This is the start of Pyramid Song. Press play, then tap along wherever you feel the beat.
If that felt slippery, you're in good company.
When the ethnomusicologist Nathan Hesselink first heard Pyramid Song, he couldn't find the beat either. So he read what fans had posted online about it: 261 posts, which fell into nine different readings of where the beat goes.
Nathan Hesselink, Finding the Beat, chapter 2. The band have mostly stayed quiet about it.
But the piano isn't random. Count two bars of eight: it lands five times, in groups of 3, 3, 4, 3, 3.
My first app, Five in Sixteen, is all about this pattern.
Videotape plays a different trick. Most people hear a slow march. Radiohead count it twice as fast, with every chord an eighth ahead of the beat.
Hesselink calls it a “complete rhythmic fakeout”.
Tap along to the piano first and see where your beat lands. Then hear the slow march most people hear, learn to tap Radiohead's beat an eighth away from it, and jam on the drums over the record.
The piano riff as a Euclidean rhythm, after Brad Osborn. Turn the play-along piano down and play the riff on your computer keyboard.
Every song has a chord that feels like home: the one you could stop on.
Pyramid Song goes round four chords, and the writers disagree about which one is home.
Pyramid Song goes round four chords, and the writers disagree about which one is home. Hold a note underneath and decide for yourself.
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.
Home can move. Start Videotape's three chords from a different place, and home moves with them.
Change one note and the mood turns. Add one chord that doesn't belong and you feel it straight away.
Change one note of a scale and you get a new mode. Slide through all seven, then hear Lucky’s chorus move one note.
In Limbo’s chorus goes round four chords that belong together, then lands on one that doesn’t. Hear why, then hear it without.
Brad Osborn describes three ways Radiohead's chords move. Use them to write your own.
Often with Jonny Greenwood's machines, some of them far older than the band.
The ondes Martenot, from 1928: a keyboard, and a ribbon you slide your finger along.
Jonny plays it with Radiohead and in his film scores. Before him, Elmer Bernstein used it for the ghosts in Ghostbusters.
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.
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.
A radio, a tape echo and a looper, live on Saturday Night Live.
Computers: a home computer, software that chops up what he plays, and a 1973 computer piece.
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.
And a guitar that doesn't sound like one: Ed O'Brien's playing, run through Thom Yorke's sampler.
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.
My first two apps, as released for public feedback. What people said shaped the guided apps above.
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 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.