Steve Reich is Calling: A Minimalist Ringtone for the iPhone

What if min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich got his hands on the iPhone’s famil­iar Marim­ba ring­tone? That’s what the web­site Steve Reich is Call­ing imag­ines. Here’s how Jason Kot­tke describes the basic con­cept:

[Reich’s] 1967 piece Piano Phase fea­tured a pair of pianists repet­i­tive­ly per­form­ing the same piece at two slight­ly dif­fer­ent tem­pos, form­ing a con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing musi­cal round. Seth Kran­zler took this idea and made a Reich-like piece with two iPhones ring­ing at slight­ly dif­fer­ent tem­pos.

From what I can tell, there’s not actu­al­ly an offi­cial way to down­load the ring­tone and make it your own–though it does appear that there are, indeed, ways to con­vert Youtube videos into ring­tones. (Note: we haven’t test­ed these meth­ods, so pro­ceed cau­tious­ly.)

For any­one inter­est­ed in tak­ing a deep­er dive–a much deep­er dive–into Reich’s musi­cal world, please see this post in our archive: Hear Steve Reich’s Min­i­mal­ist Com­po­si­tions in a 28-Hour Playlist: A Jour­ney Through His Influ­en­tial Record­ings.

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via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

Björk Presents Ground­break­ing Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cians on the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists (1997)

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More