Taking Off and Landing
Ah, the chiming labyrinth of "Let Down." I have been lost in it for days, and I have still barely scratched the surface of what may be my favorite Radiohead track—uncharacteristically major-key in feel and exultant in effect. There are other contenders from OK Computer, and from nearly all eras of their work ("Sulk," "In Limbo," "You and Whose Army," "Hunting Bears," "Go to Sleep," "House of Cards"), but this is the song that consistently gives me the most bliss.
One part of this song's pull is that it illustrates the old saw about how a great piece of art is both initially pleasurable and endlessly reconsider-able. That's not even really true of a lot of worthwhile art (some of it, including a fair amount by Radiohead itself, has a learning curve, and that's as it should be), but it is certainly true of "Let Down," which is both glitteringly attractive and gravity deep.
The first layer of the onion is one I noticed years ago: the beguiling trick of its opening guitar figure. It spins out a gorgeous 5-beat pattern, with alternate pinging high notes (A and G#) at the center of each repetition, then keeps that going even after the band enters in 4/4. The result is that the 5-beat pattern gongs against the song's three chords and arching melody at odd moments. This is the way it is often notated (many call the first 5 measures 5/8 and 6/8, actually, but I think this will do). The band enters at measure 6:
I have reasons to question this notation, one being that this doesn't really do the phrasing of the guitar part justice. First of all, I really hear that D-C-D-E phrase, the one that falls on the last 2 beats of every measure here, but then opens the band section at measure 6, as the driver of the whole pattern, the fly in the ointment that makes the pearl. I've also noticed that the opening notes, the eighth notes C#-D, really function as a kind of pickup—they don't match the pattern at any other point in its run. So are those notes really the downbeat? I've tried to notate it a few other ways. Using the D-C-D-E figure over the band's entrance (here at measure 5) as my guide, I treated the first three beats as a pickup into the first D-C-D-E:
I'm not 100 percent sold on that. That first D note doesn't sound like much of a downbeat either. Next idea: What if I treated the chiming high notes as the downbeats of the pattern?
It's a nice way to hear the figure from another angle but I don't really buy it.
I finally settled on seeing how it would work if you counted the whole thing as 4/4 from the top, and after some deliberation I think this works best. To do this I had to treat the opening six notes as a three-beat pickup into, again, that driving D-C-D-E phrase. What I like about this is that this intro makes a full set—i.e., minus the pickup it takes 5 measures for the whole chiming pattern to circle around, and that's exactly what happens between measure 2 and 7, just as the band enters:
Another argument in favor of the 4/4-all-the-time counting is what happens when the pattern returns after the first chorus. The band seems to count this in 4/4, because that's how they enter, after four measures of the guitar alone:
What are those high red C# notes dotting the score, you may ask? I discovered as I was notating the main guitar figure that these odd bits of punctuation, almost certainly over-dubbed, follow no discernible pattern but are scattered like daisies throughout. Going back to the opening:
If you can figure out that pattern, let me know!
What all this does is densify the harmonic landscape—I've read it described as "campanella," a guitar fingering technique in which strings ring out against each other to create a harp-like resonance. Apart from how Jonny Greenwood fingers the part (this tab is very helpful in outlining it, though it adds a note I don't hear on the record, an extra C# after the E in each figure—if it's there at all, it's much subtler than it sounds in this tab playback), the bell-like sounding of various notes at odd times does indeed create a kind of song-wide campanella effect, with notes arranging themselves in undulating, unpredictable patterns, like interwoven phases or loops, and sounding out against and across each other, a lush rainfall of notes that creates a tingling mist of sound. I haven't notated the sung melody, which runs up and down a small patch of notes—G#, A, B, C#, D, and E at its highest—and creates its own passing tones and harmonic contrasts with the band arrangement.
It should be said that this pattern does not keep up throughout the song's five-minute running time, but the innovations don't stop—there are twinkling synths at a few points, other latticework guitar lines linking sections together, and a haunting vocal descant at around 3:55 that ends with Thom Yorke just wailing out an A note across a few measures, among other joys. There's a lot to explore with the ears here.
I would just note one other musical felicity: the way the song's odd-shaped nine-bar chorus withholds, then delivers resolution. The band's Pixies influence shows in the fact that each chorus phrase is three rather than four measures, and the whole chorus has three lines rather than a conventional four. But that's not what makes this chorus interesting—it's the third chord here, which enters on the third beat of the second measure, then "hangs around" there for another measure. I've named it a DMaj7 over an F# bass, but what really sounds out is a C#-D-A triad over an F#—not sure what you call that chord, but in any case it's not the chord your ear wants next, as a chiming figure plays notes (A, G#, E) that mostly aren't a part of that chord either:
Which makes the landing on the E in the ninth measure all the more like a homecoming.
None of these effects would mean anything if the result weren't so gorgeous, of course. I don't honestly know or care much about the song's lyrics—some kind of Gregory-Samsa-as-frequent-flyer routine—but in the Michael Stipe tradition of sound poetry they fit beautifully, as does Yorke's anguished, ecstatic delivery, with the song's stately surge. It may be called "Let Down" but it never fails to lift me up.
One part of this song's pull is that it illustrates the old saw about how a great piece of art is both initially pleasurable and endlessly reconsider-able. That's not even really true of a lot of worthwhile art (some of it, including a fair amount by Radiohead itself, has a learning curve, and that's as it should be), but it is certainly true of "Let Down," which is both glitteringly attractive and gravity deep.
The first layer of the onion is one I noticed years ago: the beguiling trick of its opening guitar figure. It spins out a gorgeous 5-beat pattern, with alternate pinging high notes (A and G#) at the center of each repetition, then keeps that going even after the band enters in 4/4. The result is that the 5-beat pattern gongs against the song's three chords and arching melody at odd moments. This is the way it is often notated (many call the first 5 measures 5/8 and 6/8, actually, but I think this will do). The band enters at measure 6:
I finally settled on seeing how it would work if you counted the whole thing as 4/4 from the top, and after some deliberation I think this works best. To do this I had to treat the opening six notes as a three-beat pickup into, again, that driving D-C-D-E phrase. What I like about this is that this intro makes a full set—i.e., minus the pickup it takes 5 measures for the whole chiming pattern to circle around, and that's exactly what happens between measure 2 and 7, just as the band enters:
This does rather screw up the neat pattern repetition, because those opening two notes, the C#-D, aren't properly part of the whole 20-beat pattern. If you count from the second measure here, though, you'll see it clicks back into place by the sixth measure.
What are those high red C# notes dotting the score, you may ask? I discovered as I was notating the main guitar figure that these odd bits of punctuation, almost certainly over-dubbed, follow no discernible pattern but are scattered like daisies throughout. Going back to the opening:
What all this does is densify the harmonic landscape—I've read it described as "campanella," a guitar fingering technique in which strings ring out against each other to create a harp-like resonance. Apart from how Jonny Greenwood fingers the part (this tab is very helpful in outlining it, though it adds a note I don't hear on the record, an extra C# after the E in each figure—if it's there at all, it's much subtler than it sounds in this tab playback), the bell-like sounding of various notes at odd times does indeed create a kind of song-wide campanella effect, with notes arranging themselves in undulating, unpredictable patterns, like interwoven phases or loops, and sounding out against and across each other, a lush rainfall of notes that creates a tingling mist of sound. I haven't notated the sung melody, which runs up and down a small patch of notes—G#, A, B, C#, D, and E at its highest—and creates its own passing tones and harmonic contrasts with the band arrangement.
It should be said that this pattern does not keep up throughout the song's five-minute running time, but the innovations don't stop—there are twinkling synths at a few points, other latticework guitar lines linking sections together, and a haunting vocal descant at around 3:55 that ends with Thom Yorke just wailing out an A note across a few measures, among other joys. There's a lot to explore with the ears here.
I would just note one other musical felicity: the way the song's odd-shaped nine-bar chorus withholds, then delivers resolution. The band's Pixies influence shows in the fact that each chorus phrase is three rather than four measures, and the whole chorus has three lines rather than a conventional four. But that's not what makes this chorus interesting—it's the third chord here, which enters on the third beat of the second measure, then "hangs around" there for another measure. I've named it a DMaj7 over an F# bass, but what really sounds out is a C#-D-A triad over an F#—not sure what you call that chord, but in any case it's not the chord your ear wants next, as a chiming figure plays notes (A, G#, E) that mostly aren't a part of that chord either:
None of these effects would mean anything if the result weren't so gorgeous, of course. I don't honestly know or care much about the song's lyrics—some kind of Gregory-Samsa-as-frequent-flyer routine—but in the Michael Stipe tradition of sound poetry they fit beautifully, as does Yorke's anguished, ecstatic delivery, with the song's stately surge. It may be called "Let Down" but it never fails to lift me up.
Sideways turning around and around, best time ever.
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