#Radiohead Pyramid Song Meaning Free Musical Strains#

Other famous songs by the group include Fake Plastic Trees, High and Dry. He said: In 2001, O'Brien said he felt the track was 'probably the best song we've recorded.' A high-pitched wailing sound. Yorke described the track as: The song's lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while the band was recording in Copenhagen. Pyramid Song is the second track off of Amnesiac, and the title track from the Pyramid Song single.

MD: Do you mean as far as breaking up the 16th-note patterns on the.Ambiguity begets participation. I dont have a source for this, but my brother once told me the song was named give this name because a pyramid has 4 faces with 3 sides and 1 face with 4 sides, hence the interesting time signature.Is what’s clear to me clear to you? ( Cage 1973, 41)example of rhythmic ambiguity in the intro to Radioheads Pyramid Song (2001). It becomes pretty easy to follow once the drums come in.

Radiohead Pyramid Song Meaning Free Musical Strains

(1) I made the decision early on to tackle their albums in chronological order, listening to each one a minimum of three times (and at different times of the day), without any reference to guides or record reviews, before moving on to the next. I was in good company—a large group of students, families with children, and tourists had similarly amassed for the free musical strains—and in spite of the bad weather and bass-heavy sound making its way over the stands, I was intrigued enough to purchase their entire oeuvre on CD and begin to work through their songs, one at a time. I hadn’t purchased a ticket unfamiliar with their music at the time (minus the ubiquitous “Creep” due to heavy radio play) but encouraged to attend by numerous friends, students, and professional colleagues, I wandered out into the rain from my university apartment only three blocks away and stood, umbrella in hand, for the full duration of the show just outside of the northern wing of the arena.

(2) Pop/rock music more specifically has often played upon vagueness and/or multiple possibilities to great critical and commercial success it is easy to recall examples of such ambiguity with regard to race and vocal timbre (Elvis, Chuck Berry), gender (Michael Jackson, Boy George, Prince, kd lang), and even species (David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust, Lady Gaga/various human-alien hybrids). Numerous writers have shown how ambiguity—understood in its full sense of encompassing uncertainty/opacity, two or more possible meanings and/or interpretations, and the blurring of boundaries—feeds our imaginative and interpretive engagement ( Bernstein 1976 Copland 1980, 7 Thomson 1983 Cook 1990, 14 Cross and Morley 2009, 69). As is shown in the opening epigraph, music is predicated on ambiguity in its lack of one-to-one correspondence to language, emotions, and tangible objects of human experience. The central task of this article will be to demonstrate how the confluence of ambiguity and rhythm in a pop/rock song creates a powerful force for audience participation.

(5) Butler engaged in ethnographic fieldwork, an approach he openly credits to his studies in ethnomusicology ( 2006, 26–29) this article similarly draws upon ethnography (as well as fan reception studies) and its application to music theory and analysis. The analysis and insights in this article complement and develop ideas from Mark Butler’s Unlocking the Groove ( Butler 2006), particularly in his focus on metrical ambiguity, audience participation, and the specific role that underdetermination (metrical vagueness)—the form of ambiguity featured in “Pyramid Song”—plays in fostering interpretive multiplicity. Similarly, Daniel Levitin has made the analogy between such resolutions and joke telling, since in both cases the listener enjoys being led (temporarily) astray and realizing that there is more than one way to proceed through a piece/passage/story ( 2009, 110). We see such factors at play in the writings of music theorists who have long noted that musically ambiguous or even suspenseful events are often pleasant for a listener, depending on how long it takes for clarification or resolution to occur (e.g., Meyer 1956, 27–28). ( 2006, 4)Huron goes on to note that our capacity (and desire) to predict confers very specific biological advantages, including our preparedness for advantageous opportunities and the avoidance of potentially dangerous situations accurate expectations also optimize our expenditure of energy and help focus our attention in economical ways ( 2006, 3, 176). We will discover that music-making taps into these primordial functions to produce a wealth of compelling emotional experiences.

Categories such as “Western listener” or “youth audience” are thus problematic on a number of fronts, calling into question many assumptions and protocols in (Western) analyses of expectation and entrainment. As the responses in my sample will clearly illustrate, audiences are no longer homogenous (if they ever were) due to the eclectic nature of modern listening, continued travel and immigration, and exposure to and knowledge of non-Western musical genres and rhythmic constructions. Ethnographic research focused on internet communities has particular value for the expansion of existing music-theoretical and cognitive science models. Our research parameters nevertheless encompass the same domains, as stated in the opening to Butler’s second chapter: “I will be concerned with rhythm and meter in a broad sense: with the ways that those who listen to the music have described and categorized its rhythmic and metrical attributes, and with music-theoretical concepts that can clarify these phenomena as they occur in this repertory” ( 2006, 77).