Steve Reich’s Different Trains with London Contemporary Orchestra | Boiler Room
Why Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange recommends it
Music Stack Exchange answerers link it as a concrete example of Reich's speech-melody and sampled-sound technique, and as program music built from recorded trains, sirens and voices.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2021 to 2025.
What it is
A 28-minute Boiler Room performance of Steve Reich's Different Trains by the London Contemporary Orchestra, staged days before Reich's 80th birthday. It is the first to pair the piece with a new film by Bill Morrison, presented during Liverpool Biennial.
What people said
Cites Brian Towers · 2021-05 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “How do I make the sound of a car horn, car engine, on instruments?”
My first suggestion would be that you look to (recent) history to see if anybody else has done the same thing or, failing an exact match, something similar. Then you can copy/modify what they did to suit your needs. The nearest equivalent I can think of is Steve Reich's Different Trains [this video] . This has train sounds, sirens and bells along with human voices. According to the Wikipedia article [LINK] he just pre-recorded these and then edited them in. That is, he recorded real trains, sirens, bells, etc. If, as is likely, you don't find suitable examples already in the genre then pre-recording the real thing would be the sensible fallback position for which there is good precedent.
Cites Andy Bonner · 2022-11 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “Do People and/or Robots Speak on Pitch and in Harmony with themselves?”
There are some facts in this question, but they get tangled in some misunderstandings and assumptions. Let's see if we can sort them out: All sound has frequency —you can measure how far apart the sound waves are. If one frequency is prevalent enough, we say that the sound has pitch . A tuning fork is pitched, a burst of radio static isn't. A person singing "la" on a particular note is pitched; a person saying "sh" isn't. Frequency is a scientific thing; pitch is a human idea layered on top of it. Human speech includes both unpitched noises (consonant sounds) and voiced sounds, like vowels, that might rest on a certain pitch. Steve Reich's Different Trains samples short clips of speech and "
Cites Andy Bonner · 2024-03 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “What is it called when the same melody is played at different speeds by voices with different timbre?”
Having listened to the examples, I think the only answer that wraps it all up is: "No, there's no one term that's useful here. And yes, your response to these musical similarities is meaningful. But to be able to talk about it more concretely, keep enhancing your skills at listening to and describing music." I'm afraid that only the Woochia example does what you describe. In all the other examples, the two voices aren't playing the same sequences of notes , just something similar in spirit. So let's discard these examples and talk about the idea instead. So when I hear a musical segment which has very connected (e.g. playing the same melody), but very contrasting (because of the speed and ti
Cites Aaron · 2025-01 · Music: Practice & Theory Stack Exchange · on “What is abstract music?”
The term originated to distinguish "program" music — music attempting to represent a person, a story, ... something concrete — as opposed to music that is not "about" anything. In this sense, Bach's Prelude and Fugue in C Major [LINK] (BWV 846) is "abstract", while Vivaldi's Four Seasons [LINK] or Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf [LINK] are "concrete" or "programmatic". Abstract music can also refer to music that is further afield — say, music intended to create a mood or that doesn't include discernible melody or harmony. Terry Riley's In C [LINK] or Edgard Varèse's Poème électronique [LINK] are examples. Steven Reich's Different Trains [this video] could be considered program (concrete) music.