It's Gonna Rain
Encyclopedia
It's Gonna Rain is a minimalist musical composition
for magnetic tape
written by Steve Reich
in 1965. It lasts approximately 17 minutes and 50 seconds. It was Reich's first major work and a landmark in minimalism and process music
.
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 piece.
For the recording, Reich used two normal Wollensak
tape recorder
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 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 sync before the end of the piece. 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.
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
.
Musical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
for magnetic tape
Magnetic tape
Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
written by Steve Reich
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...
in 1965. It lasts approximately 17 minutes and 50 seconds. It was Reich's first major work and a landmark in minimalism and process music
Process music
Process music is music that arises from a process. It may make that process audible to the listener, or the process may be concealed. Primarily begun in the 1960s, diverse composers have employed divergent methods and styles of process...
.
Analysis
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, an African American PentecostalPentecostalism
Pentecostalism is a diverse and complex movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on a direct personal experience of God through the baptism in the Holy Spirit, has an eschatological focus, and is an experiential religion. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, the Greek...
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
Music loop
In electroacoustic music, a loop is a repeating section of sound material. Short sections of material can be repeated to create ostinato patterns...
throughout the piece.
For the recording, Reich used two normal Wollensak
Wollensak
Wollensak was an American manufacturer of audio-visual products. At the height of their popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, many brands of movie cameras came with a Wollensak Velostigmat lens. Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorders were prized for their robust construction and value.-History:The...
tape recorder
Tape recorder
An audio tape recorder, tape deck, reel-to-reel tape deck, cassette deck or tape machine is an audio storage device that records and plays back sounds, including articulated voices, usually using magnetic tape, either wound on a reel or in a cassette, for storage...
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 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
Phasing
In the compositional technique phasing, the same part is played on two musical instruments, in steady but not identical tempo...
, where all possible recursive harmonies are explored before the two loops eventually get back in sync before the end of the piece. The following year, Reich created another composition, Come Out
Come Out (Reich)
Come Out is a 1966 piece by American composer Steve Reich. He was asked to write this piece to be performed at a benefit for the retrial of the Harlem Six, six black youths arrested for committing a murder during the Harlem Riot of 1964 for which only one of the six was responsible...
, in which the phrase "come out to show them" is looped to create the same effect.
During a lecture at the Long Now Foundation, electronic musician Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
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
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
.