Pedal notes help to tie different chord sounds together, and can make otherwise unrelated chords sound like they belong together. In both cases, the pedal note is the root note, but in practice it can be any note that fits all the chords in the progression. In Pyramid Song, each chord has an F# note on top of the chord. In the Everything in its Right Place example above, the chords are all voiced so that the note C is the top note of every chord. This is a straightforward technique for voicing chords – a pedal note (or pedal point) is a sustained note held through changing harmony. I’ve notated all the right-hand parts one octave higher than they sound, for ease of reading.Another technique that Radiohead use in their chord progressions is pedal notes. You can think of it as 10/4 if that helps you count, but either is perfectly acceptable. What Yorke originally intended is a mystery as the percussion that kicks in later is a solitary kick drum on each quarter beat, not giving anything about the meter away. The time signature flits between 6/4 and 4/4. With the high C note that gives us C, Dbmaj7 and Eb6 (if you’re unfamiliar with chord naming conventions, have a read of this). The triads are C major (C E G), Db major (Db F Ab) and Eb major (Eb G Bb). This is called an inverted pedal, where there’s a note that drones throughout and it’s in the bass or lowest voice. The intro is comprised of three chords, each chord is a simple major triad with a high C note on the top. The whole song is really just three chords, with a fourth thrown in briefly during the verse, so it’s a nice, easy piece to get your fingers around. I totally lost interest in playing guitar… it just didn’t do it for me any more… I started playing the piano, I’m a terrible piano player so that was kind of good… everything was a novelty… I wrote a lot of stuff on piano… the less you know about an instrument the more you get excited about it. He cites losing interest in guitar music as a major influence for this album, and he’s fairly disparaging about his keyboard abilities too, saying: Thom Yorke composed the song originally on the piano before taking it to the studio.
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