5. Music and Technology

RK: How do you feel the new technologies are going to alter the way music is created, performed and accessed?

SR: It's part of a continuum. First there was the perfection of the organ. And then a vast literature for organ music, then the invention of the piano created a whole new kind of keyboard literature. Electronics have had an enormous effect on popular music, it's very clear to see. And by now almost every composer I know who's my age or younger works with a computer in various ways. The possibility of playing back through midi, the possibility of orchestrating with that -- I used to play everything on every instrument I was able to or have musicians down and try things out on instruments. Now, I find, with the proper samples of orchestral instruments, that I can actually do solid orchestration by trying it out on midi. My big problem that I could never solve is: does the oboe go over the clarinet or does the clarinet go over the oboe? The answer is "What's the context?" I used to have a musician, who was a Broadway doubler, play English horn, oboe, all the clarinets, and flutes and we'd just record it multi-track. But now I've found that I can in fact go a long way working with some samples that came out of McGill University that are solo instruments well recorded. This is how I did the opening of "City Life": there's sort of a poor man's "Symphony of Winds" in the beginning there. I figured, "If this works out in rehearsal, I'm with this program." And it did.

RK: It's very beautiful. It really is.

SR: So, I think the computer makes a difference, but it didn't make anyone who wasn't a good composer a good one. People say "Oh, now they've got this, they can do so and so." Yeah, you can now have people churning out a lot of garbage faster and in a prettier looking score. You can definitely produce it quicker, but copy and paste ain't gonna make you a good composer.

RK: What about the idea of music going directly into the Internet? A composer working in a room with midi or who knows what else, and literally, the performance venue is the Internet itself?

SR: I'm not even on the net because I feel that if I have one more means of communication, I will cease to be a composer and just be corresponding all day. I don't know, but I think that will absolutely come to pass and would make a profound difference in what we now call the record industry.

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Reich Interview

1.	Starting Out
2.	Audiences
3.	Orchestras and Acoustics
4.	Music as Language
5.	Music and Technology
6.	New Works

Supporting Materials
Biography
List of Works
List of Recordings
Links

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Steve Reich (photo: John Halpern)

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