by Ben Hogwood Photo credit Jeffrey Herman

Background

Reich’s short but dazzling group of pieces for tape signs off with Melodica. The composer lays out clear instructions in the score, an image of which appears in his Writings On Music compendium. He describes its genesis in typically concise fashion:

“Melodica is composed of one tape loop gradually going out of phase with itself, first in two voices and then in four. The original loop is of myself playing the four-note pattern on the melodica, a toy instrument. I dreamed the melodic pattern, woke up on May 22nd, 1966, and realized the piece with the melodica and tape loops in one day. Melodica was composed of musical pitches, as opposed to the speech fragments used in my two earlier tape pieces, It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come Out (1966). It proved to be both a transition phase shifting process, and the last tape piece I ever made.”

Listen

Thoughts

For the first time, Reich’s music does away with speech, applying the development of phase patterns to pitched music played on an instrument. This is a simple, jerky four note motif played on the melodica – whose repetitions can be jarring to start with. The key moment is just before two minutes in, where the phase shifting becomes noticeable to the untrained ear, and the echo effects start off those now-familiar sensations where the ear starts to pick out fleeting movements between the parts.

As the parts double from two to four, the melodic shapes dance in the mind’s eye, the rhythms bouncing off the walls – a dazzling effect for something so apparently simple! Then, almost without warning, the music stops, like switching off a radio – but continues to reverberate in the listener’s ears long after the sounds have died.

A postcard of minimalism, Melodica is a critical stage in Reich’s development as the emphasis shifts to instrumental music.

Recordings

Melodica – to my surprise – does not appear anywhere in Reich’s recorded oeuvre, though as you see above is easily accessed on YouTube.

Also written / released in 1966 Marvin Gaye Moods of Marvin Gaye; Frank Sinatra Strangers in the Night; Ligeti Lux Aeterna

Next up: Piano Phase (1967)

Published post no.3,050– Saturday 17 October 2026

by Ben Hogwood

“I had never heard anyone deal with music or language in that way, turning language into music that had political content. I was completely floored by it” – sculptor and artist Richard Serra on hearing Come Out for the first time (from Steve Reich: Conversations)

Background

“I had to like open the bruise up and let some of the bruise blood come out to show them.”

As Reich details in his Writings on Music, this is the voice of Daniel Hamm…one of the six boys arrested for murder during the Harlem riots of 1964. After a beating taken in Harlem’s 28^th precinct police station, Hamm and the boys were about to be “cleaned up” – but the police were only taking those with visible bleeding. Since Hamm had no open bleeding, he proceeded to open a bruise on his leg to ensure he was taken to hospital. This article on Pitchfork provides valuable political background to the piece.

Reich took a loop of the words quoted above, “recorded on both channels. First the loop is heard in unison with itself. As it begins to go out of phrase, a slowly increasing reverberation is heard. This gradually passes into a canon or round for two voices, then four voices and finally eight.”

Listen

Thoughts

After an eye-opening encounter with It’s Gonna Rain, there is less of a surprise element when listening to Come Out. And yet its impact is even more profound, sinister even, within a piece that once again stands as a blueprint for future sonic innovations. The protest made by Reich’s treatment of the musical speech elements is unswerving, and uncomfortable, with an urgency to the work demanding immediate action.

After an exposition of Hamm’s material, the speech works its way into the tight canon Reich describes, the process anticipating the work of acts such as Cabaret Voltaire a decade or two later. Looking further ahead, as the canons get more complicated, the breakdowns of big, euphoric rave numbers from the late 1980s onwards are clearly set out. Landmark tracks such as M|A|R|R|S’ Pump Up The Volume are also anticipated. If you put Reich’s manipulations to a techno beat now, few people would be any the wiser!

Yet considering the original music made in 1966, how stark this is – and what a powerful statement it makes, its relevance running all the way through to Black Lives Matter and beyond.

Quotes / Legacy

Stephen Sondheim, from Conversations… “What you do quite often, particularly with the speech pieces, is that by looping them and working with them, sounds come out of them that aren’t part of the actual language. And what happens is the listener’s ear mixes the sound. That’s exactly, of course, what (Georges) Seurat was doing with colour. He was making the eye mix the colour instead of making it on the palette. I thought that’s another thing you and I have in common, is that you have the ear-mix and Seurat has the eye-mix.”

Recordings

Again, just the one – part of the 1987 collection Early Works (Nonesuch)

Also written / released in 1966 Ennio Morricone The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Stravinsky Requiem Canticles; The Beach Boys Pet Sounds

Next up: Melodica (1966)

Published post no.3,048 – Thursday 15 October 2026