This is an hour long, ground breaking piece in composition and production recorded in 1976. It is a piece by the minimalist composer Steve Reich. "Music" is a piece that contains an eleven chord cycle and each chord consists of its own kind of song. The music flows from one chord to the next in a floating sort of fashion. Reich took everything into account, even writing breaths into the music so that the piece has yet another contribution to the rhythm of the song. Reich wrote it so that listening to it puts one in a trance, and one will begin to hear other music coming from the piece that isn't actually being played. It is an effect called psycho-acoustics. It is where your mind is trying to make sense of what you are hearing so sometimes it fills in the gaps. It has the feel of modern electonic music even though it was written and recorded around forty years ago. The instruments included in the piece are a violin, a cello, four female voices, four pianos, five marimbas, vibraphone, xylophone, and two bass clairnets.
There are so many things about this piece that I admire. One aspect of it is that it is an amazing piece of composition, with there being eighteen different musicians playing in moving harmonies. "Music" contains another effect called phasing, where some musicians will consistently fall right behind the beat to give the piece more depth. This is an amazing concept for me, because sometimes I have trouble keeping things together even when I am playing in a group that is all playing in time. Also, the endurance of these musicians is also astounding, because they are all playing an extremely difficult piece that lasts for an hour.
This is a major discovery for me because it got me to start composing music. I learned alot from this piece compositionally. I was heavily inspired by this piece of work, and it led me to go into a phase of creating compositions for piano. It is also important because I have fallen asleep many different times to this song, and it helps me sleep.
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