Digital Reich

Written in 1994 / Recorded in 1994 and 2011

An experimental composition I wrote in 1994, borrowing some idea(s) from Steve Reich. I don’t remember what the ideas were or where I found them, but when I came across with the ideas, I simply thought it would be interesting to apply such ideas to make a digital programme for the synthesizer, to reconstruct the theory accurately. 

It took probably less than five minutes for me to make the programme, which consists of a couple of tracks playing the exactly same pattern with a different length of rests – or the same melody line written in different length of bars. Both tracks are programmed with an endless loop attached, so once it started it will never end unless someone push the Stop button or stop supplying electric power to the sequencer. The longer it is played, there must be the wider length of the time gap between the melody lines. In theory, these lines must synchronise at the completely same timing, once in 10 minutes or 20 minutes, or even longer interval.

When the initial demo recording was made, I recorded the programmed synthesizer parts for over 20 minutes and could not spot the moment when these lines synchronise once again within that length of time frame. Nevertheless, I felt listening to digital music for 20 minutes a very boring thing, so I decided to write a suitable guitar part to the atmosphere of the composition and placed it in the relatively early phase of the recording. The result is what this video is all about.