\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Piano Phase\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1967), performed by Double Edge: Nurit Tilles and Edmund Niemann.<\/b><\/p>\n
This is a work for two pianos that play the same thing but gradually go out of phase.<\/p>\n
This is a really interesting piece to listen to and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s devilishly hard to play. (Although I guess all the first pianist has to do is play everything at the same tempo and try his best to ignore the second pianist\u00e2\u20ac\u201dit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the second pianist, the one that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going out of phase, who has it tough.) At least, it sounds to me like it would be devilishly hard to play. But, according to Steve Reich\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s writings, it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that hard once you get the hang of it. He talks about how you can get absorbed in listening to the sound of it while playing. I would think you would almost have to ignore the overall sound and just concentrate on the technical matter of going slightly out of phase with the other pianist, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never tried playing it. Maybe I should.<\/p>\n
What you hear when you listen to this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t two pianos playing the same thing. Sometimes you do hear two pianos playing the same thing, but often you hear two pianos playing two different things, or two pianos playing the same thing and another piano playing something completely different. But, of course, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just an illusion, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re always just hearing two pianos playing the same thing, and the complexity that arises from the phase shifting is what makes the piece. Some parts of it sound like a whirling calliope, and then other parts have a weird syncopation, even though the original phrases are not syncopated.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it reminds me of that black and white optical illusion where, if you concentrate on the white part, you see a young woman, but, if you concentrate on the black part, you see an old hag. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Piano Phase\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, if you start concentrating on one part of the sound, it will start sounding different than it did when it was only at the periphery of your hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Piano Phase\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1967), performed by Double Edge: Nurit Tilles and Edmund Niemann. This is a work for two pianos that play the same thing but gradually go out of phase. This is a really interesting piece to listen to and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s devilishly hard to play. (Although I guess all the first pianist has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.leipzig48.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}