Always a forerunner in forging new paths for music, Pete Townshend was one of the first rock musicians to utilise the sequencer and the synthesiser, as pre-recorded sequences, most famously in Baba O’Riley, Won’t Get Fooled Again and Sister Disco. This synthesised or pre-recorded material, beyond human dexterity to play, both from the point of view of precision, and because of the speed required, led to a new image in contemporary music, that of accessible sophistication. In Baba O’Riley the bubbling tiers of melody in Terry Riley’s music welded together with contemporary rock music. Terry had already explored what could be done with multi-tracking and tape speeds – incredibly effectively, moreso than any other composer, and Pete was using these musical devices to bring to rock music a new soundworld. Pete told me he bought 30 copies of Terry Riley’s Rainbow In Curved Air and I must have played it 100 times.
Method Music both responds to and digs very deeply indeed into this world. The rapidly flickering and simultaneously transforming melodic patterns – loops – extend the usual playable musical palate of possibilities into faster, more intricate realms, whilst still retaining an aesthetic control that makes for true musicality in that new, more nimble soundworld. Often elaborating on more playable music, extending it virtuosically. In the tradition of Terry Riley’s music, this is cyber-virtuosic minimalism or post-minimalism. To use machines to do what they do better than human performing.
It felt like Pete wanted to extend this work on his “paradiddles” (using Steve Reich’s word) in the Who songs for the LIfehouse-Method portraiture project. Hearing what I had accomplished with computer-generated music in my pieces like “Molecular” and “Snowflakes” (2000), “Number Rays” (1984), and “Bubbles” (1985), (free to listen to at http://www.lawrenceball.org) it seemed he felt that I could help him, despite my being a composer who had always worked thus far almost completely out of the public eye. He did his best to put me in a position where I felt comfortable attempting all of what he wished me to achieve, which in itself was quite a feat.
Having created much music that I was fabulously pleased with using “harmonic mathematics” which I developed in the 80s, (Number Rays – 1984, Silverstream and Bubbles – 1985, and about 70 of my 170 scores) it seemed the perfect technique with which to hew millions of pieces of distinct music, which was the requirement of Pete’s Lifehouse-Method portraiture.
The Meher Baba Piece, on the Method Music album, was the base for the Who song “Fragments”. When the Who played Fragments in the Hollywood Bowl in 2007, the crowd started cheering at the opening paradiddle, thinking it was Baba O’Riley. The adaptation, Fragments, of the tribute piece, the Meher Baba Piece had become confused with the target of the tribute, Baba O’Riley.
Method Music – the double album – was released on January 31st 2012 by Navona Records, available on Amazon and iTunes