At the time I set out to write Reinventing the Wheel, I was listening to Steve Reich's epic masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians on a nearly daily basis, to the point where I decided that I had to have a copy of the score even though it cost some obscene amount of money at the Juilliard Bookstore. Though I marveled at Reich's mastery of form and the unusual manner in which he constructed the piece, I was also struck by how many avenues he chose not to explore with it. For example, there is no phasing in Music for 18 Musicians like there is in his earlier pieces; none of the parts have improvisatory elements; and the time signatures (except for the meterless pulsing figures) remain relatively consistent throughout the piece. In Reinventing the Wheel, my goal was to combine Reich-style "process music," improvisation, and chance procedures in the same piece. Building on the modular structure of Drum Cells, Reinventing the Wheel makes use of an unusual form that is linear on a macro scale, but only semi-linear on a micro scale. In other words, there are five main sections that proceed in order, but within those sections there is no common downbeat and each player may not necessarily be on the same page, so to speak. In the three middle sections, the six instruments in the band--first drums & bass, then voice & saxophone, and finally the two guitars--are paired off to perform a dual improvisation over varying mathematical patterns in the other parts.
Despite Reinventing the Wheel's avant-garde construction and heritage, it is actually one of the grooviest pieces I've ever written.
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