Minimalist Phase (Reich)

Start with a short repeating pattern in a Pitch List — typically 8–12 notes. For Clapping Music, encode rests as negative midicent values inside the pattern (e.g. -1): cp.phase treats any non-positive entry as a rest slot. For melodic phasing (Piano Phase, Violin Phase), use 8–12 pitches from the piece's scale.

Feed the pattern into a Phase node. Set cycles to how many pattern repeats you want — 12 is the classic one-traversal length, 48 gives a ~5-minute extended realisation. Set voice count to 2 (for Clapping / Piano Phase), 3 (for Drumming), or 4 for a richer cascade. Leave shift per cycle at 1 for Reich-authentic drift. Voice 0 anchors; voice i rotates by i × shift notes per cycle. When cycles × shift is a multiple of the pattern length, the voices re-align at the end — the editor lights up a "voices re-align at end" indicator when this is true.

Each voice output pairs with its matching rhythm output (voice1 + rhythm1, voice2 + rhythm2, etc.). The rhythm trees are pre-padded to identical total lengths, so wiring each (pitch, rhythm) pair into its own Voice node and stacking everything in a Voice Layer produces a playable phased texture with no alignment math. For Clapping Music specifically, both voices use the same pitch (say, A4) — the music is the phase relationship. For Piano Phase, transpose one voice up an octave via the Voice node's clef or add a Transpose node before the Voice.