Aloha! Today I’m writing about why I dislike the latest sample I began working on which is simply entitled ‘Minimalist Whitacre Sampling’. Some of you may have guessed why I dislike it already…

A friend of mine, Gavin Higgins, showed me this Eric Whitacre piece, Sleep, back in July and it’s fair to say I was quite taken by it. After a year of consciously pushing my boundaries as a listener I think I quite enjoyed sitting back and listening to something that did all the work for me! (no offence, Whitacre…) For those of you who haven’t heard the piece, I listed it this week in my Spotify top ten (see ‘Steal our ears’ under discussions).

I started out by writing a polymetric drum sequence that I wanted to use as a texture for an improvisation. I planned to use several interchangeable textures as the backdrop for a solo ‘rant’ with violin. The density of the drum layers was making it quite difficult to differentiate between different ‘rhythmic islands’ and, as things went, the whole exercise began to feel slightly pointless as the structure could be easily ignored…all the listener would hear would be drums + violin = mess. Easy option was to find a tonal anchor point and, having this Eric Whitacre piece stuck in my mind, I thought a referential sample from the piece might help make it easier to navigate my improvisatory mess!

Cutting a long story short…I tired of the subtle sampling and filled the whole drum sampler with flashes from the Whitacre piece. I was completely aware of what this was going to sound like, it was starting me in the face the whole time but for some reason I couldn’t help myself….and for some unknown reason….I pretended to be Steve Reich for a second.

I have a love/hate relationship with minimalist music. I love repetition, the reference to movement and the consideration for a listener to get involved in the musical event taking place. It can be so easy to spend a lot of time on a musical moment, tailoring every nuance until you’re completely satisfied…only to realise in performance that the moment passes instantaneously and that no one got it. That’s a bit crap. But there’s compensating for something within context and then there’s patronizing.

“Did you hear that last bit?”

“Yeah I think I got it…the harmony, very nice”

“Well did you notice all my lovely added 6ths etc? I’ll play it just one more time so you can hear”
“Well that’s very thoughtful of you. Yeah I definitely heard it that time”

“Are you sure? Listen for the 6ths…”

“Yeah I got it, there it was again *hums notes*”

“No you’re a little flat there…I’ll just repeat it until you get it…”

*Explosive sound*

A composer lies dead on the floor.

I’m not saying I want to kill minimalist composers or anything…I’m just saying I don’t appreciate listening to a piece where the harmony digs its heels so far into the ground that its like arguing with a thick spide.

So I’ve inadvertently hit on the exact reason why I dislike this sample. Although the harmony presents new tones quite regularly, all of the pitches become part of the same harmonic identity because of the nature of the timbre and rhythm. I think it might be nice to treat the sample as though it were a chord in itself and pitch shift specific sections…and treat it like a juxtaposed ‘bar-chord’.

Hmmmm…..I’ll have to try this….will report back later.

(Steve Reich – After the war…good tune)