The "worst cover ever" of "The Final Countdown" and the resulting harmonic implications

You should watch and enjoy this gem first:

Now that you've watched it once, watch it again and listen to the first few chords. Oh man, so wrong, right? Funny funny ha ha. I felt the same, at first. But for me, something felt and sounded really good about those first few chords. But why? After a little thought I figured it out.

What is going on in this video? It's pretty simple, I think. The kid playing the synth lead is playing in F minor. The song is actually in F SHARP minor, which suggests that he is either playing it in the wrong key or, perhaps more likely, his guitar is tuned down a half step. The other guitar, in addition to being rather out of tune with itself, is tuned to standard tuning. She is also simplifying all of the chords to root-plus-fifth power chords. After two or three listenings I realized I was quite drawn to the sound of this. Here's a quick breakdown of this wonderful fiasco:

If you take the F minor line and turn the "horizontal" into the "vertical," you get some good sounds:

Interesting that some of the minor chords from the original become major, and the major chords become chromatic disaster chords (chords with three adjacent pitch classes, like C, Db, and D, that are hard to name with the standard symbols). All of this contains a lot of possibilities (if you're me). Here's a Bach chorale-style treatment:

  

Another possibility is a goofy bossa nova number, like this:

Love that F minor pentatonic shit over Gb major! Oh YEAH!

So anyway. My point is that sometimes you find "inspiration" (whatever that means) in the strangest places.

Train (wreck) kept-a-rollin'

I was working on a post about the bass playing on Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion" and wasn't really satisfied with my writing. The tone was wrong. So I amused myself by finding "bass lessons" on YouTube. Hilarious, as always. But I also found this curiosity:

Ok, so...Tom Hamilton's bass sounds like ass. His tone, as it turns out, is also wrong. And he has phones on his bass. And the dude looks like a lady. (I'm sorry. Not that sorry, really.) BUT. What the hell happens at 1:31? The drums are a beat late! And any performer, musical or otherwise, knows that the next question...whether spoken or not...is...

(And I know, we're supposed to work through these moments together. As a team. Or as a family (barf). But come on. We all wanna point fingers. Don't deny it...)

Who is to blame?????????

NOT Tom Hamilton. He's a champ. Steady throughout this mess (other than the beginning, I guess--though I think Joey Kramer started too fast). And he quickly adjusts to this weirdness. So what is happening here? Here's my analysis.

0:26 Bass enters, considerably slower than the drums.

0:50 Joe Perry comes in with his Talk Box junk. But it sounds really weird, like something is wrong with the tube. Or his mouth.

1:17 Steven and Tom are staring at Joe Perry, like "What the fuck, man??" This is also the moment when Joey Kramer hits the bass drum on beat 2 instead of beat 1. So someone was trying to readjust the whole thing. I'm guessing Steven Tyler did this.

1:20 Steven Tyler is glaring at Joe Perry! Awesome rock star shit, here.

1:23 Joe Perry looks...really lost/confused.

1:31 This is when anyone that's paying attention has some real fun. WHOOOOOAAAAAAA, here we go!

1:38 Steven Tyler is...trying to settle/slow down the tempo? I'm not sure. There seems to be disagreement about the tempo from the start, actually. The best part is Brad Whitford noodling stage right the whole time, in the dark and shaking his head. I assume. I've always figured that was his role in a band led by a couple of clowns.

It's a harrowing minute and a half for me. Fascinating and uncomfortable to watch. So what happened? Here are my guesses.

-Joe Perry was out of it for whatever reason. However, Steven Tyler overcompensated by cuing the wrong downbeat after following Joe Perry's meandering Talk Box stuff. Gurgle Box, more like it.
-Joe Perry couldn't hear the bass in his monitor.
-Joey Kramer couldn't hear the bass in his monitor.

That was in order of likelihood. But I also think that Steven Tyler tried to be the boss and made things worse. Shame on Joey Kramer for taking orders when he had it right all along. And kudos to Tom Hamilton for hanging in there, junk tone or not. But wow, even after the botched intro, a muddled, TERRIBLE performance. And the Talk Box never sounds right.

And if you make it to 4:45...the burning speaker cab thing is the dumbest gimmick I've seen in a long time.

It's hard being an Aerosmith apologist. Very hard, indeed.

Apt to be pinched

I'm pretty good at writing for different instruments. I get it. How the different ranges work and sound. Especially winds. But I never knew...until today...how sexy orchestration can be.

This is from my Kennan/Grantham 5th edition orchestration book:

Oh my.

Weak, breathy. Stronger. Powerful.
Piercing. Oh dear.
Thick. Oh yeah.
Reedy, sweet, intense. Yeah, I don't know what "reedy" insinuates, either.

And my favorite..."Apt to be pinched."

Yes. Woodwind registers according to Kent Kennan. So damn sexy.

The difference between D sharp and E flat

Anyone that works with me knows that I am a nerd about...everything. But especially note spelling. Sharps vs flats, etc. And I always come off as pedantic or as an asshole. Usually the latter. For me it's simple:

1) Is it correct spelling in the context of the harmony/key? (The key is E major. No, that is NOT an A flat minor chord.)
2) Does the note choice facilitate easier reading melodically? (Reading C sharp to E flat kinda sucks.)
3) Some combination/give-and-take of 1 and 2.

But that's not always enough. These are not heard examples. Those cases are fine on paper, but what about sound? Who cares if we call a D sharp a D sharp or an E flat?

Tonight I heard a great example. It's actually a great, familiar example of a number of things. And it helps that the verses and chorus are the same harmonically.

Radiohead, "Creep"

This song has two classic pop/rock harmony cliches:

-a major three chord (III) that moves to IV
-a IV chord that becomes minor (iv)

And here's where I can talk a bit about the difference between D sharp and E flat. The guitar plays different broken arpeggios of the following:

The chromatic line D, D#, E, Eb, is quite plain. And even out of context that makes sense: the non-diatonic note is spelled with a sharp ascending, flat descending.

But for nerdy/pedantic/asshole purposes that is not enough. Context is most important. In the key of G major, a chord built on the third scale degree is B major. Obviously. And a chord built on the fourth scale degree with a flatted third is C minor. Yes. Ok.

But beyond that...what is the difference between a D sharp as part of a B chord and an E flat as part of a C chord?

It's possible that not everyone hears this the way I do, and maybe it seems really obvious, but...man, I hesitate to say this word...the psychological effect of the D sharp is so very different from the E flat. I find this terribly profound. In equal temperament, these two pitch classes are the same. Yet within the contexts of B major and C minor triads, they mean such different things.

Just listen to the song, and listen carefully for that chromatic line. It's the harmonic and emotional backbone. Doesn't the D sharp sound bright? It "lifts." While the E flat is so dark. It really pulls down to the D, which is part of the G chord.

Again, maybe it's obvious. I know it's all mind tricks. Centuries of cultural conditioning. But still.

Am I over-talking this point? Eh. But I find it so interesting. And it's all tied to note spelling and context. So there. I may be pedantic AND an asshole. But sometimes I'm right.

My relationship with "Livin' On a Prayer" is complicated

My relationship with Bon Jovi's "Livin' On a Prayer" (song and video) is complicated. Mostly I think it kicks major ass. But I must temper this enthusiasm. The following points outline my predicament.

PROS:
1) The song itself is pretty solid. I was not surprised to find Desmond Child's name in the writing credits.
2) The talk box guitar hook is a classic.
3) The bass line during the verses, pedaling on the tonic under i, VI, and VII in E minor is great.
4) For 80s hair/glam/whatever the hell this is, I like the sound of the recording. Solid band.
5) The video is a great concert video, complete with a "black and white rehearsal" versus "color concert footage" gimmick. Love that shit. Oh, and flying for no reason.

CONS:
1) The video has absolutely nothing to do with the lyrics. The song is about a young couple struggling financially. So much so the guy has to pawn his guitar. This video seems to be about a bunch of overpaid young guys from New Jersey flying for no reason.
2) The song's most distinctive feature is the talk box guitar hook. The song has the line "Tommy's got his six string in hock. Now he's holding in when he used to make it talk." GET IT? TALK?! Sort of on the fence with that bit. Mostly I think it's stupid.
3) The bass line in the chorus is dumb/bad/too much. The walky-arpeggio stuff. No one cares if the bass player knows what notes are in the chord. Really. I mean, people say they care...but...I mean...after that cool E pedal for the verse, the line in the chorus is over-clever and dopey sounding.
4) I guess someone thought that shitty arpeggio line going from I to IV was soooo great it's part of the guitar solo (3:02, 3:10)! What a goofy, stupid idea.

So I'm at an impasse. These sort of balance out. No...but...WAIT. WAIT JUST A MINUTE.

After the solo...going into the end-chorus-vamp-fade-amahjig at 3:23?!

PROS, TOTAL F'ING REDEMPTION:
1) They drop a beat before they do the modulation.
2) They go up a goddamned minor third!

So there you have it. "Livin' On a Prayer," Unbehind-approved.

Old Mother Hutty

I got this rhyme from my father. If you say it quickly and mess up you might say a naughty word.

Old Mother Hutty had a cutty putty hunt.
Not a hunt punt cutty,
But a cutty putty hunt.

If you trust Urban Dictionary (ha HA!), "cutty" means something synonymous with the dirty word.

I've found other versions, usually involving boats:

Old Mr. Hunt
had a cuddy punt
Not a cuddy punt
but a hunt punt cuddy.

But I like my Dad's version. He said it sorta like this:

And my brother did it this way:

Which is the point: get drunk and say this as fast as you can until someone accidentally says c***, then laugh and drink some more.

But something I noticed recently is that this sounds a lot like a snare drum marching cadence (audio here):

I haven't found much online. I can't prove there's a relationship here. But it's interesting.

More stuff that isn't really in 7: Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees

Music that is actually in 7 is hard to find, and the following examples are no different. Sure, 4+3=7. But you still hear the split. And unlike "The Ocean," there's no 7/8 "clave" splitting the measure up. These are made up of measures of 4 and 3, though the effect achieved in each is quite different.

The first song I ever heard "in 7" was probably "Money" by Pink Floyd, written by Roger Waters. It's anchored by the following bass line:

And that notation is ok. But without that dashed line my eyes get lost. Isn't this more accurate?

I like notation to do more than tell me what the notes are. It's always better when it gives me more, and clearer, information. In this case it's clearly 4 beats + 3 beats. Just listen to the drums. The really cool thing about this line is that it's 7/4 by deletion AND elision. It's really the following line minus the last note (deletion):

The note that you might imagine as the last note of the two bar pattern in 4/4 becomes the first note of the 7 pattern (elision). Pretty cool.


"Jive Talkin'" by the Bee Gees does something quite a bit different. Here's the sweet-ass major pentatonic synth lead during the instrumental breaks (1:16):

Wait. Is it this?

 Actually, listen to the drums. The drums play in 4/4 straight through!

 

So to my ears, this is the most natural way to bar it. I like the strong 4/4 bars at the beginning and end of the 4-bar groups. Take a few listens and see if you agree:

Though really, I just think it's a 7 beat line repeated and superimposed over 7 measures of a 4-on-the-floor drum beat. Wicked sweet.

I love dancing.

Marimba Mood

Here's a quick follow-up to yesterday's post on the iPhone marimba ringtone.

Let's say you hear it right on the beat, no pickup notes. With just the tiniest bit of tweaking and a walking bass line you get something reminiscent of this Glenn Miller classic. And in a much easier key for the bass! It's all about accenting every third note.

The first time I played this back I squealed with delight.

Marimba Mood (click for audio)

The iPhone marimba ringtone and the Dance Test

I heard the iPhone default ringtone today. I wondered if I could find a transcription online, and I found this article and this transcription:
                             
I'm not so sure, and I don't just mean the iffy notation of the second line. I have already started an informal survey. Please let me know if you disagree, but I hear the following, and I can't imagine being convinced otherwise:

When you hear it continuously without much of a pause it works well in 4 (just put those 16ths into the first full measure). With a bit more of a pause you could write it in 3, but I still prefer 4/4 with a measure of 2-ish (it seems to depend on settings).

I hear the first two notes as pickups, and in my mind it's in a sort of half-time. I've found quite a few videos from people that clearly disagree, including this cutesy nightmare (which...I won't get started on how annoying I think this is). But really? Hearing those first two notes as pickups seems far more convincing, which brings me to the dance test:

Ok, maybe that wasn't helpful. But doesn't this version (somewhat slower with simple drums) sound better?

I'm going to sit back and wait to find out how wrong I am.

Creed's new line of work

I found this at the laundromat:

My first thought was "Damn, what a career downturn." Then I thought of this:

Quick actual music side note: My only intent with this post was to make a dumb parody inspired by this flier. But when he sings "So let's go there," he sings a G really strongly over an F sharp. Which is an odd choice.

And yes, too with one o. I know.

The worst technically competent and impeccably recorded guitar solo I know

This picture cracks me up.

But this is not an anti-Nickelback post, or even an anti-Chad Kroeger post. Bless 'em. They make a good living doing that thing they do.

This is also not an anti-Alex Band post. I swear, I thought of this post before his recent calamities. In fact, I always thought this song was sung by Rob Thomas.

Huh.

Anyway. This post is about the guitar solo at 2:42 of this song.

The chorus has three chords: B flat, F, E flat (I, V, IV). Santana comes in blasting and bombastically frothing...on a G. Not just a sort of delicate, G to F appoggiatura over the B flat going to F, but no. This is a full-on super-gain overdrive G minor pentatonic statement that is completely foolish next to the lyrical content. Why don't you and I get together...AND DRIVE REALLY FAST AND LIFT WEIGHTS AND DRINK RED BULL AND SHIT! I mean, "take on the world" is...tough-ish. But not "play lousy minor pentatonic licks when it makes no sense" tough.

Here's my guess as to what happened here. Santana was certainly the last to show up for this session. Chad Kroeger wrote the tune, he probably recorded the vocals before Santana took a big dump on the whole track. The problem stems from the intro, which is used as an interlude later: that is in G minor. Carlos thought screw it, I'm going to leave little G minor turds all over this song (which he does), and then he keeps playing G minor licks all through the solo, even though the song/vamp is clearly in B flat major.

I could transcribe this If I felt like it. But I don't. If you don't hear how foolish this solo is than a transcription is not going to help. He almost rights himself at 2:54, but quickly reverts to his "G-centric" ways.

What an awful guitar solo. Sometimes "right" notes are just wrong. And besides the solo, his little interjections during the verse are quite problematic since the chord progression is I, V, flat VII, IV. The G minor thing does NOT work with that A flat chord.

He makes things worse at 3:40 with the "Stairway To Heaven" quotes. My gosh. Maybe that wasn't his idea.

Side note: Lee Sklar is the man and plays on this track. Good for him getting paid.

And I know I said no Nickelback bashing, but...this video makes my "top 10 things on YouTube" list.

7/8 and metric modulation in Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean"

Here's the main riff to Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean."

The standard notation for this is a measure of 4/4 followed by a measure of 7/8. I have a problem with compound meters. Not that they're hard, but that they always require some sort of explanation and/or additional notation (triangles and lines, etc). This riff does NOT change from "in 4" to "in 7." The whole thing is in 4; as is often the case the 7/8 is split up a certain way, distributing eighths and sixteenths into unequal beat lengths. It's fairly common to split 7/8 up into two "long" beats and two "short" beats, and that's what happens in "The Ocean." Sure, it's 4 eighths+3 eighths. But those last three eighths sure sound like 2 beats to me.

And here I am conducting in 4 badly.

 

It would be great if we could adopt something like the following Carl Orff inspired signature. While a bit clunky (and sloppy looking, but I need to stop trying to make it pretty), it's far more descriptive:

I admit it's not immediately obvious, but if you go back to the first way you learned time signatures (top=how many, bottom =what "gets the beat") it's very simple. 4 total beats, 2 quarters and 2 dotted eighths. And if you're still unsure about the way I've distributed the beats, the metric modulation should convince you. Start at 3:14 and you'll hear the following:

The sixteenth note becomes the eighth note, though I find it much simpler to hear the dotted eighth notes in the 7/8 bar as the new beat, or dotted quarter. Unlike "Say You, Say Me," which becomes "1/3rd faster," "The Ocean" speeds up by 25%--the dotted eighth, which is 75% of a full beat, becomes the beat, thus increasing the tempo by 25%.

It would be great if we wrote this instead of 12/8:

But oh well. Conventions will stand, I figure.

Now. About the "key change" during the verse and Robert Plant's strange D minor pentatonic stylings...a post for another day.

music talk

Perhaps I'm too sensitive. Ok, yes, I'm way too sensitive. But it seems to me that more than with any other discipline (yes--discipline), everybody thinks they have something to say about music. Almost as embarrassing as someone pretending they know about cars or wine (me on a semi-regular basis).

I just copied this from a comment somewhere in the vast internet areas and regions. Let's just say that AC/DC was involved:

"It's interesting to see this stuff and from where music progressed. I'm always interested in the guitar playing from that era--the approach they'd take to song writing by alternating chords like major, minors, and sevenths just makes an interesting tone."

It just makes an interesting tone! Minors! Let me try this!

Rob Gerry on architecture:

"It's nice to see this stuff and whatnot, and to see where this architecture has progressed. I've always been interested in that. Straight lines, Chrysler builder and stuff. Rectilinear. King Kong. Oh wait, wrong building. Anyway, all those angles just make an interesting look."


If you're a musician, the bit I quoted sounds just as dumb as my fumbling. Maybe dumber (because I'm wicked smart and used the word "rectilinear"). But hey, at least they tried using words like "major" and "minor." In contrast, I copied the following from nprmusic (do I need a proper citation for this junk?):

"Though [artist] remains a gregarious and approachable live performer, [new album] as a whole is a more darkly solemn and deliberately paced record than [previous album]. But even at its slowest, in the tentative search for salvation in its first half, [new album] doesn't drag to a slog so much as radiate reverence, while summoning a slow burn well-suited to [artist's] rich, dusky voice. Then, as the album blooms into something more celebratory — as [artist] begins to find salvation and comfort — the joy in [new album] peeks through like slivers of sunshine."

First of all--tentative search for salvation? It radiates reverence? And what the hell does a "dusky" voice sound like, really? But anyway. Here's my translation, using real music words.

"The first half of Album X is slower and quieter than the second half."

I can't tolerate this. Here's a restaurant review I wrote!

Rob Gerry on food:

"I ordered a meal at Restaurant X. The appetizer didn't drag to a slog so much as it radiated reverence, and the first course summoned a slow burn well-suited to the main course. Then as the main course bloomed into something more celebratory I drank another darkly solemn cocktail, and I soon found salvation and comfort in the dessert. As always at Restaurant X, the service was gregarious and approachable."

Doesn't that sound delicious?? Why is it that music reviews get away with this shit? This is the sort of nonsense we haven't been allowed to write since high school writing class. I'm serious. It needn't be technical. But bullshit like this tells me NOTHING about what the music SOUNDS like. I don't need this guy's meaningless, and totally subjective, piece of shit personal response freshman comp vignette. What does the music sound like? Tell me anything! Instruments? Tempos? Loud? Soft? Major? Minor? Lyrics? ANYTHING.

Oh well. Maybe I should just go to Bar X and get a nice, dusky drink. What kind of drink? I'm not telling. But in it I will be sure to find salvation and comfort.

mystery tune

Here's a little quiz. Recognize this?

mystery tune, pretty good transcription

Here's a "field recording" I found. The tune occurs at 0:39.

mystery tune field recording

I haven't actually heard this in a while. These machines must be mostly outdated by now.

Bring On the Edge of the Night, or "Having only one wing makes it exeedingly [sic] difficult to fly"

This has to be obvious to anyone that knows both of these songs, and I can't believe I didn't notice it until this week: "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks uses elements of "Bring On the Night" by The Police in a very literal way:

  



The Wikipedia entry for "Edge of Seventeen" seems to suggest that it was session guitarist Waddy Wachtel's idea, while Wachtel claims ignorance in the interview that is cited on Wikipedia:

"I had never heard "Bring On the Night," and at that session they told me they were going to do this song based on this feel. I had heard something about the Police, but I didn't know what they were talking about. Then about two years ago, I had the radio on, and on comes what sounds like "Edge of Seventeen"-and all of a sudden, there's Sting's voice! I thought, "We ripped them off completely!" I called Stevie that night and said, "Listen to me, don't ever do that again!" "

I think the truth is in the middle somewhere. And I also think this may be an instance of the producers mishearing the Police track. Here's what I mean. First, the intro to "Bring On the Night" can be reduced as follows:

Lots of Police hallmarks here: a syncopated single-note guitar riff (which is picked up later by the bass, more or less) with wide, slow flanger (so clear with that constant, "lift the fretting hand ghost note" technique), bass drum on 2 and 4 (also seems to be running through a flanger and lots of reverb--synched with the guitar?), and hi-hat accents on the "ands." All of this adds up to a typical "Where the hell is 1?" Police intro. It's quite possible to mistakenly hear the accents on the hi-hat as downbeats, which in turn puts the bass drum on the "ands." Which brings me to the verse of "Edge of Seventeen":

It's "Bring On the Night" with a more consistent guitar part (borrowed later for this?) and a drum part that has been shifted by an eighth note (the same can be said for the bass line to the first verse). That brings me back to the producers. Was this a deliberate change or did they mishear/misremember the groove from the Police track?

Either way, it's nearly identical stuff. And for the record, I always thought the first line to this song was "Just like the one we knew," or something like that. I guess "white-winged cockatoo" has too many syllables. "One-winged dove" is good, too.

ZZ Plant

Today I made a discovery: the ZZ Plant.

I had never heard of such a thing. It also made me think: "ZZ Plant...that would be a frickin' AWESOME supergroup!"

It would sound something like this:

Or maybe like this:

Frickin' awesome.

Elliott Carter's impact on the music of Lionel Richie

Just kidding about the Elliott Carter bit.

But I did realize something great today: there's an out-of-nowhere metric modulation in the Lionel Richie song "Say You, Say Me" (here's another totally rad movie montage video for an Oscar-nominated song from a Taylor Hackford directed flick from the 80's--see this). Isabella is SO PRETTY.

                           

I digress. I never thought much about the tempo change. Figured the bridge was just...faster. Not metrically related to the original tempo in any way. But I heard the song today and had one of those "Wait a minute..." things that keeps me from doing anything at all productive until I find the answer. Sure enough, I was right.

Here's what happens at the transition into the bridge:
To clarify--the single eighth note triplet "becomes" the eighth note, increasing the tempo by 1/3. I found sheet music online that uses this notation:

Allow me to bitch about this editorial choice for just a moment. How useless is THAT?! If something like this is happening, I want to know what the NEW tempo is. This is not a transition to compound meter--it's 4/4 moving to a faster 4/4. I need information that will help me count the NEW tempo. If I didn't know the song and was trying to figure out this tempo shift, the dotted quarter is just confusing. True, telling me what the "new quarter" is in relation to the old tempo is tricky, but the triplet eighth/new duplet eighth relationship is a piece of cake.

The bridge is short and transitions back to the old tempo suddenly and rather awkwardly. It is, in fact, not a very good bridge. The song as a whole is pretty pedestrian. But Lionel Richie is cool as hell. And I give him (or producer X) credit for this very unusual metric modulation trick in an otherwise pretty half-assed ballad (He had a dream! He had an awesome dream! You are a shining star!).

I still love you, Lionel. "Dancing On the Ceiling" makes up for this and then some. And don't get me started on "Easy." AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW shit.

The vocal ad-lib so awesome he ad-libbed it twice

For Kelly Muse and Andy Robbins, Toto enthusiasts and discerning listeners. I owe this post completely to them. A dubious honor, no doubt.

Ok, so...this tune basically kicks ass, right? I mean come on. However. Check out the ugly vocal moment at 1:10, then AGAIN at 2:37. I decided that "Ooo" deserves its own sentence.

Hold the Line

"Ooooooo"? More like "EWWWWWWWW"! The ad-lib at 3:23 is pretty rough, too. "Love isn't always...love isn't always on tiii-iiime!"

But who am I to talk? HE'S SINGING HIGH C SHARPS IN HIS DAMNED CHEST VOICE!

And this video is fantastic. True, Steve Lukather is trying hard to look like Brian May, but his solo is great, especially the overdubbed harmony stuff at the end. Why is the bass player (David Hungate?) playing a double-necked bass/guitar thing in this video? I don't know. We do what we can to get attention. He was probably trying to justify the purchase. And I do love those old Yamaha electric pianos.

And vests. I love vests.

And the more I hear it...the more I like this little lick. Forget everything bad I just sad.

More flams than you can shake a stick at!

Plenty has been said and written about Stewart Copeland's playing with The Police, but I want to focus on a very small aspect of it--an astounding number of songs that The Police recorded have either very short or somewhat long drum solo introductions. Some are a full four+ measures long, some are just one beat. This is a catalog of all(?) 30 of them, taken from the Message In a Box four disc collection. ("Box set"...I almost don't remember what that even means...). I'm not sure when or why I became obsessed with these intros, but they're all such great little gems. All of these songs could have started with the full band on a downbeat. But I'm glad they don't.

After searching around online, I've decided not to worry about sticking to any notation protocol. Every chart I find is slightly different, so I just wrote something that seems passable, and the description should clarify any uncertainty. Drummers: feel free to let me know if anything is way off in terms of notation or what you hear.

I have included links to YouTube videos, all of various audio quality and some could be taken down at any moment. Spotify works great if you're really interested in checking these out.


The first two tracks were released as a single in the UK:

1. Fall Out
This gets us off on the right foot. Well. Literally. And with a flam on the snare. There are plenty more of those.

2. Nothing Achieving

Another flam, this time without the bass drum.

From Outlandos d'Amours

3. Next to You

Let's call this a modified "blackum": the typical snare flam followed by the bass drum, except with snare drum hits with the bass drum and toms at the end.

4. So Lonely
A single "blackum": snare flam followed by bass drum.

5. Roxanne
Just one eighth on the open hi-hat, then the guitar enters.

6. Peanuts
Tom pickups into two measures of driving, open hi-hat beat. There's a transcription online that has eighth notes in the hi-hat in measure 2, but I hear a closing hi-hat "shht" sound, not a stick sound.

7. Can't Stand Losing You
Maybe I'm hearing things, but I hear snare, crash, AND closed hi-hat on beat 4 of this intro. I think the cymbal was overdubbed.

8. Truth Hits Everybody
Another bass-flam pickup.

B-side of the "Message In a Bottle" single:

9. Landlord
Another snare flam on 4.

From Regatta de Blanc

10. Deathwish
This is classic Stewart Copeland shit: hi-hat and rim clicks with shifting accents.

11. Walking On the Moon
The drum track for this song is well-known for its use of a delay effect, but the intro is just the hi-hat (and guitar amp noise), no delay.

12. On Any Other Day
I've included Stewart's spoken part with the snare drum intro. It flows pretty well.

13. No Time This Time
Choo-choo train intro. He kinda muffs the fourth bass drum hit.

B-side of the singles "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (UK), and "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" (U.S.):

14. Friends
This one took me awhile. I kept hearing it an eighth-note off with the splash cymbal on the "and" of 3 instead of on 4.

From Zenyatta Mondatta:

15. Driven To Tears
A modified "blackum," with hi-hat closing in place of bass drum.

16. When the World Is Running Down
Double flam! Flam it good! Flam it right! Flam it TWICE!

17. Bombs Away
One tom and the snare. This project has reinforced something I already knew but had never paid such close attention to: drums can sound really different depending on how hard they're hit.

18. Man In a Suitcase
More signature stuff: splash cymbal and a really high-pitched tom.

19. Shadows In the Rain
Hi-hat alone.

B-side of the singles "Invisible Sun" (UK), and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" (U.S.):

20. Shambelle
Another boom-flam. These are technical terms.

From Ghost in the Machine:

21. Spirits In the Material World
This was another tricky one, mostly due to the synth.

22. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
A simple hi-hat intro made more intricate with a stereo panning delay effect. Repeats are at the 1/16 note. This is the sounding intro--he probably played half as many notes.

23. Hungry For You
A single snare hit. No flam.

24. Demolition Man
This one is tough for me. Honestly I can't make out nine individual attacks. But I saw it written this way online and I'm going with it. In some ways the strangest of all the intros.

25. Rehumanize Yourself
Flam it. Flam HARDER. FLAM AGAIN!

26. One World 
I found a transcription of this that notates it in 4/4 with a lot of triplets. It's a tough call, but I like my way better: a modified shuffle with straight elements. Really cool feel. Stupid lyrics, but rhythmically very interesting.

From Synchronicity:

27. Miss Gradenko
This intro features a high-pitched octoban.

28. Every Breath You Take
This quarter-note pickup features another non-standard addition to the kit: gong drum.

29. Wrapped Around Your Finger
This is either a splash cymbal or some other small metallic thing-a-ma-jig.

30. Murder By Numbers
This is perhaps the drum intro. My transcription is only the first two measures, but it shows several Copeland hallmarks: the off-putting splash cymbal downbeat, the cross-cutting rim clicks, and the strong two and four on the bass drum. I actually found a transcription of this that put the bass drum on one and three at the beginning of the verse, then turns it around with a 3/8 measure. Which...makes no fucking sense. (Must be getting to the end of the post...he's cursing!) The whole point is that the verse is a modified one drop/shuffle pattern and the chorus shifts to a heavy shuffle with a backbeat. Anyway. Great tune. Great drumming.