It's Gonna Rain

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"It's Gonna Rain" is a musical composition written by Steve Reich in 1965; the work is approximately 17 minutes and 50 seconds in length. It was Reich's first major work and a landmark in musical minimalism and process music. The book by the same name is by an author called Nic Cooper and was published in May 2008.

[edit] Breakdown of the composition

The source material of "It's Gonna Rain" consists entirely of a tape recording made in January 1965 at San Francisco's Union Square. In the recording, an African American Pentecostal preacher, Brother Walter, rails about the end of the world, ^[1] while accompanying background noises, including that of a pigeon taking off, are heard. The piece opens with the story of Noah, and the phrase "it's gonna rain" is repeated and eventually looped throughout the song.

For the recording, Reich used two normal Wollensak tape recorders 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 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 what is known as phase shifting, where all possible recursive harmonies are explored before the two loops eventually get back in synch before the end of the piece.

Reich created another composition the next year called Come Out, done via the same process. The phrase, "come out to show them", is looped over and over again.

During a lecture at the Long Now Foundation, electronic musician Brian Eno cited "It's Gonna Rain" as his first experience with minimalism and the genre that would come to be known as ambient music.