Phasing
A few thoughts, interesting links and some of my own work exploring the idea of “phasing” in music.
I was recently reminded of the concept of “phasing” in a post by Dom Aversano on his Liner Notes substack about his new album Tocsin. It’s not that I’d forgotten about phasing, it’s just that it tends to come and go in my mind! (sorry, couldn’t resist, I promise, no more phasing jokes ;)
Dom explores phasing using software and a technique he calls “deep phasing” where he uses many copies of a sound controlled with much more accuracy than is possible with traditional tape based phasing setups.
Tocsin is a beautiful collection of tracks and you should definitely take a listen.
The first use of phasing as a creative tool in music is most often attributed to the American minimalist composer Steve Reich in his piece “It’s Gonna Rain”. Here Steve Reich talks very succinctly about how that piece came about, it’s fascinating:
Steve Reich went on to explore “phasing” in many different ways in his work using both tape and live performance. Many of his pieces such as Drumming, Clapping Music and Piano Phase are still performed regularly. Here’s another great video that explains Clapping Music really well:
And one more, a recent video from Hainbach where he re-creates Steve Reich style phasing using his rather nice Nagra tape recorders:
I was captivated by these ideas when I was at college studying art in the 90s — the level of complexity and variation that can come from very simple starting points is truly amazing! So I started to experiment with phasing myself in lots of different ways with different equipment and have continued to do so ever since!
Here is a quick resume of some of my phasing experiments from over the years, the few that I actually remembered to record that is! :)
HUM: This was a sound installation I made in 1995 which consisted of three stereo tape loops — 2 minutes, 5 minutes and 10 minutes — sound pieces I’d made using “field recordings“. The three stereo tracks went in and out of phase with each other over ten minutes but this also changed slowly over the day as the tape players ran at slightly different speeds. This is a short stereo excerpt, you needed to listen for quite a lot longer to appreciate the phasing tape loop element of the piece, but it gives you the general feel!
Complex Phase Experiment 1: When I previously wrote about this piece it was with respect to drone music but it really is more of a phase piece. Also from 1995, it was made using a BOSS DR-55 Dr Rhythm drum machine processed through a rack-mount multi-effects unit! The phasing complexity comes completely from the delay, chorus and reverb of the multi-effects! I entered it into an open call at SPNM but unfortunately they weren’t impressed! :) It’s still a fascinating listen considering the simplicity of the setup!
Takt: More recently I made some phase pieces using the Elektron Digitakt. I shared a snippet of one of those experiments previously as well. It’s hard to understand what is happening here as it is just an excerpt from the middle of a 58 minute recording! I do have a whole collection of these and I did release them momentarily into my short-lived Bandcamp subscription but they are not currently available. I am listening to the tracks again to see if there is an interesting re-release in there somewhere!
There is a lot that I still wish to explore in this area. Most of my current music practice involves looping of some kind — the Boss RC-600 loop station, 4ms Dual Looping Delay in modular, pedals like the Hologram Microcosm and Empress ZOIA, or software VSTs and VCV Rack. All of these options offer the potential for creating work which is completely or partially concerned with phasing. And relatively complex looping and delay based solutions are now very accessible.
One of the reasons I like the RC-600 is that it’s very easy to record multiple loops on it that are either the same length, multiples of each other or completely different lengths. Many phasing possibilities.
I recently made a video which I explored the 4ms Dual Looping Delay module in both hardware and software and I built a seven track “Delay Machine” using VCV Rack and my Novation Launch Control MIDI controller.
This simple setup could very easily be used to create phase based pieces and I will be exploring that idea further very soon :)