btw I think he's a genius

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnQdP03iYIo[/youtube]

Who will be the first to do it on a Stick?

Steve Reich has some interesting pieces with phasing; my favorites are the ones with marimbas.


Cheers, Daniel.

Great video (the Gunn one). Well and also this last one with the guy playing the piano.

I also understood that what only 6 people can do is play polyrhythms like that. I don't know if specifically that one; I couldn't really count so I'll just take arsacane's word for it that he was playing 7 vs 4.

Last week's lesson for me was precisely that kind of stuff, but I'm starting with 4 vs 3 and 5 vs 3, I suppose because those are easier... and it's only been a week so I'm still splitting my brain to become fluent in them, slapping my thighs all day long, 4 beats in one hand vs 3 in the other, then swapping... pretty weird, but the very simplistic stuff I've managed to play on the bass and on the Stick sounds interesting, I think there's a lot to explore there.

I had the great opportunity to sit in a small seminar with Steve Reich at MIT last spring. He discussed the evolution of his "phasing" experiments. At one point in the discussion he said that percussive instruments were most amenable to phasing...and the thought struck me that a "Stick Phase" would be pretty cool.

Stick Phase would be pretty cool. Especially if Mr. Reich would write one.

I'm sure that the "Piano phase" can be played by 2 Sticks with good results. Regarding the 'percussive instruments', the really interesting effect of this kind of pieces is (IMHO) the emergence and evolution of different rhythms; since the difference in time between 2 notes can be VERY small, a sharp attack makes it easier to perceive it.


Cheers, Daniel.

Enrique,

It's fairly easy to play 'patterns' in 2 against 3, 4 against 5, etc, once you are able to "hear" them; it gets exponentially harder (at least for me) to play "music" in that way (here I refer to music in the sense of phrases that are mixture of different note duration, include silences, maybe triplets, last a few bars, etc). Finally being to improvise with this in a band context is extremely hard...

My 2 cents

Cheers, Daniel.

PS: When I practice this kind of poly-rhythm patterns, it is very helpful to me to program them in a drum machine then listen them for a couple of minutes. Once you know how they should sound, it becomes easier to count them and them play them. I hope it helps