Steve Reich, "Music for 18 Musicians" - FULL PERFORMANCE with eighth blackbird

Why HN readers recommended it

Recommended in coding-music threads as lyric-free, repetitive music that aids focus.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Vic Firth

Topic

minimalist music

Format

music

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

7

Recommendation years in dataset

2016–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• This is an incredibly beautiful tutorial. Art, deconstruction, minimalism and some of the greatest musical artists of the 20th century! What an amazing way to explore the mechanics and mechanisms behind these artists. I had heard of other minimalist artists before, but until a couple …

• For me, the only genre that reliably works is "minimal" music, like stuff by Steve Reich[1] or Gas[2]. My definition of this genre would be music with no lyrics that has highly repetitive structures (differentiating it from "ambient" music, which I find too sleepy to …

• [tangent] Speaking of Steve Reich, if you haven't yet listened to his glorious Music for 18 Musicians ensemble piece (duration: 55 minutes), do give it[1] a try. An explanation of the composition and its structure: [LINK] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO] [/tangent]