Come Out

:See also coming out.

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"Come Out" is a minimalist piece of music that was composed by Steve Reich in 1966.

Related Topics:
Minimalist - Steve Reich - 1966

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It consists of a single spoken line, given by an injured survivor of a race riot; he is describing how, after being beaten, and the police disbelieving his story, he punctured a bruise on his own body "to let the bruise blood come out to show them." The line "come out to show them") is introduced and then expanded upon gradually. The line was recorded on two channels, which are initially played in unison. Quickly into the piece they fall out of synchronization as channel two is played slightly before channel one. Gradually the discrepancy becomes a reverberation, and then two voices split into four, looped continuously. The effect is to intimately reveal the rhythmic and tonal patterns of spoken word, as the one line becomes a self-contained ensemble. Four voices split into eight and so on until the line is almost unintelligible for all of the times it is repeated on top of itself. The conclusion of the 11 minute piece is a polyphony of sound and rhythmic elements. The piece is an example of process music, which involves the continual progress from the initial theme to an entirely new result.

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