Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich

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‘Electric Counterpoint’ by Steve Reich Comment on how Steve Reich uses the following in 3rd movement from Electric Counterpoint: * Tonality and harmony * Instruments and texture * Use of motifs, repetition and variety Reich uses tonal ambiguity, which means an element of uncertainty in his piece. This keeps the audience interested in the repeating piece, and keeps them guessing as to what the key of the piece is. The bass guitars enter to confirm the E minor key. The piece finishes on an E5 chord, which gives it an “open” and “light” sound. This piece was composed during the minimalist style outbreak, so it was only natural and exciting for composers to be experimenting with the newly-discovered ways of electronically making and editing music. Steve Reich greatly incorporates the electronic sound into his piece by using 7 electric guitars and 2 bass guitars. The use of all of these instruments creates a thick polyphonic texture, which was achieved by being “multi tracked”, which was overdubbing short phrases on top of each other. The piece is mainly made up of many short patterns/motifs, with the repetitiveness of the piece making it feel rather hypnotic. The texture remains fairly constant but with use of panning (bass guitars are panned with one to the left and one to the right. The uses of many smaller motifs that can be repeated and changed were common in this period. Reich used many ostinati, but they all originated from one usually randomly-composed bar. This bar could be altered in many ways such as retrograded, inverted, diminished, augmented or retrograde inverted. Although they all came from one bar, they all sound more individual and unique, although the sense of repetition is still there, it at least creates a variety in the piece to ensure the audience does not get bored. These bars can also be phase shifted and
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