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and everything in its right place each
measure or musical phrase is 10 beats
long
that's pretty weird this is one of those
songs where i've always just guessed the
timing i've just sort of relied on my
own internal
body clock but that's gotten me into
trouble a few times especially with
radiohead songs i'm looking at you
pyramid song hey everybody my name is
ixi and this is part two of my series on
everything in its right place by
radiohead off of their album kid a most
the time we're gonna have something in
multiples of four
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or maybe three
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but ten
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but 10 is kind of too big a number for
most of us to be able to make sense of
so we have to subdivide the 10 into
smaller groupings of say 2 3 or 4 beats
and subdividing is a really good way to
find the rhythmic feel or the meter of a
song there are usually going to be
stressed or emphasized beats and then
weak beats just like in speech
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it's grounding and anchoring and helps
us find structure this song is a little
unusual and that it's not immediately
apparent to me where the stressed and
weak beats are and so that makes it
really disorienting
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finding the downbeat is such an
important part of how we find the feel
of the song rhythmically and so you
could kind of think of that as finding
the beginning of the sentence if you
don't know where the sentence starts
then you can't really properly
speak with any sort of real emphasis or
communicate the meaning of your words
very clearly and what's even driving the
timing of this song is it the chord
progression sort of completing some kind
of cycle intent
is it the length of the phrase lyrically
but to explore this let's imagine that
everything in its right place was in 4
4-4
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actually still sounds really great
because those harmonies are so lush and
because there's so much syncopation or
emphasis on the offbeats that it sounds
kind of fun and jazzy and interesting
even in 4-4 but tom would have to sort
of rush some of his phrases he wouldn't
be able to say all the words he would
have to stress certain syllables and
leave certain ones weaker and maybe
that's not really the feeling that they
were going for maybe something a little
bit more dreamy more abstract now the
chorus i think is so much easier to feel
rhythmically than the verse and that's
because i kind of count it as eight
beats or two groupings of four and then
two extra beats
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and i hear this little rundown as the
pickup two beats of a pickup before the
measure starts like so
one two three four one two three four
one two one two
[Applause]
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it sounds so jazzy when you play it like
that now just to make things more
interesting and also confusing a lot of
the
chords and the vocal melodies which are
often synced up with the chords are on
the eighth note off beats so what that
means is that instead of falling on the
beats which you can hear very clearly
with the kick drum we're hearing things
sort of filling in the gaps that the
kick drum is leaving for us and so that
creates a lot of like rhythmic tension
which is so great but also throws us off
a little bit here's what it would sound
like if everything was on the beat
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[Applause]
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[Applause]
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[Applause]
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that's not nearly as interesting and has
not nearly as much of an emotional pull
for me it's less groovy syncopation
makes things feel more groovy and more
human listen to his vocal melody it's
not stressing the downbeat at all it's
sort of coming at the end of the phrase
and then singing over the bar line
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so that's pretty dreamy and it's you
have to kind of feel that or count that
out where is that it's coming on the
and of
ten and and one
everything
but back to the chorus you can hear some
kind of stress on the first chord
because it's longer than the others and
it's on the beat and then all the others
are on the offbeats
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so that also helps us find the beginning
of the phrase also in its right place
when he sings place
that it falls actually on beat one it's
not offset at all it's not anticipating
the beat
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so that feels very stable that feels
really
locked in and really satisfying and it's
perfect because he's singing everything
in its right place it's like yes this is
in its right place nothing else has been
but the verse is a whole other world
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it just feels like the beginning is the
end is the beginning is the end is the
beginning and it's just so hard to find
the seam of this garment and i have to
be honest with you i'm not certain that
i've figured out the count of the verse
i figured out a way that i can play it
and that's probably the only reason you
would really need to figure out the
counts
but the way that i had to sort of train
my body to feel the beginning of the
phrase has to do with how i play it i
have to play that beat louder and keep
track of how many of the d flat major
seven chords i've played
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do
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but like i said there's no real speech
emphasis happening here it's so
mechanical sounding we're missing a
piece of information essentially but we
should be able to figure that out by
listening to when the sentence ends
right
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well yes but that's in conflict with the
fact that he breaks an unspoken rule
that a chord doesn't repeat until it
gets to the beginning of the next
measure so now we have a chord
progression starting on d flat major 7
and ending on d flat major 7.
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so as you can see the big the ending of
that phrase sounds just like the
beginning of the next one and so when we
get to the d flat major seven chord at
the end of the phrase it sounds like
it's started over but it hasn't yet
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so it's just hard to know which one of
those is the downbeat and it really
doesn't help when he's saying what what
was that you tried to say because those
three syllables sound kind of the same
then he sings tried to say
try to say with a little trill and it
really sounds like he's landing on a
downbeat there but he's not he's landing
on beat ten
and then he's just singing over the bar
line again so that's also obscuring the
beginning of the phrase
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that you tried to say
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then on his last one try to say same
deal he guts resolves up to the f major
tried to say also on beat 10.
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now you might be thinking okay exceed
this is crazy the most logical
explanation is that everything you think
is b10 is actually beat one you could be
right but if you listen to the beginning
of the song then you'll hear that the
kick comes in on the place where i think
beat one is
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me
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if the everything were offset then it
would come in one beat earlier and it
doesn't now radiohead might be just
screwing with us and that's something
they would totally do
but i think it's less likely another
explanation is that they're shortening
one measure and lengthening one measure
so it still evens out to 10 10 10 10 10
i think that's even less likely but all
these explanations are valid so how do
you count the song there's no one way to
do it it's really up to you and how you
feel the song best for the chorus i i
count four four two and for the verse
i don't really count but remember trying
to count a song is only useful in
certain situations there's nothing wrong
with just letting a song take over your
senses and being a little bit lost in it
if you'd like to hear my thoughts on the
incredible harmonies of this song you
can click on one of these links right
here to watch the video or you can go to
my homepage on youtube and find the
radiohead playlist until next time
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you