It's Gonna Rain

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It's gonna rain is a musical composition written by Steve Reich in 1965 and approximately 17 minutes and 50 seconds in length. It was Reich's first major work and a landmark of musical minimalism and process music.

The source material of It's gonna rain consists entirely of a tape recording, made in January 1965 at San Francisco's Union Square, of an African American Pentecostal preacher named Brother Walter speaking about the end of the world (Grimshaw [1]) and the accompanying background noises, such as the wings of a pigeon taking off. The piece opens with the story of Noah and repeats the phrase "it's gonna rain" before looping this sentence. Reich uses two tape normal Wollensak taperecorders with the same recording, originally attempting to align the phrase with itself at the halfway point (180 degrees), but due to the imprecise technology in 1965, the two recordings would fall out of synch with one tape gradually falling ahead or behind the other due to minute differences in the machines and playback speed. Reich decided to exploit this phase shifting wherein all possible recursive harmonies are explored before the two loops eventually get back in synch before the end of the piece.

Reich created another similar composition the next year called Come Out, in which the same process is done with the phrase, "come out to show them".

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