Thank you so much for watching this! For song & album requests and to support my channel and musical projects, please consider joining my Patreon (I can't monetize these videos): www.patreon.com/iximusic 🙌 You can also commission me to analyze your original music or do a piano cover. 🎹 And I teach private & group lessons, do film/video game scoring, and music transcriptions 🎶 TIPS: www.buymeacoffee.com/iximusic 💄
I love TH-cam for this reason. A little wine with my spaghetti, and next thing you know I'm 30min into a video of a stranger deep diving into Pyramid Song. Thank you so much for putting your time into such a detailed video!
I'm 7 months late but I just wanted to give some feedback. I think you have such a lovely way of engaging with musical content. It's quite intuitive and felt. It really is lovely to watch the way you interpret music and then bring the viewer into that interpretation. Keep up the awesome work (which you have done, for 7 months already haha so, thanks for that).
@@andyOsalek it might be easier to imagine stretching the length of the track and still listening to it at normal speed. 100% slower would make the track twice as long etc
This must be the most beautiful music piece that will ever be created. I am obsessed with this song for 20 years now. I am glad thatyou only showed the 4 note stripped down chord shapes as i have a 4 note polyphony synth and it are perfect to play this.
@@Dunbar0740Beautiful! And certainly very similar to Radiohead’s Pyramid song, so thank you for posting. Have you heard the original of “Exit music (For a Film)”? th-cam.com/video/FDT_gtC5faQ/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared
This is the first time I have watched this content creator. I have seen dozens of "Music expert reacts to a popular recording" type videos and this is absolutely the best I have seen. It fills all the gaps left by all the other "experts" who do similar content. It does far more than just pretend to love it, or shout out the basic chords (which only makes me wonder if they looked them up on a tab from a Google search and noted them down before recording the video). As it goes it actually describes why the music sounds like it does.
There are not many pieces of music that bring a lump to my throat and that keeps me totally captivated from the very start to the end, but this is one of those.
Jesus… THANK YOU!! I’m also a musician and this is one of my favorite songs because it gave me so much anxiety that i definitely could never quite hear it / think it through comfortably ever.
For me the lyrics give the song a dark nostalgia by twisting with songs I knew in my childhood. The way Thom plays on the lyrics from Swing Home, Sweet Chariot ("I jumped in the river and what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me" seems to mimic "I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? ...I saw a band of angels coming after me") and lifts that line from The Clapping Song ("And we all went to heaven in a little row boat") makes me feel simultaneously like I'm home but something isn't right. Like a strange dream where you're somewhere familiar but things are slightly off and scary. Powerful to play with those memories burned deep into your psyche.
Its based on Dante's divine comedy. I think this is the crossing of the Archeron with Charon and 'coal black eyes'. Charon is a greek deity kind of like an angel of death i suppose. Well, he does go to heaven, in Paradiso but he has to catch the ferry into the Inferno (hell) first.
It is wonderful to dive with you into so many subtle details hidden in this beautiful song. I was moved in many passages. Thank you for doing it this way
Fun fact, this song was initially called Egyptian Song. A live version was kicking around the internet for a couple of years before Amnesiac was released.
@@Danny-wv8ec Not a clue! It was one of the MP3s obsessives like me were sharing through Napster or something. Along with True Love Waits, Lift, Follow Me Around, Motion Picture Soundtrack. All unreleased at the time. Pyramid song barely changed from that early version, as I remember. So you’re not missing much.
I've always thought that Pyramid Song is a slow and sad bossa nova. :) Also, we do have a specific name for notes that aren't included in a scale but are used a few times in a song (e.g. in Hungarian we call them pien notes ). Also I'd like to say a super huge THANK YOU for analyzing my all time favourite Radiohead song!
My eyes have been dry and sore all day. Pyramid song has always been one of my favourite songs, and is deeply connected with a friend who killed herself 20 years ago. My eyes are no longer dry.
i was playing those chords and suddenly realized how similar it is to Everything in its right place, YET it feels so different... And it's so touching... How beautiful it is to keep discovering new things in their music, after so many years... Thank you
That G# you talk about at 20:47 is what makes the song. It'd be beautiful anyway, but that simple note choice opens up the harmony and makes it sound so unique.
Mind blown. When you first counted 4/4 it’s like I could hear in another dimension. Haha I got emotional. I’ve never heard the song in that way. I always just dismissed it as a weird time signature and loved it for what it was. What a rare and gorgeous tune. Thanks for explaining it with such detail and feeling. ✌️
I've been a drummer and a Radiohead fan for many years, and I could never work this song out. The fact that it is in 4/4 blows my mind, but you're right. In the end I just kinda worked it out through repetition and feeling it, but now it seems so much simpler to understand. Thank you!
Though I’ve been playing music for 30 years, I don’t know anything about theory, so I rarely watch videos like this. But this was one of the best breakdowns of any piece of music I’ve ever seen. Even the technical parts which I didn’t fully understand seemed to make sense to me on a core level, and it’s made me fall even more in love with a song I’ve loved since its release. What a an absolute pleasure to watch…and listen to. Thank you. 😭
I can’t tell you how much your analysis has enhanced my enjoyment of this masterpiece. I’m a bass player that occasionally plays guitar and am trying to teach myself music theory on piano. I have been a Radiohead fan since The Bends in 1994, seeing them play live only once in Vancouver, BC in 2001 for the Kid A tour. Thank you for sharing this.
I get the way you break it down but I can't fathom how complicated it must have been to write and record in the studio...trying to explain your vision to producers and other members...mind blowing.
This is (easily) the best music breakdown I’ve seen on YT. Thanks for taking your time and going through how it feels emotionally as well. Really cathartic. If you’re looking for another song to breakdown, So Real by Jeff Buckley has a lot to talk about, harmonically and rhythmically.
This song has always felt like being on large wooden sail ship in heavy seas at night under the stars, hanging on for dear life as it sways side to side, to me.
What the weirdest thing about this song is not even just the general metering feel. It’s the harmonic feedback loop or as you say the “howling” that Nigel Godrich created at the end of the song. Seemingly within a similar meter at double speed. Exits to the jarring beat of Pull/Pulk revolving doors on the next song. What’s truly fascinating is this “howling sound” comes back at the end of Pull/Pulk revolving doors but in a completely different time signature. I always felt Amnesiac was the quieter angry artsy brother of Kid A that is often misunderstood. And is still to this day one of my favorite albums of all time. There’s no other body of work I’ve ever heard that pulls me in like it.
its a mellotron flute or similar keyboard/synth run into an AMX digital delay with the feedback all the way up so it repeats infinitely. then you turn the pitch shift knobs to change the pitch to whatever key you want. they basically created a loop/pad with the infinite feedback then tune it with the pitch shift
I love when you expressed as “it hurts” 😣 because it really hurts! Pure genius this song 🙏👏👏👏👏🙏🙏🙏 It really makes me cry for some reason I can’t figure out. So glad to see someone really adore this song explaining this song with a genuine attachment.
What gets me is that they're not planning on this musical structure. They're feeling it and you're analyzing it. They're not thinking about the chords or the musical rules. They're thinking about feelings. Emotion.
I don't know nothing about music theory, but @4:42 the rhythm you're singing sounds like bossa nova to me. I just love Pyramid Song, actually it's one of the only ones i can play on a piano/keyboard... just memorized the chords positions because i don't know what i'm doing 😆
I love how the song can be very reasonably interpreted in different ways like how a pyramid looks like a triangle from some angles and a square from others
For like 9 years I had no idea how to count this thing. One day I got that exact "It's a clave!" eureka moment you had, because I realized if you ignore the harmony, that pattern of "3-2 / 3-3-2 / 3" becomes "3-3-2 / 3-3-2" which is two claves in a row. And just like you said "I could just feel, confidently" I felt the exact same thing.
Jesus... I'm listening to Radiohead with my future wife right now. We initially bonded over our love for the band. After watching the official Pyramid Song video again, your video (this one) was in my recommended list. I checked out your channel and it seems like it was made for my partner and me. I'm looking forward to the rest of this video, and so many others that I see you've uploaded. Thank you so much for all you do. She and I will be binging your channel tonight.
I was conflicted about KID A after being in love with Radiohead for years since The Bends… I was in the US Navy in 2001 before 9/11 and I remember watching Pyramid Song’s video on MTV in the barracks/in all the bullshit places us enlisted sailors were studying in… and thinking/feeling, “there is a part of me, dying… and i have a great soundtrack the end of the world” - and 6 months later, our world was changed forever. The year 2000 and 2001 before 9/11 WAS AMAZING if you can remember
The general music listening public think of Radiohead as depressing, melancholic and suicide inducing but if you actually listen to their catalogue you'll find beautiful extraordinary musicality and just sheer bloody genius! I love Thom's music in all of it's iterations. An incredible talent. Subscribed, and I love Meshuggah too! 😉
Fantastic video! I've enjoyed your videos before but somehow failed to subscribe sooner, happy to fix that now. I've always found this song incredibly interesting rhythmically, and as you mentioned a big source of confusion is the lack of drums for a while. This helps hide what the feel of the quarter note is initially. To put the song to sheet music, in a context where you're arranging it for an entire band, I've felt that 8/4 might make the most sense. Not that because smaller groupings of odd numbers wouldn't be better for any single musician, because that's extremely valid, but I think the best way to reconcile things is to just sort of map out the length of the whole pattern. Because the alternative of settling on smaller, odd groupings, can result in a situation where the time signature could make more sense to the pianist but less sense to the drummer, for example. And the worst thing you could do is force "beat 1s" of measures that don't feel like beat 1s to everyone. It'll feel incredibly unnatural to have the downbeat of your measure not feel intuitively like the start of a measure to you. Though no matter how you subdivide it, I believe that literally everyone will still agree that beat 1 of an 8/4 measure is still a "beat 1" to them. That's one spot where it has to line up for everyone (at least I think so?). Not wanting to feel it as 4/4 makes a lot of sense to me, which is part of why 8/4 makes a little more sense to me too. The bigger grouping helps acknowledge that you might want to break it up in ways that makes more sense to you personally, something that 4/4 would kind of rush and give a lot of players a weird beat 1 every other measure. The drums in particular have a very strong 3/4 jazz groove to them. Of course it has to add or drop beats in certain places and doesn't stay 3/4, but if you play a 3/4 jazz beat vs a 4/4 jazz beat, it's the former that has the general vibe of pyramid song and not the latter. Your scatting section at 8:32 captures this perfectly; Ask a drummer what they hear in there and I'm very confident they will tell you there's a strong 3/4 emphasis within that. Once again adding to the confusion of trying to make 4/4 work, even though it technically can or does. Anyways, your videos rule and are always insightful!
As a fan of both Radiohead and Charles Mingus (as documented in wikipedia) it feels much like Jazz and more so as I think Mingus much like Tom are composer 1st; things of many parts. His best work I think and to be clear very much his own thing. Wiki didnt get it,.. but feels more like Erik Satie. So good! Great video!
This is a study in post rock drumming. Phil Selway and Radiohead were pioneers of avoiding the downbeat, which defies the conventions of rock drumming. Another great, earlier example of this is Britt Wolford’s drumming in Slint. Check out Spiderland if you haven’t yet. They along with Talk Talk’s “Laughing Stock” essentially kicked off post rock.
When this album came out I spent an entire day obsessively notating this song and it’s stayed with me ever since. It’s a perfect example of cyclical hypermeter and this is the best explanation online I’ve seen. The ambiguity is core to the experience.
Iron Maiden has a song called Revelations, and it’s intro has a very similar ”rhythmic riddle”. It doesn’t sound as strange as the Pyramid Song, but once you start counting it, you very quickly run into a WTF type of situation ;) And in the end it turns out to be in 4/4 as well.
Wow, it is so good to hear someone explain so eloquently why a song is so special! Radiohead pretty much saved my life and I was never sure why their music lifted me up so much. Did they really know about these complex structures when they wrote the song or did they just "feel" their way through it? So interesting!
Pyramid Song is Radiohead’s best, and your review was amazing! Thank you. And if you haven’t already, you should give Elliott Smith a listen sometime. Although the majority of his music is guitar centered, you should give his album “XO” a listen, preferably the song “Independence Day.” I think you might just fall in love with his voice and the subtle backing keyboard in this track. Thx again, you’re awesome! Eric
Forenote: I do not wish to come off as a snob, i love every one of radioheads' songs. I'm not (as people put it in this chat) into music theory, I know nothing about it. My mum is very big into radiohead, and so naturally I was too, I found pyramid song when I was around 16 being exposed to pretty much every other song. Short of the story is this is in my opinion their best song, I told my mum this and she doesn't understand and says it's just ok and to be fair i didn't understand, I was just drawn to it, it was inexplicable. This video helps me a lot. There's just so much complexity in it, but at face value, it seems so simple. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who appreciates this song as I feel many people have either never heard or don't appreciate it, and it definitely should be.
Your videos are so cathartic to watch. I love your way of exploring music and your keen attention to every note and chord. You take songs that we already know and love and give us an even deeper appreciation for them, often helping us understand the nuances that we could never put our fingers on. It's like you're guiding us through a journey in every video. Thank you!
Haha, you put into words how I feel listening to this intelligent and educated woman! And I do have enough music theory to get me into trouble but not to get out again.
My take on the lyrics is that they feel like they were inspired by a psychedelic experience of one type or another. Letting go and diving into the unknown where past and future exist as one, there is nothing to fear, nothing to doubt. Hence the positive harmonic resolutions everywhere..there are gnarly moments and a threat of dissonance but everything resolves naturally. The string sounds to me feel like Dervish spinning around and around as he floats with the black eyed angels. Yea ok I'm stoned but hey ☺️
18:14 "has that exotic sound to us" was perfectly phrased, me being still reeling from Farya Faraji's long essay on Orientalism: "desert level" music Vs actual middle Eastern music
I love your musical analysis and breakdown of all things Radiohead. Can you one day soon do a video on Myxomatosis?? As a guitar player it's a very fun riff to play and eventually master. But what are your thoughts and impressions on this driving riff and the subtle change ups?
I would say your mistake with missing doubled roots and fiths in the chords is a lucky mistake because it makes it easier to understand Easier to read because there's less visual noise is the best way i can think of saying it. Appreciate the keyboard accross the bottom, my polysynth is warming up so i can watch again and play along
Thank you so much for this video! When it comes to hypnotic piano-based things that are so beautiful it hurts, I doubt you can beat "Giant" by the Bad Plus. th-cam.com/video/uG7W-OziAVo/w-d-xo.html
There are plenty of those 'wrong notes' in Mozart, too. In the second variation of the Theme and Variations which opens his Piano Sonata in A (KV331) you get a D natural in the right hand over a repeated A, D#,E pattern in the left hand. This is an amazing song by Radiohead, thanks for your interesting and illuminating observations.
I don't play music, but I've always been fascinated by the time signatures/feeling of songs and I love Radiohead. I'll never be able to hear "Pyramid song" not in 4/4 now lol. This is similar to when I first heard the live Bonnaroo version of "Videotape", now I can't unhear that version, even when i listen to the album version. th-cam.com/video/DTZt6Dzkq6w/w-d-xo.html For those who've never had the pleasure of hearing this version of "Videotape"
Part of Radiohead’s brilliant musicianship is that they don’t make things easy for themselves. Particularly when it comes to time signatures. I can’t imagine it was an easy song to write but if the drums, vocals, piano accents had all been on the first beat of the 4/4 time signature with no ties over one one bar to another, it would be a completely different inferior song.
100% there is a famous video of Thom struggling to get the syncopated beat of videotape live. But God damn, only they can do it. So blessed to be alive during their time
Thnx for the great video/ analysis. Radiohead is a master of complexity. I am curious what your opinion is about the song 'fire' of a new artist called moost. In this song the rhythm leads through what it seems in 3/3 & 4/4.
They like to do this. Playing round with perception of timing. I've seen stuff about Videotape. I reckon there could be some interesting covers done of Pyramid Song.
For me Pyramid song is in the same family as _Everything in its right place._ Something very rooted to the breathing and the words. Sure the Pyramid song has a more complex metric, an inevitable evolution IMO.
The harmonic progression is one found in multiple Spanish flamenco songs. I wonder if the rhythm is also made to resemble some of the complex flamenco time signatures (12 beats..) I’m not an expert so I can’t really validate this, but it feels somewhat similar
Every now and again it has a middle eastern flavor. I love this song, thank you so much for for the analysis. Does everybody remember the first time they heard the album. I was gobsmacked, it wasn't an easy album to listen to. What do you think the lazy drawl is about? maybe just to keep us dreamy.
Aside from the meter, the lyrics are a journey into the afterlife/death process. Haunting and beautiful. This song is timeless. Edit: Good call on the 3:2 Clave pattern. Thom is a clearly fan of salsa and bossa nova.
This song reminds me of a night I was on an overnight train in south India and the steward was putting fresh sheets on the pull down bed and asking what he could do to make us comfortable. So surreal. I had Amnesiac on repeat all night long and now I can think of nothing else listening to it
There is a channel called ‘ listening in’ that also explained it very well. The deeper meaning of the song and how it all connects. There is more to it than the ears can catch. It’s well worth checking out.
Instantly counted it in 4/4 and counted it double time for clarity. Implied swing is evident. But, of course I’m not a pop music guy. Jazzer who loves fusion and plays sax. You could also make a case for 8/4 because the resolve is on every other “one”. Cheat code for timing breakdown is to always go for the 1. Once there, just count until 1 shows up again. Then, there’s usually a division to consider. If you have an 8, consider 4. If you have a 10, consider a 5. If there’s a swing and it’s triplet grouping, then multiply by three and put it over 8. Also, you mentioned Toto’s Rosanna and then Michael Jackson. I wonder if you knew that the house band for Thriller was basically Toto? Kings of shuffle - Porcaro, Purdie, Keltner, etc
wow.. pretty smart analysis! I still have so much trouble feeling this song but this will make it clearer.. still not easy but I like the occam's razor solution.. guys, it's just 4/4 but Radiohead so a different 4/4 :-) Thx for the video! Just a question, do you think it is composed in a sense that everything was worked out or did it grow organicaly,.. curious how they as a band work.. especially since Greenwood is a great composer for film music.
I'm here just to appreciate the progress bar being perfect alligned with the piano in the standard view mode 🎹My overexcited ADHD impulses salutes you. Great video btw, really enjoyed.
Such a gorgeous song. One of my all time favorites. The melody and harmonic modulation in this song, Everything in its right place, and Ill wind evoke thoughts, feelings, and visualizations I had as a toddler. Like a mind that’s rapidly and joyfully developing while simultaneously being aware of its own limitations. Paul McCartneys compositions often do the same.
Brilliant break down. I haven't listened to this song in a while and it reminded me of how I listened to it walking to work, every day for about 6 months. Loved the analysis.
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Thank you so much for watching this! For song & album requests and to support my channel and musical projects, please consider joining my Patreon (I can't monetize these videos): www.patreon.com/iximusic 🙌 You can also commission me to analyze your original music or do a piano cover. 🎹 And I teach private & group lessons, do film/video game scoring, and music transcriptions 🎶 TIPS: www.buymeacoffee.com/iximusic 💄
I just subscribed! 🎉😊🎉
Hi @iximusic would you kindly react to my song? th-cam.com/video/-B0i9uelCK0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=ypUCoS0rjWl3sDq-
producer: what is the time signature of this song?
radiohead: yes/4
This is unquestionnably the best, ever, explanation/tutorial video for Pyramid Song.
everything's in 4/4 if you're not a nerd
😂
All I ever hear is 4/4 but I am white
Well….nope.
Evrytheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeng...
is in 4/4
Even a Strauss waltz if you are Victor Borge 😂
I wish my life had the clarity of this explanation.
So beautifully put!
I love TH-cam for this reason. A little wine with my spaghetti, and next thing you know I'm 30min into a video of a stranger deep diving into Pyramid Song. Thank you so much for putting your time into such a detailed video!
Wild because this is literally me right now, eating my spaghetti and drinking wine. Cheers! 🍷
I am smoking a joint
Same, I’ve been watching for 4 hours since!
I am always "no more subscriptions I am following too many channels already". And then I discover you with this video ...
"If you grew up listening to blues or jazz, you're free".
I'm 7 months late but I just wanted to give some feedback. I think you have such a lovely way of engaging with musical content. It's quite intuitive and felt. It really is lovely to watch the way you interpret music and then bring the viewer into that interpretation. Keep up the awesome work (which you have done, for 7 months already haha so, thanks for that).
I think this may be Radiohead's best song, and you're raising my appreciation of it even higher. Excellent analysis!
It's definitely a cliched "best song" for sure.
now everybody listen to pyramid song 800% slower because what else are you going to do today
Hell yeah
But 100% slower is actually pausing or turning it off. So what does 800% slower even mean? Listening backwards at 4x speed? Confused...
Lol !!!
@@andyOsalek it might be easier to imagine stretching the length of the track and still listening to it at normal speed. 100% slower would make the track twice as long etc
Love hearing someone gush about the chords as much as I feel them
This must be the most beautiful music piece that will ever be created. I am obsessed with this song for 20 years now. I am glad thatyou only showed the 4 note stripped down chord shapes as i have a 4 note polyphony synth and it are perfect to play this.
Try the original, "Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis", by Vaughn Williams: th-cam.com/video/ihx5LCF1yJY/w-d-xo.html
Agreed. The most beautiful composition ever submitted to vinyl, by my favourite band of all time. Timeless 👍
@@Dunbar0740very interesting. Thanks for the share.
@@Dunbar0740 wow many similarities. How does that "Great artists..." quote go? Creation always comes from something before it already there.
@@Dunbar0740Beautiful! And certainly very similar to Radiohead’s Pyramid song, so thank you for posting.
Have you heard the original of “Exit music (For a Film)”?
th-cam.com/video/FDT_gtC5faQ/w-d-xo.htmlfeature=shared
This is the first time I have watched this content creator. I have seen dozens of "Music expert reacts to a popular recording" type videos and this is absolutely the best I have seen. It fills all the gaps left by all the other "experts" who do similar content. It does far more than just pretend to love it, or shout out the basic chords (which only makes me wonder if they looked them up on a tab from a Google search and noted them down before recording the video). As it goes it actually describes why the music sounds like it does.
I love that after 23 years people are still interested enough in this song that a video about it can still pull almost 200k views.
There are not many pieces of music that bring a lump to my throat and that keeps me totally captivated from the very start to the end, but this is one of those.
Jesus… THANK YOU!! I’m also a musician and this is one of my favorite songs because it gave me so much anxiety that i definitely could never quite hear it / think it through comfortably ever.
For me the lyrics give the song a dark nostalgia by twisting with songs I knew in my childhood.
The way Thom plays on the lyrics from Swing Home, Sweet Chariot ("I jumped in the river and what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me" seems to mimic "I looked over Jordan, and what did I see? ...I saw a band of angels coming after me") and lifts that line from The Clapping Song ("And we all went to heaven in a little row boat") makes me feel simultaneously like I'm home but something isn't right. Like a strange dream where you're somewhere familiar but things are slightly off and scary. Powerful to play with those memories burned deep into your psyche.
pyramid song is a modern 'negro spiritual' which is a genre Sweet Home Sweet Chariot belongs.
You're bang on in making that connection
As Masta Killa once said: The dumb are mostly intrigued by the drum. So many folks are caught up in the timing that they neglect the lyrics.
Very interesting !
Its based on Dante's divine comedy. I think this is the crossing of the Archeron with Charon and 'coal black eyes'. Charon is a greek deity kind of like an angel of death i suppose. Well, he does go to heaven, in Paradiso but he has to catch the ferry into the Inferno (hell) first.
The intimacy of this presentation is wonderful.
It is wonderful to dive with you into so many subtle details hidden in this beautiful song. I was moved in many passages. Thank you for doing it this way
All these years later, this song still gives me chills. It still feels eerie. Thank you for the detailed analysis.
I appreciate the shoutout! The pyramid conspiracy continues...
Fun fact, this song was initially called Egyptian Song. A live version was kicking around the internet for a couple of years before Amnesiac was released.
That is a very fun fact
Interesting, especially as ixi's demonstration of Phrygian Dominant sounded distinctly Arabic (to my ears anyway!)
Oh I didn’t know that, i was like a kid back then. Is that version inline now?
@@Danny-wv8ec Not a clue! It was one of the MP3s obsessives like me were sharing through Napster or something. Along with True Love Waits, Lift, Follow Me Around, Motion Picture Soundtrack. All unreleased at the time. Pyramid song barely changed from that early version, as I remember. So you’re not missing much.
This is the best Radiohead song. Isn’t it? And one of the best ever written.
I've always thought that Pyramid Song is a slow and sad bossa nova. :)
Also, we do have a specific name for notes that aren't included in a scale but are used a few times in a song (e.g. in Hungarian we call them pien notes ).
Also I'd like to say a super huge THANK YOU for analyzing my all time favourite Radiohead song!
Oh man I thought there was something Hungarian about it. Not being familiar with a lot of Hungarian music, but as a Gabor Szabo fan
My eyes have been dry and sore all day.
Pyramid song has always been one of my favourite songs, and is deeply connected with a friend who killed herself 20 years ago. My eyes are no longer dry.
i was playing those chords and suddenly realized how similar it is to Everything in its right place, YET it feels so different... And it's so touching... How beautiful it is to keep discovering new things in their music, after so many years... Thank you
Ugh, once again time for my eyes to inexplicably well up with tears while you go over chord progressions
ESPECIALLY this song, oh my G O D
I feared I might be the only one! 😅
You're never the only one...
@@adamdalpozzo Shit man, that was unexpectedly moving! Thank you for that. 🥹
Same. Isn't it weird?
That G# you talk about at 20:47 is what makes the song. It'd be beautiful anyway, but that simple note choice opens up the harmony and makes it sound so unique.
For me, that’s where Egypt is hiding in plain sight.
I am still convinced that this song is incomparable after 20 + years... simply because there is literally nothing to compare this to.
And a lot of Radiohead song are incomparables, never heard a band with such unique songs
Only thing it’s comparable to is other Radiohead songs
It really loosely reminds me of Swim by Oh No Ono.
Mind blown. When you first counted 4/4 it’s like I could hear in another dimension. Haha I got emotional. I’ve never heard the song in that way. I always just dismissed it as a weird time signature and loved it for what it was. What a rare and gorgeous tune. Thanks for explaining it with such detail and feeling. ✌️
I've been a drummer and a Radiohead fan for many years, and I could never work this song out. The fact that it is in 4/4 blows my mind, but you're right. In the end I just kinda worked it out through repetition and feeling it, but now it seems so much simpler to understand. Thank you!
Though I’ve been playing music for 30 years, I don’t know anything about theory, so I rarely watch videos like this. But this was one of the best breakdowns of any piece of music I’ve ever seen. Even the technical parts which I didn’t fully understand seemed to make sense to me on a core level, and it’s made me fall even more in love with a song I’ve loved since its release. What a an absolute pleasure to watch…and listen to. Thank you. 😭
this seems right to me. If you go to the original on youtube and put the playback time at 2x you can hear exactly what ixi is saying
Yeah i played it at 1.75 and it made a lot more sense, especially as someone who knows very little about music theory.
I can’t tell you how much your analysis has enhanced my enjoyment of this masterpiece. I’m a bass player that occasionally plays guitar and am trying to teach myself music theory on piano. I have been a Radiohead fan since The Bends in 1994, seeing them play live only once in Vancouver, BC in 2001 for the Kid A tour. Thank you for sharing this.
I get the way you break it down but I can't fathom how complicated it must have been to write and record in the studio...trying to explain your vision to producers and other members...mind blowing.
Don't know... I've always just thought of it as 4/4 never knew about this controversy. Interesting though.
This is (easily) the best music breakdown I’ve seen on YT. Thanks for taking your time and going through how it feels emotionally as well. Really cathartic.
If you’re looking for another song to breakdown, So Real by Jeff Buckley has a lot to talk about, harmonically and rhythmically.
David Bennett Piano also did an excellent video on Pyramid Song.
This song has always felt like being on large wooden sail ship in heavy seas at night under the stars, hanging on for dear life as it sways side to side, to me.
What the weirdest thing about this song is not even just the general metering feel. It’s the harmonic feedback loop or as you say the “howling” that Nigel Godrich created at the end of the song. Seemingly within a similar meter at double speed. Exits to the jarring beat of Pull/Pulk revolving doors on the next song. What’s truly fascinating is this “howling sound” comes back at the end of Pull/Pulk revolving doors but in a completely different time signature. I always felt Amnesiac was the quieter angry artsy brother of Kid A that is often misunderstood. And is still to this day one of my favorite albums of all time. There’s no other body of work I’ve ever heard that pulls me in like it.
its a mellotron flute or similar keyboard/synth run into an AMX digital delay with the feedback all the way up so it repeats infinitely. then you turn the pitch shift knobs to change the pitch to whatever key you want. they basically created a loop/pad with the infinite feedback then tune it with the pitch shift
@@RyanRenteriamakes sense as Nigel infamously used one of those.
I love when you expressed as “it hurts” 😣 because it really hurts! Pure genius this song 🙏👏👏👏👏🙏🙏🙏
It really makes me cry for some reason I can’t figure out. So glad to see someone really adore this song explaining this song with a genuine attachment.
Lovely. Your discovery of the clave rhythm is the key.
What gets me is that they're not planning on this musical structure. They're feeling it and you're analyzing it. They're not thinking about the chords or the musical rules. They're thinking about feelings. Emotion.
Great content! I wish I could like this every time I come back for a refresh!! :)
I don't know nothing about music theory, but @4:42 the rhythm you're singing sounds like bossa nova to me. I just love Pyramid Song, actually it's one of the only ones i can play on a piano/keyboard... just memorized the chords positions because i don't know what i'm doing 😆
I love how the song can be very reasonably interpreted in different ways like how a pyramid looks like a triangle from some angles and a square from others
Interesting point.
Sounds like something that idk, like a really talented vibraphone player would say? ;)
Or a diamond or a flame
For like 9 years I had no idea how to count this thing. One day I got that exact "It's a clave!" eureka moment you had, because I realized if you ignore the harmony, that pattern of "3-2 / 3-3-2 / 3" becomes "3-3-2 / 3-3-2" which is two claves in a row. And just like you said "I could just feel, confidently" I felt the exact same thing.
Jesus... I'm listening to Radiohead with my future wife right now. We initially bonded over our love for the band.
After watching the official Pyramid Song video again, your video (this one) was in my recommended list.
I checked out your channel and it seems like it was made for my partner and me.
I'm looking forward to the rest of this video, and so many others that I see you've uploaded.
Thank you so much for all you do. She and I will be binging your channel tonight.
I just want to clap 👏👏👏
This haunting song deserved this beautiful analysis
Wow ... Wat a fantastic 'analysis' of one of my favorite songs of one of my favorite bands. And you bring it soooo good! Thank you for this one 🙂
I was conflicted about KID A after being in love with Radiohead for years since The Bends… I was in the US Navy in 2001 before 9/11 and I remember watching Pyramid Song’s video on MTV in the barracks/in all the bullshit places us enlisted sailors were studying in… and thinking/feeling, “there is a part of me, dying… and i have a great soundtrack the end of the world” - and 6 months later, our world was changed forever. The year 2000 and 2001 before 9/11 WAS AMAZING if you can remember
I can grieve that with you. I remember.
What I love about Thom's vocal melodies is how they flow from one note to another. It's a very fluid style.
Yes, it's called legato 🙂
The general music listening public think of Radiohead as depressing, melancholic and suicide inducing but if you actually listen to their catalogue you'll find beautiful extraordinary musicality and just sheer bloody genius! I love Thom's music in all of it's iterations. An incredible talent. Subscribed, and I love Meshuggah too! 😉
Fantastic video! I've enjoyed your videos before but somehow failed to subscribe sooner, happy to fix that now.
I've always found this song incredibly interesting rhythmically, and as you mentioned a big source of confusion is the lack of drums for a while. This helps hide what the feel of the quarter note is initially.
To put the song to sheet music, in a context where you're arranging it for an entire band, I've felt that 8/4 might make the most sense. Not that because smaller groupings of odd numbers wouldn't be better for any single musician, because that's extremely valid, but I think the best way to reconcile things is to just sort of map out the length of the whole pattern. Because the alternative of settling on smaller, odd groupings, can result in a situation where the time signature could make more sense to the pianist but less sense to the drummer, for example. And the worst thing you could do is force "beat 1s" of measures that don't feel like beat 1s to everyone. It'll feel incredibly unnatural to have the downbeat of your measure not feel intuitively like the start of a measure to you. Though no matter how you subdivide it, I believe that literally everyone will still agree that beat 1 of an 8/4 measure is still a "beat 1" to them. That's one spot where it has to line up for everyone (at least I think so?).
Not wanting to feel it as 4/4 makes a lot of sense to me, which is part of why 8/4 makes a little more sense to me too. The bigger grouping helps acknowledge that you might want to break it up in ways that makes more sense to you personally, something that 4/4 would kind of rush and give a lot of players a weird beat 1 every other measure. The drums in particular have a very strong 3/4 jazz groove to them. Of course it has to add or drop beats in certain places and doesn't stay 3/4, but if you play a 3/4 jazz beat vs a 4/4 jazz beat, it's the former that has the general vibe of pyramid song and not the latter. Your scatting section at 8:32 captures this perfectly; Ask a drummer what they hear in there and I'm very confident they will tell you there's a strong 3/4 emphasis within that. Once again adding to the confusion of trying to make 4/4 work, even though it technically can or does.
Anyways, your videos rule and are always insightful!
This was a pleasure to watch. Would you review River Man by Nick Drake? The version with the strings. Somehow this song takes me to that song.
As a fan of both Radiohead and Charles Mingus (as documented in wikipedia) it feels much like Jazz and more so as I think Mingus much like Tom are composer 1st; things of many parts. His best work I think and to be clear very much his own thing. Wiki didnt get it,.. but feels more like Erik Satie. So good! Great video!
This is a study in post rock drumming. Phil Selway and Radiohead were pioneers of avoiding the downbeat, which defies the conventions of rock drumming.
Another great, earlier example of this is Britt Wolford’s drumming in Slint. Check out Spiderland if you haven’t yet. They along with Talk Talk’s “Laughing Stock” essentially kicked off post rock.
Talk talk Spirit of Eden do it for me to this day.
Spiderland is one of the BEST albums❤️
When this album came out I spent an entire day obsessively notating this song and it’s stayed with me ever since. It’s a perfect example of cyclical hypermeter and this is the best explanation online I’ve seen. The ambiguity is core to the experience.
Thank you! I’ve been searching for a way to express this point but you said it perfectly with “The ambiguity is core to the experience”. 👌
Iron Maiden has a song called Revelations, and it’s intro has a very similar ”rhythmic riddle”. It doesn’t sound as strange as the Pyramid Song, but once you start counting it, you very quickly run into a WTF type of situation ;) And in the end it turns out to be in 4/4 as well.
i don't understand music theory - but I know genius when I hear it....
Wow, it is so good to hear someone explain so eloquently why a song is so special! Radiohead pretty much saved my life and I was never sure why their music lifted me up so much. Did they really know about these complex structures when they wrote the song or did they just "feel" their way through it? So interesting!
Pyramid Song is Radiohead’s best, and your review was amazing! Thank you.
And if you haven’t already, you should give Elliott Smith a listen sometime. Although the majority of his music is guitar centered, you should give his album “XO” a listen, preferably the song “Independence Day.”
I think you might just fall in love with his voice and the subtle backing keyboard in this track.
Thx again, you’re awesome!
Eric
This song hit me right away and pulled me back while I was still reeling from Kid A. Pure beauty. Thank you yet again!
I remember feeling the same, came out almost as a side feel to kid a.
Forenote: I do not wish to come off as a snob, i love every one of radioheads' songs.
I'm not (as people put it in this chat) into music theory, I know nothing about it.
My mum is very big into radiohead, and so naturally I was too, I found pyramid song when I was around 16 being exposed to pretty much every other song.
Short of the story is this is in my opinion their best song, I told my mum this and she doesn't understand and says it's just ok and to be fair i didn't understand, I was just drawn to it, it was inexplicable.
This video helps me a lot. There's just so much complexity in it, but at face value, it seems so simple.
I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who appreciates this song as I feel many people have either never heard or don't appreciate it, and it definitely should be.
Your videos are so cathartic to watch. I love your way of exploring music and your keen attention to every note and chord. You take songs that we already know and love and give us an even deeper appreciation for them, often helping us understand the nuances that we could never put our fingers on. It's like you're guiding us through a journey in every video. Thank you!
I have no idea what you're talking about, but I definitely listened as if I was learning something. Please don't test me.
Haha, you put into words how I feel listening to this intelligent and educated woman! And I do have enough music theory to get me into trouble but not to get out again.
My take on the lyrics is that they feel like they were inspired by a psychedelic experience of one type or another.
Letting go and diving into the unknown where past and future exist as one, there is nothing to fear, nothing to doubt.
Hence the positive harmonic resolutions everywhere..there are gnarly moments and a threat of dissonance but everything resolves naturally.
The string sounds to me feel like Dervish spinning around and around as he floats with the black eyed angels.
Yea ok I'm stoned but hey ☺️
18:14 "has that exotic sound to us" was perfectly phrased, me being still reeling from Farya Faraji's long essay on Orientalism: "desert level" music Vs actual middle Eastern music
I love your musical analysis and breakdown of all things Radiohead. Can you one day soon do a video on Myxomatosis?? As a guitar player it's a very fun riff to play and eventually master. But what are your thoughts and impressions on this driving riff and the subtle change ups?
This is the first time I have seen this channel, and it gave great insight to me, not trained in music but fascinated by this song.
Thank you. I love early and major Radiohead, until "In Rainbous". I LOVE the Piramid Song
I would say your mistake with missing doubled roots and fiths in the chords is a lucky mistake because it makes it easier to understand
Easier to read because there's less visual noise is the best way i can think of saying it.
Appreciate the keyboard accross the bottom, my polysynth is warming up so i can watch again and play along
Thank you so much for this video!
When it comes to hypnotic piano-based things that are so beautiful it hurts, I doubt you can beat "Giant" by the Bad Plus.
th-cam.com/video/uG7W-OziAVo/w-d-xo.html
There are plenty of those 'wrong notes' in Mozart, too. In the second variation of the Theme and Variations which opens his Piano Sonata in A (KV331) you get a D natural in the right hand over a repeated A, D#,E pattern in the left hand.
This is an amazing song by Radiohead, thanks for your interesting and illuminating observations.
I don't play music, but I've always been fascinated by the time signatures/feeling of songs and I love Radiohead. I'll never be able to hear "Pyramid song" not in 4/4 now lol. This is similar to when I first heard the live Bonnaroo version of "Videotape", now I can't unhear that version, even when i listen to the album version.
th-cam.com/video/DTZt6Dzkq6w/w-d-xo.html
For those who've never had the pleasure of hearing this version of "Videotape"
Such a beautiful song. I’m pleased it’s not only me who can’t listen to this without crying. Great video, thanks so much.
Part of Radiohead’s brilliant musicianship is that they don’t make things easy for themselves. Particularly when it comes to time signatures. I can’t imagine it was an easy song to write but if the drums, vocals, piano accents had all been on the first beat of the 4/4 time signature with no ties over one one bar to another, it would be a completely different inferior song.
100% there is a famous video of Thom struggling to get the syncopated beat of videotape live. But God damn, only they can do it. So blessed to be alive during their time
Thnx for the great video/ analysis. Radiohead is a master of complexity. I am curious what your opinion is about the song 'fire' of a new artist called moost. In this song the rhythm leads through what it seems in 3/3 & 4/4.
I always thought of the chords as being taken from your typical Spanish Flamenco song...
They like to do this. Playing round with perception of timing. I've seen stuff about Videotape. I reckon there could be some interesting covers done of Pyramid Song.
How could anyone think Pyramid Song sucks? Something wrong with that person
For me Pyramid song is in the same family as _Everything in its right place._ Something very rooted to the breathing and the words. Sure the Pyramid song has a more complex metric, an inevitable evolution IMO.
The harmonic progression is one found in multiple Spanish flamenco songs. I wonder if the rhythm is also made to resemble some of the complex flamenco time signatures (12 beats..) I’m not an expert so I can’t really validate this, but it feels somewhat similar
Every now and again it has a middle eastern flavor. I love this song, thank you so much for for the analysis. Does everybody remember the first time they heard the album. I was gobsmacked, it wasn't an easy album to listen to. What do you think the lazy drawl is about? maybe just to keep us dreamy.
Aside from the meter, the lyrics are a journey into the afterlife/death process. Haunting and beautiful. This song is timeless. Edit: Good call on the 3:2 Clave pattern. Thom is a clearly fan of salsa and bossa nova.
if sheet music can be anything like guitar books.... it can be wrong.
with my ear, you are correct
This song reminds me of a night I was on an overnight train in south India and the steward was putting fresh sheets on the pull down bed and asking what he could do to make us comfortable. So surreal. I had Amnesiac on repeat all night long and now I can think of nothing else listening to it
Thank you so much for "solving" Pyramid Song for me!
Brilliant video. Can you make a video about Radiohead Video tape from the basement version? Thx!
Started listening to Capital G. Expected him to start singing The Way You Make Me Feel.
There is a channel called ‘ listening in’ that also explained it very well. The deeper meaning of the song and how it all connects. There is more to it than the ears can catch. It’s well worth checking out.
Instantly counted it in 4/4 and counted it double time for clarity. Implied swing is evident. But, of course I’m not a pop music guy. Jazzer who loves fusion and plays sax.
You could also make a case for 8/4 because the resolve is on every other “one”.
Cheat code for timing breakdown is to always go for the 1. Once there, just count until 1 shows up again. Then, there’s usually a division to consider. If you have an 8, consider 4. If you have a 10, consider a 5.
If there’s a swing and it’s triplet grouping, then multiply by three and put it over 8.
Also, you mentioned Toto’s Rosanna and then Michael Jackson. I wonder if you knew that the house band for Thriller was basically Toto?
Kings of shuffle - Porcaro, Purdie, Keltner, etc
wow.. pretty smart analysis! I still have so much trouble feeling this song but this will make it clearer.. still not easy but I like the occam's razor solution.. guys, it's just 4/4 but Radiohead so a different 4/4 :-) Thx for the video! Just a question, do you think it is composed in a sense that everything was worked out or did it grow organicaly,.. curious how they as a band work.. especially since Greenwood is a great composer for film music.
Yeah it’s a clave pattern. Always heard it that way. But that’s not surprising considering most of what I write uses clave patterns.
I'm here just to appreciate the progress bar being perfect alligned with the piano in the standard view mode 🎹My overexcited ADHD impulses salutes you. Great video btw, really enjoyed.
Such a gorgeous song. One of my all time favorites. The melody and harmonic modulation in this song, Everything in its right place, and Ill wind evoke thoughts, feelings, and visualizations I had as a toddler. Like a mind that’s rapidly and joyfully developing while simultaneously being aware of its own limitations. Paul McCartneys compositions often do the same.
Everything is in four four if you stop counting like a nerd 😁
(I forgot what that's from but I think about it often)
You understanding this song structure has me bawling like a baby. Why is that?
Brilliant break down. I haven't listened to this song in a while and it reminded me of how I listened to it walking to work, every day for about 6 months. Loved the analysis.
the ride cymbal..........that is all.