Phase Patterns (1970)

Album title: Four Organs - Phase Patterns
Title: Phase Patterns (Side B)
Publisher: Shandar, Paris
Date: 1970
Medium: record 30 cm
Cover photo: still of film "Wavelength" by Michael Snow
Performers: Steve Reich, Steve Chambers, John Gibson, Philip Glass, Art Murphy

The composer Steve Reich is, in particular, regarded as a representative of minimal music.
In the 1960s, he experimented with recording devices and the sampling of sound fragments. He superimposed sequences and shifted the phases so that sounds played synchronously and repeatedly shifted slightly against each other over time. This was also the case with the piece "Phase Patterns", recorded in 1970, for which he recorded the playing of an electric organ with several tape recorders and played it back again.

Reich used this phasing technique in later years and in more large-scale works.