ABSTRACT
At the heart of many works of electronic music is a process. Sometimes the process itself becomes the piece of music. Whether using tape loops or algorithmic composition, the tools available for electronic music often become the most direct and fluent way for a composer to express their music. Steve Reich, one of the founders of the contemporary classical musical style known as minimalism, attributes his interest in process forms of music to his early experiments with tape music. Eno’s composition consisted of a diagram of the devices used to generate the music. Whereas the minimalism of Reich often explores the effect of slowly changing melodies and rhythms, another form of process music explores the effect of slowly changing textures of sound. With the addition of reverberation, the result was a barrage of slowly unfolding undulations that changed dynamically as sounds continued to be repeated.
