For most people, like myself, music is the combination of chords, instruments, and voices which create songs. For Steve Reich, any sound can be looped together until that original sound is unrecognizable to form a musical tune and beat. At a young age, Reich was introduced to music and the piano, and from there, his musical passion has all but diminished. Steve Reich is a minimalist who started a whole movement on behalf of his works. He is known for turning any sound into music.
Steve Reich was born in New York to two musically talented parents. At the ripe, young age of one, his parents divorced and his mother moved across the country from New York to Las Angeles, California. Not wanting to lose contact with either parent, Reich spent his childhood traveling the distance across the country via train to spend adequate time with both his mother and father. These frequent trips and the repetitive clacking of the train tracks got Reich's imagination rolling and ultimately began his musical journey and
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his unique use of looping (Just Don't). While Reich had always had a fascination for music from a young age, he chose to pass up a degree in music when he attended Cornell University in New York and earned his degree in Philosophy. This break from music did not last long, however, as he went on to study composition for two years and then to attend the Julliard School of Music with William Bergsma and Vincent Persichetti. After he finished with his schooling, Steve Reich put together his own group of musicians.
At first, his ensemble consisted of only three members, but it quickly increased in size to about eighteen or more. With this assembly of talented musicians, Reich pushed the boundaries of music and created something no one had ever experience before. During this time, Reich had learned of his Jewish heritage. He was aware that had he been living in Europe instead of America, his life would have turned out much differently. This all contributed to his different take on traditional music (Puca). In addition to his education at Julliard School of Music, Reich also earned his master's degree in music at Mills College in California. During his time at Mills, Reich focused on rhythmic music, which later morphed into the repetitive music that he is known for today. A fellow musician of Reich, Terry Riley, was a huge influence on Reich's repetitive style (Steve
Reich). Steve Reich has been described as "working with an absolute minimum of musical material," (Potter). From this began the concept of minimalism in music. One of his most notable songs, and one of his first songs, It's Gonna Rain, is created by using simply the speech of a black preacher. At the beginning of the song, Reich plays out a small portion of the preacher's speech without any modifications to it. Then, he uses only the words "it's gonna rain" to compose a work of music. He loops the words and rearranges them. He plays them simultaneously and separately. As the song continues, the listener loses touch with the original words and meaning of the song, and the speech becomes almost recognizable (Mors). Later, Reich composes another piece called Different Trains. This piece was influenced by his frequent trips across the country to visit his mother and father in different cities and states (Steve Reich). Unlike It's Gonna Rain, Different Trains is not composed of just someone's speech, but of different sounds and whistles with the occasional repetitive voices and speech in the background. Because his music is so atypical, it is easy to assume that Rock and Roll or any other traditional forms of music would be to simple for Steve Reich's taste. To some extent, it is. That's not to say that Reich doesn't enjoy any music aside from his own, but he thinks more deeply about the music and considers it less complicated. In one interview, Reich said "It wasn't until the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album that I began to realize something was really going on in the rock world, but it wasn't something that influenced me," (Johnson). It wasn't until the newer hit rock band Radiohead made its way to Reich's ears that he decided to give the genre a chance. Reich was intrigued by how one of the band members had played electric guitar against one of his own pieces, Electric Counterpoint. This influenced Reich to go home and listen to some of Radiohead's music and work some fragments of their songs into his own pieces. On whether or not he truly enjoyed those songs before he made them his own, Reich said "sometimes you hear them and sometimes you don't," (Johnson). To me, what Reich is saying here is that Radiohead's music, at some points, can be raw and inspiring, but other times, it is simply another form of a rock and roll song. Steve Reich takes me out of my comfort zone for music. I enjoy listening to instruments and chords played in unison to create harmonic, beautiful music. Reich's style of music is so repetitive, and sometimes does not include any instruments at all, hence his minimalist title. I never would have considered such combination of sound as being music, but something about the time and thought he put into exactly how to manipulate those sounds is endearing and translates those sounds as music to me. Many people have called Reich an experimenter. At first, after listening to many of Reich's "phases," I, too, considered Reich's work experimental. In an interview with Reich, he confronts the experimental title some have given him and states "I've got a big trash basket on my Mac, and I've got a big trash basket of paper underneath my desk...I reject a lot of stuff... By the time I get out there with a finished piece, I feel like, 'look, I've done the best I can with this thing, and I hope you like it, but it ain't no experiment. It's a finished piece, take it or leave it,'" (Interviews). I find this attitude refreshing. Many people today create music simply because they have the technology on their computer to combine a few prerecorded instrumental riffs into something that resembles a song. These people are attempting to take the easy road toward stardom. Steve Reich, on the other hand, does not create music for fame, he creates music because he simply has to. Every sound Reich hears is music to his ears. Most people don't listen to the wind, or to the flapping wings of a pigeon and think "that could be music." Steve Reich does. By cutting, piecing together, and looping tapes, Steve Reich has created a music unlike any other. Anyone can take their computer and piece together fragments of instrumental riffs, but not just anyone can take regular, recorded speech or sound and turn it into something completely different from its original meaning. These are the things that make Steve Reich the incredible composer he is today. Reich makes people think about what they have just listened to. The way in which looping and overlapping and taking sounds out of their context manipulates those sounds is confusing for our brains. Rather than simply listening to a song and thinking "it sounded pleasing to me," Reich's music causes the listener to really think about and contemplate the original sound they heard and how much it seems to have changed just from repetitive looping.
In 1955, Steve Miller started his first band at the age of twelve, the Marksmen. This band consisted of guitarists James Burton and Bob Hayden, and he acquired Barron Cass to play the drums. Steve taught his older brother Buddy to play the bass so that he had someone to drive them to their gigs. They played songs by Ray Charles and the Four Freshman. Steve was finally given the chance to display his showmanship such as spinning into split or throwing the guitar behind his head mid-song. Upon graduating high school Steve moved to Madison, Wisconsin to go to college. At the University of Wisconsin he started his studies in literature. Here he assembled a group called the Ardells. Ben Sidran played the keyboard, and Steve convinced his friend Boz Scaggs to play rhythm guitar. The band received some success, but they got tired of playing meaningless parties and other small-time gigs. Miller decided to study literature his senior year at the University of Copenhagen. After arriving back in the states he heard an act the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. This caught his attention and he left for Chicago to enter the blues-scene, at this point he was only six credits shy of graduating. Once in Chicago he did session work for Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and Howlin’ Wolf.
Oxford’s dictionary defines music: as vocal or instrumental sounds or both, combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion. Music, as a form of expression and communication, comes in many forms and styles: classical, folk, country, rock, and electronic
You might have remembered him as the funky-looking stylist of Katniss Everdeen on the trilogy Hunger Games and have forgotten how great of an artist Lenny Kravitz is. With her edgy hairstyles, the occasional facial piercings and the soulful tracks he had released during his entire career, we can all surmise that he's one extraordinary soloist. Brought to mainstream fame during the 1990s after his iconic and relatable track Again, Kravitz has been very active in the music industry but on a low-key.
“Retirement sucks!'; These are the famous words from one of the most captivating musical artist living today. Ozzy Osbourne has taken this world by surprise with his stunning actions, energetic motivation, and of course his music. His presence in the music industry inspired many artists today, and has taken everyone by surprise. In this paper I will discuss some history about the recording industry, background on the Ozzman himself, and how he has sparked the recording industry.
Music is loved by nearly everyone around the world; learning about composers and what they have been through can develop your understanding of music today. World War II certainly helped sculpt the face of music and of the composers of that time. The war affected German, American and French composers and musicians; causing them to write hateful music, or live with fear of writing any music at all.
His mother, Bibbe Hansen, was an actress who went as far as to work with such artists as Andy Warhol. Also, his grandfather, Al Hansen, was involved with the Fluxus art movement and was best known for launching the career of Yoko Ono. Beck grew up mostly in Los Angeles, also spending some time in Europe and in the Kansas City area with both of his sets of grandparents. A seemingly bad decision to drop out of school in tenth grade led to Beck’s early career as a street performer playing acoustic blues and folk music, as well as trying his hand at the poetry. In 1988, he produced a cassette of home recordings called The Banjo Story, which led to his move to New York in 1989.
Stephen Sondheim was born on 22 March 1930, the son of a wealthy New York dress manufacturer. But, when his parents divorced, his mother moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and young Stephen found himself in the right place at the right time. A neighbour of his mother's, Oscar Hammerstein II, was working on a new musical called Oklahoma! and it didn't take long for the adolescent boy to realise that he, too, was intrigued by musical theatre. Although he subsequently studied composition with Milton Babbitt, he chose to apply what he
particularly large surprise due to the fact that he grew up in a family of German composers like
Anderson had a very strong musical education. At age eleven he began piano lessons and music studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Cambridge. At his high school graduation from the Cambridge High and Latin School, Anderson composed, orchestrated, and conducted his class song. In 1925 he entered Harvard College. While at Harvard he studied musical harmony with Walter Spalding, counterpoint with Edward Ballantine, canon and fugue with William C. Heilman, and orchestration with Edward B. Hill and Walter Piston. Between 1926 and 1929 he played trombone for the Harvard University Band. He eventually became the director of the Harvard University Band for four years. In 1929 Anderson received a B.A. magna cum laude in Music from Harvard. The magna cum laude is the next-to-highest of three special honors for grades above the average. He was also elected into Phi Beta Kappa. Anderson continued into graduate school at Harvard. In 1930, he earned an M.A. with a major in music. He began studying composition with Walter Piston and Georges Enesco; organ with Henry Gideon and double bass with Gaston Dufresne of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. As well as his studies in music, he continued for his PhD in German and Scandinavian languages. He ultimately mastered Danish, Norwegian, Icel...
Music for Eighteen Musicians (MFEM) is a minimalist composition by Steve Reich written between 1974 and1976. Though this piece was a culmination of Reich’s previous minimalist work, it was also innovative in its elements of structure and harmony. Reich emphasizes this point in saying “there is more harmonic movement in the first five minutes of Music for Eighteen Musicians than in any complete work of mine to date.” It was also his first attempt at composing for a large ensemble building upon his frequent use of piano and pitched percussion with a violin, a cello and two clarinets. The context leading up to the composition of Music for Eighteen Musicians sheds light onto the reason why it was composed and in a greater sense why Minimalism as a whole was born.
What is music? Where did it come from? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, music is defined as the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity (Music). There are many types of genres of music. Examples include classical, rock, rap, techno, metal, acoustic, pop and many others. Music is one of the most popular cultural aspects that we have adopted from ancient societies throughout history. Some forms of music date back to ancient civilizations of Egypt, China, India, Greece and Rome. Music can be used during every day activities such as working out, relaxation, for entertainment and also therapeutic uses. Many types of music therapy have been seen all over the world and also in different time periods. Music Therapy was used in the 20th century for World War One and World War Two veterans. Local musicians were hired to play in the local hospitals where veterans that were suffering both physically, emotionally and mentally were making progress towards recovery. Music therapy is still very common today. It gives an opportunity for a musical therapist to work with people of all different ages and varying disabilities. In order to become a musical therapist, a person must have some special qualities. Some of these include basic understanding of music, the willingness to help people, patience, creativity, empathetic and supportive. According to the Cancer Association society “ Music therapy may be used to encourage emotional expression, promote social interaction, relieve symptoms, and for other purposes.”
According to dictionary.com, music is “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, and color.” Music is the product of sound waves coming from anything making a melodic tone. There are different genera’s of music, ranging from rock to pop to classical. Each person likes different genera’s of music.
Dan Berkowitz is a firm believer in the transformative power of music and is dedicated to creating experiences that are equally immersive, unforgettable and seamless for his fellow diehard music lovers. Dan started in the music business like many before him, handing out flyers for his favorite bands and venues. He worked his way up, becoming the tour manager for The Disco Biscuits in 2004, overseeing their day-to-day operations. After leaving the road in 2006, Dan worked for Electric Factory Concerts, while laying the groundwork for what would later become CID Entertainment, creating unique travel packages and VIP experiences for marquee events in Philadelphia.
What does music mean to you? Music is something that has been around for many years. It started out as just some drums and a few instruments, but has changed a lot over time. The dictionary defines music as “an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.” When I think of music I think of it has a story combined with instrumental sounds. Over the years, it has changed so much, some for the good and the bad. There are many different types of music and different emotions it will bring.
“An art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color” is music defined by Dictionary.com. This definition is for the most part is accurate, from a superficial standpoint, although it does not capture the importance of music as music is vital in the rehabilitation and development of others. For instance, music is a tool that can be very effective if used properly. Take small school children for example. More often than not, they are taught songs that are intended to help them remember important information Even if the child is unable to recount the lyrics of the song, they will most likely be able to hum the tune and recount the information. Music not only assists children, it also adequately aids adults. This is the case with the classical music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as it has been known to entice learning. Most people in our western society predominantly use the left sides of the brain but the music of Mozart causes both sides of the brain to work toge...