Day 117: Violin Phase

Violin Phase by Steve Reich.

When I was an undergrad at USC, I worked part-time in the music library. At the time, the music library was located on the third floor of the main library . We would close a couple of hours before the main library, securing the big wooden doors that separated the music collection from the rest of the building. Part of this collection included thousands of albums. After cleaning up, we would often get a stack of albums, plug in some headphones, turn off the lights and listen in the dark. This track is one of the longest I will post, but is worth the listen, especially when the unison line starts to get out of phase (see the graphic below). It’s like waiting in your car at a traffic stop with your turn signal on, and you notice that your signal is in perfect sync with the blinking turn signal of the car in front of you. Mesmerized by the rhythmic precision, slowly the synchrony starts to fall apart as your click begins to drift apart from the blinking in front of you. Then a honk of the horn behind you breaks you out of your reverie.

This track is from a you a youtube video by dancer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker.