening to,

0:35:180:35:19

but you've got no recollection of how you got there.

0:35:190:35:22

The idea of meditative, long-held notes was at the root

0:35:270:35:31

of minimalism, but it was not a new concept.

0:35:310:35:34

Both La Monte and Terry studied Indian classical music,

0:35:340:35:38

an ancient style rooted in drones.

0:35:380:35:40

This is called a tanpura.

0:35:450:35:48

It is essentially a drone instrument

0:35:480:35:52

which you play so that you can sing at a certain scale.

0:35:520:35:57

It's very meditative.

0:35:580:36:00

It obviously gives a sense of peacefulness,

0:36:000:36:05

and there is a little austerity

0:36:050:36:09

which one associates with very high order of notes,

0:36:090:36:15

high order of music.

0:36:150:36:17

In its simplicity, there is a lot of depth.

0:36:170:36:20

These composers studying Indian music was at a time

0:36:240:36:28

in the '60s when people

0:36:280:36:30

in the West were looking to Asia, to India,

0:36:300:36:35

to other cultures for an alternative state of mind.

0:36:350:36:40

We think of The Beatles, of course, most famously -

0:36:400:36:43

George Harrison studying sitar with Ravi Shankar,

0:36:430:36:46

and them going off to study meditation in India.

0:36:460:36:51

It was the thing at the time.

0:36:510:36:54

HE HOLDS NOTE

0:36:540:36:57

In 1970, Young and Riley both became disciples of the great raga vocalist

0:37:000:37:06

Pandit Pran Nath

0:37:060:37:07

and would study with him for the next 26 years.

0:37:070:37:10

We found ourselves attracted to him like iron filings to a magnet.

0:37:120:37:17

It became essentially a force

0:37:170:37:21

that was much more powerful than any of us

0:37:210:37:25

or him in that we found ourselves drawn together.

0:37:250:37:29

And he insisted that we become his disciples in order to study.

0:37:290:37:36

As well as drones, Indian music is based around the raga,

0:37:410:37:44

a kind of microtonal scale.

0:37:440:37:46

I felt like I was in kindergarten again

0:38:290:38:32

when I started studying Indian music because I had to learn a whole new

0:38:320:38:36

way of perceiving and listening.

0:38:360:38:38

You and the note, the note and you.

0:38:390:38:42

HE SINGS IN HINDI

0:38:420:38:46

I always practise early in the morning.

0:38:580:39:00

First thing I do is do my ragas in the morning.

0:39:000:39:03

And, you know, it kind of tunes me up for the whole day.

0:39:040:39:08

It's a lot of work just to maintain the huge vocabulary of raga that I

0:39:090:39:13

learned over the many years with Pandit Pran Nath.

0:39:130:39:16

Ragas share minimalism's aversion to Western music narrative.

0:39:270:39:31

Time often moves like an arrow in Western music.

0:39:340:39:36

We imagine there's a beginning and end, and somebody,

0:39:360:39:38

something or somebody, usually it's a composer, telling you the story,

0:39:380:39:42

that's going from a beginning to an end.

0:39:420:39:43

Well, in the music of Indian classical music,

0:39:430:39:46

and in La Monte Young's music, and Terry Riley's music especially,

0:39:460:39:49

you don't have that arrow.

0:39:490:39:50

You have instead an ocean of time in which you can be in,

0:39:500:39:55

in which you feel that the universe operates according to cycles

0:39:550:39:59

as opposed to arrows.

0:39:590:40:00

And to use a Western music to tap into that same energy that Indian

0:40:010:40:06

classical music, kind of, has always done,

0:40:060:40:08

is an amazing act of imagination.

0:40:080:40:10

Riley and Young's original experiments in sound abstraction

0:40:140:40:16

and repetition have been shared amongst a close-knit community,

0:40:160:40:20

but the crossover moment,

0:40:200:40:22

the Big Bang, if you like, would come in 1964.

0:40:220:40:26

The date was November 4th

0:40:260:40:28

and ground zero was the San Francisco Tape Music Center.

0:40:280:40:32

Riley's big idea was to translate techniques of repetition

0:40:400:40:44

and an immersive attitude to time

0:40:440:40:46

into a work for musicians rather than machines.

0:40:460:40:50

The result was the ground-breaking In C.

0:40:520:40:56

Let's talk about that first performance of In C,

0:40:570:40:59

because obviously with that first performance,

0:40:590:41:02

you launched a kind of musical revolution.

0:41:020:41:04

Believe me, I tried...

0:41:040:41:05

..in this whole lifetime since In C to come up with another idea,

0:41:070:41:11

that it could be that simple and inclusive.

0:41:110:41:15

And I haven't been able to do it either.

0:41:150:41:17

You know, I got back after working with Chet Baker,

0:41:250:41:27

I thought, "I should write something new like this."

0:41:270:41:30

So I had this, you know,

0:41:300:41:32

idea to write for a large group of instruments.

0:41:320:41:35

But I was writing it all out, you know.

0:41:350:41:38

And afterwards, at some point, I was thinking,

0:41:380:41:40

"Boy, this is hard, you know,

0:41:400:41:41

"because it doesn't have the freedom that I really want.

0:41:410:41:44

"And I'm actually writing the structure out."

0:41:440:41:46

Isn't it the most beautifully baffling and illogical thing?

0:42:110:42:14

That here is a piece, called In C, that can take upwards of three

0:42:140:42:17

or four hours to perform,

0:42:170:42:19

and the entire score is contained on one sheet of paper.

0:42:190:42:24

53 beautiful little melodic extracts,

0:42:240:42:27

all basically in the key of C major.

0:42:270:42:29

Every player is the master or mistress of their own destiny.

0:42:440:42:47

They can choose how many times exactly they want to repeat

0:42:470:42:50

Extract One before they move to Extract Two.

0:42:500:42:52

They can choose to play at exactly the speed of the pulse

0:42:520:42:54

or they can choose to play at double the speed or quarter the speed.

0:42:540:42:58

But, of course, the essence of the magic of the piece

0:43:100:43:12

is what happens when one extract is being played by one player

0:43:120:43:15

while another player is playing the same extract

0:43:150:43:17

but slightly out of phase with the first player.

0:43:170:43:19

Or a third player is playing the extract in front

0:43:190:43:21

of that same extract or the one just behind it.

0:43:210:43:24

Cos let's remember the rule of this piece is that however many members

0:43:240:43:27

there are in the ensemble, no-one is allowed to get more than three

0:43:270:43:31

extracts either ahead or behind anyone else.

0:43:310:43:34

None of those present at the premiere

0:43:370:43:40

on November he 4th, 1964, had seen or heard anything like it.

0:43:400:43:44

What was the impact on the audience that night?

0:43:450:43:48

Well, it was significant.

0:43:480:43:50

I mean, people were really blown away.

0:43:500:43:53

We all knew. I think everybody in the group knew that there was

0:43:540:43:57

something special happening that night.

0:43:570:43:59

In C marked a moment when the world began to prick up its ears to this

0:44:010:44:05

whole movement.

0:44:050:44:07

The memorably named critic of the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle

0:44:070:44:11

Alfred Frankenstein came to the first performance of In C.

0:44:110:44:15

And he was completely knocked for six by it.

0:44:150:44:18

The headline is, "Music like none other on Earth."

0:44:180:44:21

And most brilliantly he says,

0:44:210:44:23

"At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but

0:44:230:44:27

"listen to this music,

0:44:270:44:29

"and as if that is all there is or ever will be."

0:44:290:44:33

I think this piece is the Big Bang of minimalism.

0:44:420:44:44

Because, for a start, it's total democracy in action.

0:44:440:44:47

It's not the conventional or traditional model

0:44:470:44:50

where the composer imposes

0:44:500:44:52

a very precise, tight and defined structure.

0:44:520:44:55

Exactly who plays what, and in what direction of travel,

0:44:550:44:58

and in what order of play.

0:44:580:45:00

This is absolutely about whoever's in any ensemble who decide to

0:45:000:45:05

play In C, each and every one of those musicians

0:45:050:45:07

making their own choices

0:45:070:45:09

within, of course, as we've said, very controlled parameters.

0:45:090:45:12

So that there can't ever be two even remotely similar performances

0:45:120:45:17

of In C. Every single time it's performed,

0:45:170:45:19

it is a world apart from any previous performance.

0:45:190:45:22

So that in itself is like a kind of revolution

0:45:220:45:25

of the most extreme sort.

0:45:250:45:26

It is an amazing piece.

0:45:330:45:34

It's an amazing piece because it expresses all sorts of...

0:45:340:45:37

You know, the sort of gestures

0:45:390:45:40

which became sort of quite central to minimalism.

0:45:400:45:43

It's, you know, that sort of political aspect of it,

0:45:430:45:46

in the sense that it's a kind of community project

0:45:460:45:49

and, you know, there's no leader,

0:45:490:45:51

and all of these sorts of ideas were sort of encapsulated in that.

0:45:510:45:56

There's a great liberation that this music gives musical culture.

0:45:560:45:58

Not just in the way it sounds but the way it's made,

0:45:580:46:01

so that you can have a roomful of people

0:46:010:46:03

and it's defined by the way they interact with each other,

0:46:030:46:08

the journey through that piece.

0:46:080:46:09

As much as, really more than, what the composer tells them.

0:46:090:46:13

It's also, by the way, I think, a democracy of listening because it

0:46:140:46:17

involves being hyperaware of one another as performers.

0:46:170:46:22

And you're aware that your own contribution is, you know,

0:46:220:46:24

maximally important, you have to be totally responsible for it.

0:46:240:46:28

And yet, at the same time, you're also part and responsible

0:46:280:46:31

for this bigger ocean that's being created by the whole piece.

0:46:310:46:37

In C crystallised ideas of freedom three years before anyone heard the

0:46:370:46:42

words summer of love.

0:46:420:46:44

Do you think that that had anything to do with location?

0:46:480:46:51

The West Coast of America has always been a place where people are more

0:46:510:46:53

free to experiment, that there's less sense of judgment.

0:46:530:46:56

I think you're right. It had to happen, not only in the West Coast,

0:46:560:47:00

but it had to happen in San Francisco.

0:47:000:47:03

My whole history of spending a lot of time in San Francisco,

0:47:030:47:07

there's a kind of Pacific Rim mentality that is connected to Asia,

0:47:070:47:13

whereas East Coast is connected to Europe.

0:47:130:47:15

I think it had to happen where it happened.

0:47:150:47:17

Terry Riley makes it very clear in his somewhat bold instructions

0:47:360:47:39

to the piece that the way that the piece finishes

0:47:390:47:41

is that everyone eventually in the ensemble arrives

0:47:410:47:44

at extract number 53.

0:47:440:47:46

And then they end up kind of in unison on extract number 53 before

0:47:460:47:50

gradually disintegrating.

0:47:500:47:52

So a musician will decide to cut out.

0:47:520:47:55

Leaving four left.

0:47:550:47:57

And then another one cuts out, and then a third, and a fourth.

0:47:570:48:00

And eventually there's just one lonely player left.

0:48:000:48:02

And then he or she cuts out.

0:48:020:48:04

And then finally the pulse is switched off.

0:48:040:48:07

With In C,

0:48:220:48:24

an appreciation of minimalism began to spill beyond the fringes of the

0:48:240:48:28

Tape Music Center.

0:48:280:48:30

Meanwhile, the new technologies the Center had been trialling were about

0:48:300:48:33

to break out, too.

0:48:330:48:34

Coming into contact with this relatively new technology

0:48:410:48:44

of the tape recorder and the possibility of manipulating

0:48:440:48:48

recorded sound made...

0:48:480:48:51

..a whole new set of things possible

0:48:520:48:55

in music.

0:48:550:48:56

I'm thinking particularly of Steve Reich,

0:48:560:48:58

for whom the technology of the tape recorder opened up

0:48:580:49:02

a whole new world of possibilities.

0:49:020:49:04

28-year-old San Francisco inhabitant Steve Reich was a friend

0:49:060:49:09

of Terry Riley who'd been involved

0:49:090:49:11

in rehearsals for the premiere of In C.

0:49:110:49:13

-TV NARRATOR:

-The people of San Francisco dress well,

0:49:150:49:18

walk briskly, and their friendliness,

0:49:180:49:20

as much as the charm of their city,

0:49:200:49:22

causes visitors to return again and again.

0:49:220:49:26

In former days, Union Square was the heart of the city.

0:49:260:49:30

It is still the centre of the downtown shopping area.

0:49:300:49:33

In late '64, Reich heard about an extraordinary black preacher

0:49:350:49:39

who could be heard every Sunday in Union Square.

0:49:390:49:43

He began to warn the people, he said,

0:49:430:49:46

"After all, it's going to rain after all."

0:49:460:49:48

For 40 days and for 40 nights.

0:49:480:49:50

And the people didn't believe him,

0:49:500:49:51

and they began to laugh at him, and they began to mock him,

0:49:510:49:54

and they began to say, "It ain't gonna rain!"

0:49:540:49:57

Brother Walter was the black Pentecostal preacher

0:49:580:50:01

who I recorded in Union Square in 1964,

0:50:010:50:05

and in January '65 did the piece.

0:50:050:50:07

He's talking about the end of the world.

0:50:080:50:10

It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:100:50:13

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:130:50:15

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain

0:50:150:50:18

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:180:50:20

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:200:50:23

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:230:50:25

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:50:250:50:28

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain...

0:50:280:50:29

Now, this is 1964.

0:50:290:50:33

The Cuban missile crisis was '62.

0:50:330:50:35

I've mentioned this before, but it bears re-mentioning.

0:50:350:50:38

And I think almost everybody in America, certainly myself,

0:50:380:50:42

were thinking, you know, when that happened, you know,

0:50:420:50:45

one false move and we're all so much radioactive dust.

0:50:450:50:48

It's the kind of thing that stays with you.

0:50:480:50:51

It's unsettling. So,

0:50:510:50:52

if you hear something about the end of the world, which is biblical and

0:50:520:50:55

which was contemporary, and which was musical.

0:50:550:50:59

"It's gonna rain," bam-ba-da-dum, bam-ba-da-dum...

0:50:590:51:02

The pigeon drummer who happened to take-off at the moment he said that.

0:51:020:51:05

The pigeons...

0:51:050:51:06

It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:51:060:51:08

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:51:080:51:10

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:51:100:51:13

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:51:130:51:15

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain...

0:51:150:51:17

Playing two identical loops simultaneously on old tape recorders

0:51:170:51:21

that ran at slightly different speeds,

0:51:210:51:24

Reich chanced upon the future.

0:51:240:51:26

So, I made the two tape loops as perfectly as I could.

0:51:270:51:30

In those days, you put tape into a splicing box,

0:51:300:51:33

cut it with a razor blade,

0:51:330:51:34

and then put the two ends together, back in the block,

0:51:340:51:36

and then put some splicing tape over it.

0:51:360:51:38

And then I just pressed the go button.

0:51:380:51:40

And I am just glued to this process,

0:51:400:51:43

going... I'm thinking, "Wow, you know, what's going on here?"

0:51:430:51:46

Cos there's all kinds of irrational things and then

0:51:460:51:48

you get something that really makes musical sense.

0:51:480:51:51

And then there's this sort of blur and then there's more.

0:51:510:51:54

And then finally you're back together again.

0:51:540:51:56

Wow, you know. That's a whole lot more interesting

0:51:560:51:58

than just, "It's gonna, it's gonna..."

0:51:580:52:01

It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:52:010:52:03

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:52:030:52:05

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain...

0:52:050:52:08

And so that was really a chance procedure,

0:52:080:52:10

even though you hadn't ordained it as such,

0:52:100:52:12

it happened by chance to you.

0:52:120:52:14

Well, I don't see things as ever by chance.

0:52:140:52:18

I think there's no such thing as coincidence.

0:52:180:52:20

The eternal's hand is at work...

0:52:200:52:23

But, in no causative way, I mean,

0:52:230:52:25

in no way that I could care to discuss or whatnot.

0:52:250:52:28

But I think that that viewpoint makes life a little bit more...

0:52:280:52:31

..liveable and optimistic and hopeful in an admittedly dark time.

0:52:330:52:39

It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:52:390:52:41

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:52:410:52:43

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain,

0:52:430:52:46

it's gonna rain, it's gonna rain after all!

0:52:460:52:48

It's Gonna Rain represented a technological breakthrough

0:52:510:52:54

for minimalism, known as phasing.

0:52:540:52:56

To find out how it worked,

0:52:590:53:01

I've decided to replicate Reich's experiment.

0:53:010:53:04

Ade and I have recorded a long synth loop

0:53:080:53:10

on two rickety old tape machines.

0:53:100:53:13

OK, Ade, so we've got that beautiful seven-beat sequence

0:53:180:53:21

identically recorded on both of these machines.

0:53:210:53:24

Yep. We've lined them up.

0:53:240:53:26

-At the beginning of the sequence.

-Yep.

0:53:280:53:30

By finding the very beginning of it.

0:53:300:53:33

All we need to do is push go.

0:53:330:53:35

MACHINE PLAYS

0:53:350:53:37

Due to the analogue vagaries of old-school tech,

0:53:400:53:44

the tape machines play back at slightly different speeds.

0:53:440:53:47

We've started off with seven notes.

0:53:530:53:55

I haven't got seven fingers on each hand but if I did,

0:53:550:53:58

let's say this that each one of my fingers is a note.

0:53:580:54:01

They start off together like that

0:54:030:54:06

and they slowly slip out of time,

0:54:060:54:08

so one is falling behind the other one.

0:54:080:54:11

Or...

0:54:110:54:12

And so it's doing this.

0:54:120:54:14

And this, when it's like that, you hear...

0:54:140:54:17

That's the duh-duh-duh-duh-duh kind of rhythm.

0:54:170:54:20

And then they slip back into time

0:54:200:54:22

but their notes are not in sync with each other any more.

0:54:220:54:25

So that's where we get our harmonies from.

0:54:250:54:28

MACHINE CONTINUES PLAYING

0:54:280:54:30

-It's awesome, isn't it?

-It's absolutely amazing.

0:54:380:54:41

-Yeah.

-It gets so densely populated.

0:54:410:54:43

Yeah.

0:54:430:54:44

When they're really forming across each other.

0:54:440:54:46

-Yeah, it's not unmusical either.

-No.

0:54:460:54:49

For me this is another absolutely bull's-eye example of what

0:54:510:54:54

minimalism is about. That it is very busy, this.

0:54:540:54:56

There's a heck of a lot of information

0:54:560:54:58

coming through our senses right now.

0:54:580:55:00

And yet it's incredibly transcendent.

0:55:000:55:02

That's something that I've heard from all of the composers within that genre,

0:55:020:55:06

that there's a kind of meditative thing happening quite a lot.

0:55:060:55:10

Even with its uptight, fairly frantic music,

0:55:100:55:12

there's kind of very slow melodies happening underneath this thing.

0:55:120:55:17

And it's quite spiritual.

0:55:170:55:18

And the smell of the hot tapes.

0:55:190:55:22

Ah... Sends me into a complete paroxysm of joy.

0:55:240:55:26

Phasing, repetition with gradual change over time,

0:55:560:56:00

represented the start of minimalism's halcyon period.

0:56:000:56:04

From the late '60s into the '70s,

0:56:040:56:06

Steve Reich and new kid on the block Philip Glass

0:56:060:56:09

would preside over a high court of New York minimalism

0:56:090:56:13

and take it into the stratosphere.

0:56:130:56:15

The composers who began it all, Terry Riley and La Monte Young,

0:56:190:56:24

have continued in their own vain,

0:56:240:56:26

remaining to this day happy, experimental musicians.

0:56:260:56:30

What do you think of the term minimalism and do you think it applies to you in any way?

0:56:310:56:35

Well, you know, minimalism, what does it mean?

0:56:350:56:37

I have my definition.

0:56:370:56:39

-Go on.

-You want it?

0:56:390:56:41

That which is created with a minimal...

0:56:410:56:43

A minimum of means.

0:56:430:56:45

Minimalism is that which is created with a minimum of means.

0:56:450:56:49

But what do you think it is?

0:56:490:56:50

What it does to me, it sounds like we're a bunch of simpletons, you know, minimalists.

0:56:510:56:55

We can't be more complex thinkers, or even feelers, you know.

0:56:550:57:01

So it doesn't explain the spiritual aspects to the music at all.

0:57:010:57:06

And it also doesn't approach explaining who we all are.

0:57:060:57:11

What the term minimalism does do, however, is help the listener.

0:57:330:57:38

It's a gateway into a world of extraordinary transcendental music

0:57:380:57:42

of wildly differing styles

0:57:420:57:44

that could only have been born in the USA.

0:57:440:57:48

We did all happen that you, er...

0:57:540:57:56

All being ourselves in the '60s,

0:57:560:57:59

and we all used repetition to some degree.

0:57:590:58:02

But then everybody went their own way.

0:58:020:58:05

I haven't kept up. I mean, in all honesty, I haven't kept up with it.

0:58:050:58:09

Because it's not my favourite music to listen to.

0:58:090:58:12

Next time, I go to New York and explore how Steve Reich and Philip Glass

0:58:160:58:20

took minimalism into the mainstream and beyond.

0:58:200:58:23

Download Subtitles

SRT

ASS