iSpotify

This morsel is in 4/4 time.

The ride cymbal plays continuous sextuplets. The kick drum plays a four bar phrase, made up of alternating eighth note pairs and eighth note triplets.

The sextuplets played by the drummer on the ride cymbal create the sound of a 3:4 polyrhythm. This means that in the time it takes to sound 4 notes of equal distance to each other, 3 notes of equal distance to each other sound as well.

The 3:4 polyrhythm often exists where 4 is the number of quarter notes, yet this example uses eighth notes. As a result, the drummer manages to fit two instances of the polyrhythm in each bar.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

iSpotify

Listen from 0'34" to 1'30".

A two note melody functions as a series of common tones over 4 chords: G minor, Gb Major/Bb, Eb Major, and B Major 7. Others will hear it differently, but I hear this as an unresolved progression in the key of Bb Major. In this context, the progression starts on the relative minor (vi), followed by a bVI (borrowed from Bb minor), a IV chord, and finally ending on a flat-two chord (borrowed) from Bb Phrygian). While there are no Bb chords to be found, the melody helps to imply the key of Bb by pulsing on that note five times every bar.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

iSpotify

This rhythmic delay technique is commonly associated with The Edge. The guitar plays 8th notes, while the wet signal from a delay unit is set to (roughly) a dotted eighth note, creating the illusion that a note is being performed every 16th note. After two notes are played, the spaces between each note played are filled with copies of the second to last note played. By doing this, you can play very sophisticated sounding arpeggiations, or play something twice as fast with half the effort.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.

iSpotify

Like the morsel before it, this clip is another example of a common rhythm trick heard at the beginning of songs. If you’ve never heard this song before, or you haven’t heard it in a while, you may be tricked by the opening phrase, which innocently sounds like the count starts on the very first note. What’s not clear until the drums drop into the groove is that the downbeat actually starts an 8th note late, deceiving your expectations in the process. Many of us have been fooled by this kind of thing many times, and will continue to be fooled by it. It’s so effective, that sometimes you can re-listen to the same introduction repeatedly, and hear it the “wrong way” every time. One interesting question worth posing is whether Led Zeppelin did this intentionally or not. It’s entirely possible that they didn’t.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.