Music for 18 Musicians was my gateway into Steve Reich. Clapping Music was an inside joke I shared with two college friends—even though it wasn’t quite a joke because we all really liked his music—the joke was how others around us would react to our spontaneous attempts to perform the Clapping. I was worse at it than my friends; getting the hang of phasing is very difficult. Phasing is a trademark Reich technique wherein two melody lines start out in unison, while one line slowly speeds up until it gets ahead, then snapping back into place, but a rhythmic step ahead—over time changing the texture of the piece until it cycles through every note in the pattern. Search “Piano Phase” on YouTube for a quintessential example—18 minutes of two melodies that are wrung for every bit of their impact.
Electric Counterpoint. Different Trains. Drumming. So much of Reich’s music has been in steady rotation for me for years. Can’t recommend him highly enough.
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