Terry Riley - Techniques

Techniques

While his early endeavors were influenced by Stockhausen, Riley changed direction after first encountering La Monte Young, in whose Theater of Eternal Music he later performed in 1965-66. The String Quartet (1960) was Riley's first work in this new style; it was followed shortly after by a string trio, in which he first employed the repetitive short phrases for which he and minimalism are now known.

His music is usually based on improvising through a series of modal figures of different lengths, such as in In C (1964) and the Keyboard Studies. The first performance of In C was given by Steve Reich, Jon Gibson, Pauline Oliveros, and Morton Subotnick. Its form was an innovation: The piece consists of 53 separate modules of roughly one measure apiece, each containing a different musical pattern but each, as the title implies, in the key of C. One performer beats a steady pulse of Cs on the piano to keep tempo. The others, in any number and on any instrument, perform these musical modules following a few loose guidelines, with the different musical modules interlocking in various ways as time goes on. To some extent, though, critics have focused too obsessively on In C, thereby ignoring the full range of Riley's work and innovations. The Keyboard Studies are similarly structured, a single-performer version of the same concept.

In the 1950s he was already working with tape loops, a technology then in its infancy, and he has continued manipulating tapes to musical effect, both in the studio and in live performance, throughout his career. An early tape loop piece titled The Gift (1963) featured the trumpet playing of Chet Baker. Riley has composed in just intonation as well as microtonal pieces.

Riley's collaborators have included the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Pauline Oliveros, the ARTE Quartett, and, as mentioned, the Kronos Quartet.

Riley's famous overdubbed electronic album A Rainbow in Curved Air (recorded 1967, released 1969) inspired many later developments in electronic music, including Pete Townshend's synthesizer parts on The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Baba O'Riley", the latter named in tribute to Riley as well as to Meher Baba. The recording had a significant impact on the development of ambient music and progressive rock and predated the electronic jazz-rock fusion of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and others.

As Rainbow demonstrates, Riley performs on multiple keyboard instruments, but his principal instrument is actually the acoustic piano. Riley's 1995 Lisbon Concert recording features him in a solo piano format, improvising on his own works. In the liner notes Riley cites Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and Bill Evans as his piano "heroes," illustrating the central importance of jazz to his conceptions, and his playing bears some notable similarities to that of Keith Jarrett. (The album title invites this comparison.)

Riley's work and various innovations have influenced many others in various genres, including John Adams, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, Philip Glass, Frederic Rzewski and Tangerine Dream.