On Mighty Men (disquiet0249) by Nate Trier

"Mighty men must master modesty."

This is a slightly unconventional take on Reich's phasing, but I think it is in line with his description of "process music." A short vocal phrase is repeated over and over again by a fake vocal trio. The lowest notes in each voice's repetition form a chord: C, Bb add 9, Am, F/A, F/Ab, C/G. However, given the way the melody jumps around, the chords are somewhat obscured (but they're there!).

I transformed the vocal parts through old school tempo-and-pitch shifting (no fancy modern stuff like warping!), because I knew this would give me variety in note durations and the unique timbre of pitch-shifted voices.

I tried to write a melody that would imply suspension and resolutions against pitches that I could not predict, so I used lots of leaps and then steps. I had to track it twice, because after the first time I realized I would need much longer vowels to emphasize the suspensions and resolutions. This second draft worked better, but really I think I could have made the vowels even longer. Ah well.

The final step was a little gated Beat Repeat with lots of echo and panning at the output to add some ambience.

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More on this 249th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Wish the minimalist composer Steve Reich a happy birthday” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0249/

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http://disquiet.com/junto/

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http://llllllll.co/t/happy-birthday-steve-reich-disquiet-junto-project-0249/

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Rain image by Rory MacLeod, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/bVJFJb

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/