''It's Gonna Rain'' is a tape composition written by American composer

Steve Reich Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer best known as a pioneer of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich descr ...

in 1965. It lasts about 18 minutes. It was Reich's first major work and is considered a landmark in minimalism and process music.

Analysis

Around 1964, influenced by his work with

Terry Riley Terrence Mitchell Riley (born June 24, 1935) is an American composer and performing musician best known as a pioneer of the minimalist music, minimalist school of composition. Influenced by jazz and Indian classical music, his work became notab ...

on the composition ''

In C ''In C'' is a composition by Terry Riley from 1964. It is one of the most successful works by an American composer and a seminal example of minimal music, minimalism. The score directs any number of musicians to repeat a series of 53 melodic fr ...

'' and Riley's use of tape looping and delay systems, Reich started experimenting with these techniques as well. Up until January 1968, the full title of ''It's Gonna Rain'' was ''It's Gonna Rain, or meet Brother Walter in Union Square after listening to Terry Riley''. The source material of ''It's Gonna Rain'' consists entirely of a tape recording made in 1964 at San Francisco's Union Square. In the recording, a

Pentecostal Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a movement within the broader Evangelical wing of Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes direct personal experience of God in Christianity, God through Baptism with the Holy Spirit#Cl ...

preacher, Brother Walter, rails about the end of the world, while accompanying background noises, including the sound of a pigeon taking flight, are heard. The piece opens with the story of Noah, and the phrase "It's Gonna Rain" is repeated and eventually looped throughout the first half of the piece. For the recording, Reich used two normal Wollensak

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

s with the same recording, originally attempting to align the phrase with itself at the halfway point (180 degrees). However, due to the imprecise technology in 1965, the two recordings fell out of sync, with one tape gradually falling ahead or behind the other due to minute differences in the machines, the length of the spliced tape loops, and playback speed. Reich decided to exploit what is known as phase shifting, where all possible repeated harmonies are explored before the two loops eventually get back in sync. The following year, Reich created another composition, '' Come Out'', in which the phrase "come out to show them" is looped to create the same effect. The work is in two parts of roughly equal length, the first using the "It's Gonna Rain" sample as mentioned above, the second using a separate section of the speech with short phrases cut together and the resultant pattern then phased as in the first part, but with additional tape delay to create a more processed sound. During a lecture at the

Long Now Foundation The Long Now Foundation, established in 1996, is an American non-profit organization based in San Francisco that seeks to start and promote a long-term cultural institution. It aims to provide a counterpoint to what it views as today's "faster ...

, electronic musician

Brian Eno Brian Peter George Jean-Baptiste de la Salle Eno (, born 15 May 1948), also mononymously known as Eno, is an English musician, songwriter, record producer, visual artist, and activist. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to ambien ...

cited ''It's Gonna Rain'' as his first experience with minimalism and the genre that would come to be known as

ambient music Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melod ...

References

External links

"Steve Reich: Early tape pieces"
interview by Jason Gross. Perfect Sound Forever. April 2000.
"Will Wright and Brian Eno - Generative Systems"
video of lecture at Long Now Foundation {{Authority control 1965 compositions Compositions by Steve Reich Process music pieces