Radiohead's 'Daydreaming' - musical analysis

[felephant]

Click to view

I want to talk a bit about the mesmerising quality of the second single from Radiohead's new album. It's to some extent rhythmic, melodic and textural, but mainly harmonic; and is so in a really fascinating and fresh way

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Nice analysis.

I must listen to the song closely with this in mind. (The last album I loved was Kid A. I have not yet gotten around to listening to the new album yet.)

I must admit I've been looking at Prince's guitar stuff recently.

thanks

[anonymous]

Lovely song. Thanks for the thoughtful analysis. I was looking for someone to explain what made that 'B' section sound so magical, and you've helped me to understand it better. Take care!

Time signature

[anonymous]

My friends and I got into a huge argument over the time signature. One said it’s 3/4, and the other said it’s 6/8. I think that the piano is in 3/4 on top of a 4/4 bass line. They disagree but I SWEAR that’s what it is! What do you think?

Re: Time signature

[felephant]

Hey howya!

So (1) 3/4 6/8 ambiguity is a common enough musical device. Mostly, though, it's a thing where you get a few bars of clear 3/4 followed by some bars of clear 6/8.

(2) What's going on in this piece is more interesting: the bass suggests 6/8, and the piano suggests 3/4. But they're not *totally* independent of each other, so I would rather say that the whole thing is ambiguous between 3/4 and 6/8, than that either element of it is unambiguously in either time signature.

(3) Why do you think the bass is 4/4? If you're only playing on the beat, I don't think that there'd be an aural distinction between 4/4 and 6/8. Unless you were reading the bass's one bar stretching over two of the piano's bars... that would be a possible, to be sure. I don't hear the rhythm that way, but there might not be an objective answer here (unless the objective answer is: there's no objective answer (if you catch my meaning)).