I build interactive apps for Radiohead's music. You understand a song's theory and rhythm by interacting with it, manipulating it and taking part in it. These apps are the artefacts of my PhD, Vibe Coding for Interactive Aural Analysis on Radiohead's Music.
Be Jonny Greenwood for the night. Play a radio through a Space Echo and a looper, then turn round to the ondes Martenot and play over the whole song.
Listen for the Ondes, then join the band. Play the ribbon or keys, try suggested notes and shape your own phrases over the full recording.
At the end of Let Down, Jonny Greenwood's ZX Spectrum plays on its own. Hear it, see how a program like his works, then write your own and run it over the band.
At the end of Go to Sleep, Jonny Greenwood's guitar runs through a Max/MSP patch that grabs and stutters what he plays. Hear it, build the patch one box at a time, then play along on your keyboard and let the patch chop you up.
Find the four chords Jonny took from Paul Lansky’s 1973 computer piece. Then dig through other electronic records, cut your own loop and play it over Idioteque’s drums.
Play the ondes Martenot over the piano. Then hear the whole cue, find its dark and bright notes, and play the ondes part along with the piano.
Walk into the haunted library and hear the ondes Martenot’s ghost theme. Then play it yourself: each note wakes a book or opens a drawer of the card catalogue.
Play the song with the band while the notation follows along. Then play the five chords yourself on the pads, or pull the piano down and take its part.
The two-bar clave under Pyramid Song: 3 3 4 3 3. Slide the swing and hear the off-beats land late, with the drum kit laid out underneath like a drum machine.
Ed O'Brien's guitar, played back on Thom Yorke's sampler. Find the seven chords, hear them through, then play them yourself or let the app compose something new.
Most people hear a slow march on 1 2 3 4. Press Reveal to put an 808 backbeat on the real beat, an eighth-note later, and the same notes snap into syncopation.
The piano riff as a Euclidean rhythm, after Brad Osborn. Turn the play-along piano down and play the riff on your computer keyboard.
New progressions from Brad Osborn's three Radiohead voice-leading systems, over rhythms spread as evenly as they can be across the bar.
Pyramid Song goes round four chords, and the writers disagree about which one is home. Hold a note underneath and decide for yourself.
Change one note of a scale and you get a new mode. Slide through all seven, then hear Lucky’s chorus move one note.
Videotape goes round the same three chords. Start the loop somewhere else, and home moves with it.
In Limbo’s chorus goes round four chords that belong together, then lands on one that doesn’t. Hear why, then hear it without.