THE
PARAMETRIC
MUSIC
OF TERRY RILEY

An interesting trend in rhythmic improvised music seems to be appearing gradually, which faces squarely up to that difficulty of surprise-in-excess which I discusssed in my aesthetics article in the February issue.

As yet there are very few available recordings of the new music, but I imagine this situation will change. One example is by an American, Terry Riley, whose record "Reed Streams" is issued on the Mass Art label. Such music certainly represents a break with tradition, in that it makes significant use of parametric effects deriving from the basic material, and in Riley's case I propose to describe the way in which it is constructed.

Riley's basic instrument is the electric organ, on which the slightly sustained nature of the notes enables the drone effect to be achieved very clearly. Riley's real talent is to be able to hear the strobe patterns and work with them, manipulating them into exotic shapes, sometimes fast and light, sometimes slow and powerful. It is the simplest of drones which produces an ellipse, but some very strange patterns can be obtained by delicately moving the rhythmic details on the drone. Since the strobe pattern is a network of beat notes, the pitching of the notes in the drone is very important and striking a wrong note in one repetition of the drone causes the strobe pattern to collapse to an extent that may be disasterous.

If now the drone is changed to, for example, "begin to think, about how we are to begin to begin" (a stanza that is used in a fragmented manner in Riley's composition, Olsson III), there is a strange feeling of ambiguity as the old drone dies and the new drone establishes itself. Shifts of drone emphasis now produce a whole new range of strobe patterns.

Throughout the process, including the drone changeover, the pulse rate remains hypnotically constant and the eventual object is for the listener to stop listening to the drone, and concentrate purely on the strobe patterns, for it is here that the aesthetics of the music lie. Getting into this situation is what Riley as a performer describes as "tuning up to time". Finding the right pulse can sometimes take half an hour and if the pulse is a little too slow or a little too fast, Riley finds that after awhile, even when a large number of musicians are involved, everybody automatically gets into it.

But to return to Riley's organ work, we soon begin to appreciate where his genius lies and that is in maintaining that hypnotic pulse whilst manipulating the drone, completely in terms of the strobe patterns produced. At times he works with two or more drones, or fragments of drones, in pattern juxtapositions, and the music produced is very strange, very strong and quite new. The shifting rhythms which generate the outlines of of the strobe patterns give a rhythmic impetus which is amazing, making the whole thing swing like hell. This music is not jazz but it is not classical or pop music in any accepted sense either. It is in fact a whole new area of music.

The second side is rather different, although the strobe principle is basically the same, in that Riley uses soprano saxophone in a performance of Dorian Reeds which runs almost 15 minutes. He achieves the drone by using what he calls "the time-lag, looping and phasing accumulator", which is essentially a roll of tape and two tape recorders. This gives echoes of blown notes of fixed delays, with decremental amplitudes, which Riley controls at times for unison effects. This sounds like a band of around a dozen soprano saxophones, many of them being well away from the microphone. An interesting feature is that the piece is broken into sections, differing in what I can only call mood. There is a jazz feeling of a far-out kind that outdates jazz as we know it today by a galaxial decade. Some of the multiple strobe patterns can give a remarkable feeling of assurance, thereby imparting calm. I am sure there are many among the new wave jazz enthusiasts who will find the exciting Dorian Reeds very easy to like.

Both performances were recorded on November 4th and 5th, 1966, in New York City.

- Keith Knox.