The Music of Radiohead: New Approaches to Popular Music Analysis

The University of Oregon offers a unique opportunity to its PhD students. Once a
year we are able to construct a syllabus that is then submitted to the theory faculty.
They then select two classes to be taught during each of the Summer sessions to
undergraduate music majors that have successfully completed their core theory
classes. The classes pitched by the PhD students fulfill the undergraduate’s advanced
analysis requirements. In this paper I will discuss the analysis class that I designed
and taught during the second summer session of 2014 at the University of Oregon,
called “The Music of Radiohead: New Approaches to Popular Music Analysis.” I will
discuss some of the many ways I approached teaching undergraduates new
concepts of music analysis through the use of popular music, as well as the
organization of the class, with a brief overview of my choices of literature used to
teach rhythmic, formal, and harmonic organization. I will also mention throughout
some of the students’ interesting analytic discoveries.

////
(SLIDE: READ)

The critical exploration of Radiohead’s music necessitates analytic tools not

traditionally featured in an undergraduate curriculum. Introducing students to the
school of neo-Riemannian, and transformational analysis is challenging, since such
topics are normally reserved for students focusing on music theory at the graduate
level. Being that Radiohead’s music is related to ideas of harmonic organization of
late-Romantic music allowed us to build upon past analyses of concert music and
apply it to popular music. This approach provides the student with new ways of
thinking about and understanding various layers of function in music no matter its
classification. Additionally, this class not only teaches students new ways in which to
analyze music, but also seeks to develop critical thinking and writing skills that are
necessary when discussing music, and serves as an introduction to relatively recent
theory literature.

Through teaching this class, I discovered that by using a repertoire familiar to most
students, they became excited, and energized, by the material, often striving to reach
well beyond what was required of them. Confirmation of the course’s effectiveness
was clear throughout the class, but solidified upon seeing that their final analytic
papers were some of the most thoughtful and well written undergraduate
documents I have ever come across. The class seemed to prove that when given the

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opportunity, and optimal environment for doing so, students will work to make their
own analytic discoveries.

(SLIDE) The Syllabus and Course Materials:

I decided at the outset of class that I wanted to find material for my students that was
going to be not only relevant, but challenging. I learned early on in my
undergraduate career, studying composition with Dr. Donald Bohlen, who received
his DMA in composition from this very institution, that the only way to make students
grow is to set a high bar; so I decided to do just that, and then make it my job to
teach them to jump.

Class met four days a week for four weeks, and I divided each of the two hour classes
in half. The first hour would present new concepts and a discussion on the assigned
reading, and after a ten minute break, the second half would focus on listening and
analysis.

Each week’s classes focused on a single concept. (SLIDE) Week one introduced them
to Neo-Riemannian Operations, and also touched upon some formal and reductive
analysis; (SLIDE) week two centered around pitch collections such as hexatonic,
octatonic, and enneatonic; (SLIDE) the third week focused on Rhythm and meter,
(SLIDE) and the fourth week concluded the rhythm and meter unit and allowed me
to give them some tips on how to write well.

There were readings, and analyses due for each class, and a weekly quiz. An analytic
paper was assigned as a final assignment worth a large portion of their grade.

Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations

(SLIDE) Speaking of setting a high bar, I began the class with a reading from Daniel
Harrison’s book “Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music.” The section I read came
from the latter half of the book that described the beginnings of dualist musical
theoretical thought, with the writings of Moritz Hauptmann.

I wanted to start the students off knowing that music theoretical thought doesn’t end
with what they learned in their core curriculum, and that analytic approaches are
constantly evolving, and new ones emerging, just the same as compositional
techniques.

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Their readings for this week included (SLIDE) Richard Cohn’s “Introduction to Neo-
Riemannian Theory,” (SLIDE) Guy Capuzzo’s “Sectional Tonality and Sectional
Centricity in Rock Music,” (SLIDE) and Marianne Tatom Letts’ “The Vanishing Subject
in Radiohead’s Kid A.”

While the Cohn article introduced them to some complex concepts that were both
descriptive and prescriptive, not to mention historical (something else I believe
theory curriculums usually lack) I think that it is important to let students know when
we are talking about how music does act versus how music can act. This would
become one of the themes throughout the course.

The analyses I assigned tied into the readings in some way. The first involved simply
mapping a song on a tonnetz. (SLIDE) The song was “Knives Out.” Scores were
given, and they were asked to simply highlight the harmonies on a tonnetz. This was
an opportunity to show them, visually, how song structures may be connected. They
were also encouraged to look into the form and counterpoint, and to be able to
discuss their findings. Here are a few clips of the song, with their corresponding
tonnetz mappings. (SLIDE: PLAY VERSE) (SLIDE: PLAY CHORUS)

(SLIDE) And this is how the song connects when mapped on a tonnetz.

(SLIDE) The next day led to discussions of form, with “Karma Police.” They were to
pay special attention to the tonal organization and how it would be described using
terms from the Capuzzo article (SLIDE).

Finally, I asked them to listen to “Kid A” in its entirety, and whether they agree or
disagree with Marianne Tatom Letts’ analysis, which included a reductive,
Schenkerian analysis. I felt that this was important way to get students to consider
their own analysis, giving them the opportunity to use a scholar’s analysis as a
jumping off point. (SLIDE)

As a note, I did not have the time to go into the details of pulling apart Letts’
reductive analysis, it would have been too much to inject into a class that was already
overpacked with new material. Instead, I focused on her choices of tonal centers and
focal pitches that were central to her main argument of Kid A as an extended work of
progressive tonality.

The discussions this first week during the 2nd half of class were lively, as I watched as
excited students argued, sometimes loudly, about the organic unity present or not
present in an album that some had heard before that day and others had not.

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Week 2: Pitch Collections. Hexatonic, Octatonic, Enneatonic, Oh My!

For the second week I began with another Cohn article (SLIDE), “Maximally Smooth
Cycles, Hexatonic Systems and the Analysis of Late Romantic Harmonic
Progressions,” which was assigned to them to read over the weekend. Because
nothing is better than Richard Cohn when you want some light Summer reading on a
beautiful July weekend in the Pacific Northwest.

The example that Cohn uses to illustrate a maximally smooth cycle is taken from a
reduction of Brahms’ Double Concerto. (SLIDE) First, however, Cohn shows the
myriad ways this progression may be labeled with Roman Numerals, to varying
degrees of success. He points out the advantages, and increasingly the
disadvantages, of each before breaking down the specific qualifications that must be
met in generating a maximally smooth cycle. (SLIDE)

This example from the concert music repertoire helped to show them the practicality
of these analytic techniques. And before long I was showing them this… (SLIDE) the
hyper-hexatonic system.

They all, of course, are very familiar with the circle of fifths, but now they were being
presented with an entirely new concept of how harmonies could be organized, and
therefore entirely new ways of considering form. I wanted them to appreciate the
beauty of that graph. I liken it to the periodic table of the elements because you can’t
move even the smallest single element without completely destroying the entire
structure.

The class began to notice that often times the verses of songs remained in one, or
maybe two hexatonic poles, while the chorus would move at least partly to a
previously un-explored pole. For example in “Morning Bell” the two halves of the
verse move from East (SLIDE: PLAY MORNING BELL A), to West and South (SLIDE:
PLAY MORNING BELL B) while a contrasting section, only appearing once, moves
from North, before making a large leap to the South, the first time a shift to a
collection with no shared pitches occurs, and back to the East where the A section
returns to conclude the song. (SLIDE: PLAY MORNING BELL C)

This way, students began analyzing form and harmony as the motion through pitch
collections.

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The next assigned reading (SLIDE) taken from Alex Ross’ book “Listen to This!”
helped to perhaps answer the question of “yeah, but do they know about these
things? Does Radiohead think about these things when they are writing?”

In Ross’ chapter he interviews the band, and they get down to discussing some of the
ways in which the band approaches their writing process. The big “a-ha!” moment is
when Ross notes one of Radiohead’s harmonic trademarks: their use of “pivot-tones.”
Lead singer Thom Yorke says, “Yeah, that’s my only trick. I’ve got one trick and that’s
it, and I’m really going to learn a new one.” Ross continues, after noting the band’s
out-front use of a bare octatonic scale in their song “Just,” saying (SLIDE) “The
Romantic composers worked to death the idea that any chord could turn on a dime
toward another.” Ross gives some examples, like the song Creep using adjacent G
major and B major chords, how the song “Airbag” while in A major, uses F-natural
and C-natural to point more toward the parallel minor in places, and how “Morning
Bell” moves ably between A-minor and C-sharp minor.”

Ross draws parallels to Stravinsky and Messiaen, which may be a touch heavy
handed, but I think from my student’s perspective, the chapter legitimized the band
in a way. And it worked for me as well, because reading this chapter, and the
aforementioned talk of “pivot-tones” is what got me thinking about creating this
class.

Going with the theme of “a little light reading over the weekend” I assigned the most
difficult article of the term. Jack Douthett and Peter Steinbach’s “Parsimonious
Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformation and Modes of Limited
Transposition” sounds really fun on the surface, I know, but I did underline and
annotate the article for them, because let’s be honest sometimes reading music
theory articles is about as much fun as reading stereo instructions. The main point
was that I wanted them to see the various ways that voice-leading parsimony could
be diagrammed. (SLIDE) I provided them with a packet showing each of the graphs,
and then guided them through each in the following class.
(SLIDE)

And again, we can show these different collections organized into graphs as they
would appear on the tonnetz. (SLIDE) This second week focused mostly upon
getting the students used to the tonnetze introduced the previous week, and the
new graphs shown here that explored voice leading parsimony from a more
theoretical perspective. (SLIDE) Both the tonnetze and these other diagrams were

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connected, so they could see how analyzing the analytic method can offer some new
avenues for….further analysis.

(SLIDE) Week 3: Rhythm and Meter

In a way, the third week was the final week of class. The fourth week was more or less
dedicated to reviewing earlier concepts and helping students to decide what they
were going to write about for their final analysis paper.

I began the week asking them how much time they spent discussing meter in their
core theory curriculum. One student, Patrick, I remember, shouted out “Uh, none!?”
Of course, I knew ahead of time that this was most likely going to be the answer, and
for the most part Patrick was right. In theory curriculums we typically discuss simple
and compound meters somewhere close to the beginning of the first term of theory
and then we might later talk about harmonic rhythm, the importance of strong vs.
weak beats etc. We don’t often take the time to discuss in depth this incredibly
important part of music. And, sure, I focused the majority of my class around
harmonic and formal analysis, but I felt that the perfect opportunity to focus on the
importance of rhythm was presenting itself within the music of Radiohead, centering
around their fan favorite “Pyramid Song.”

Going back to the Alex Ross chapter, of “Pyramid Song” he says that the drummer,
Phil Selway, “laid on a shuffling rhythm that defies description, because, as he said,
‘there is no time signature.” In another reading, taken from a book of articles written
by philosophers talking about Radiohead called “Fitter, Happier, and More
Deductive,” Michael Thompson compares it to the elastic temporality one often hears
in the music of Chopin; while Nathan Hesselink looks into the “Ambiguity, Rhythm
and Participation” of “Pyramid Song,” which foretold the lively discussion we were
about to have.

Students sketched out how they thought the rhythm could be written down as they
listened. They then arranged themselves into groups of similar sketches. There
ended up being five groups. After collaborating, a representative wrote their
rhythmic transcription on the board and presented their argument. For those of you
that may not be familiar, here is the opening solo piano of “Pyramid Song,” and an
excerpt from when the drums enter. (SLIDE: PLAY PYRAMID SONG BEGINNING)
(PLAY DRUM ENTRANCE)

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And after 20 or 30 minutes of pretty intense discussion, we could not come to a
consensus. I presented them with what I settled on in my own analysis shown here
(SLIDE: PLAY VOCAL ENTRANCE AND REDUTION).

In order to guide them to this differentiation of the larger implications of rhythm, they
were assigned to read from Harald Krebs’ “Hypermeter and Hypermetric Irregularity
in the Songs of Josephine Lang,” as well as a chapter from his book “Fantasy Pieces.”
These readings gave them a lot more to find that went hand in hand with their
harmonic and formal analyses.

Sometimes we would all come to new realizations while in class discussions and
group analyses. For example, in the song “Idioteque.” When discussing the regular
irregularity of the five-bar phrases, we began to hear that despite a local 4/4 meter,
the vocal melody could be heard as being grouped in alternating seven, eight, and
nine eighth notes, creating a multi-layered rhythmic dissonance that was clearly a
large component to the structure of the song (SLIDE: PLAY IDIOTEQUE EXCERPT).

(SLIDE: BLANK) CONCLUSIONS:

My overarching premise was not that everything that they learned was wrong, but
that everything they learned was only the beginning of the story. In a way, I told
them, “you’ve been given a hammer and told that everything is a nail.” Ok, that is
probably veering a bit toward the histrionic, but I wanted to let them know that
exploring a new musical language sometimes means creating an appropriate
analytic method, instead of depending on a “one-size-fits-all” system that isn’t really
“one-size-fits-all.” Most importantly I wanted to encourage them to look at things
from as many different perspectives as they could, to find their own way in, to see
what they could find.

And maybe, just maybe, those students that spent two years cursing their having to
go to theory class, will give it another chance.

Thanks. (15:15)

(SLIDE [works cited])

(SLIDE [contact info])

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The Music of Radiohead:
New Approaches to Popular Music Analysis

Adam Shanley
University of Oregon

Ann Arbor Symposium IV

University of Michigan
November 19, 2015
 “It should be regarded as amazing, even scandalous,
that the major textbooks that are used for courses in
twentieth-century music do not even attempt to explain
their exclusion of the vast majority of music that has been
performed and heard during the twentieth century, even
within the geographical areas they address; some do not
even acknowledge that exclusionary choices were
made....Our textbooks record not any reasonable history
of twentieth-century music but rather the history that
some composers and musicologists wish had
happened.”
Walser, Robert. “Popular music analysis: ten apothegms and four instances.” In Analyzing Popular Music, edited
by Allan F. Moore, 16-38. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 26.
Course Syllabus: Overview
Course Syllabus: Week 1
Course Syllabus: Week 2
Course Syllabus: Week 3
Course Syllabus: Week 4
Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations
 Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations

Harrison, Daniel. Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994),
223-5.
Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations
Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations
Week 1: Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Operations
“Knives Out”: verse reduction
“Knives Out”: chorus reduction
“Knives Out,” verse and chorus as interlocking structure
Guy Capuzzo’s tonal categories
 “Karma Police” harmonic organization
Verse:

Am - D9/F# - Em - G - Amadd9 - F - Em - G - Amadd9 - D - G - G/F# - C - Cadd9/B - Am - Bm -D

(A as center)

Chorus:

C - D/A - G - F# - C - D/A - G - F# - C - D/A - G - Bm/F# - C - Bm - D

(G as center)

Outro:

Bm - D - G - D - G - D - E
(B-minor as center)

“I take each section to correspond to two or more centers,

such that the song has three sections and three sets of
centers.” - Guy Capuzzo

Capuzzo, Guy. “Sectional Tonality and Sectional Centricity in Rock Music,” Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 31, No. 1
(2009), 162.
 Marianne Tatom Letts’ Kid A tonal plan and groupings

Letts, Marianne Tatom. “I’m Not Here, This isn’t Happening: The Vanishing Subject in Radiohead’s Kid A,” in
Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album: How to Disappear Completely (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2010), 223.
Week 2: Pitch Collections. Octatonic, Hexatonic, Enneatonic,
Oh my!
Week 2: Pitch Collections. Hexatonic, Octatonic, Enneatonic, Oh My!
Week 2: Pitch Collections. Hexatonic, Octatonic, Enneatonic, Oh My!

Cohn, Richard. “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic
Progressions,” Music Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March, 1996), 10.
Week 2: Pitch Collections. Hexatonic, Octatonic, Enneatonic, Oh My!

Cohn, Richard. “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic
Progressions,” Music Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March, 1996), 15.
Cohn, Richard. “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic
Progressions,” Music Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March, 1996), 24.
 “The Romantic composers worked to
death the idea that any chord could turn
on a dime toward another.”

Ross, Alex. “Orbiting: Radiohead’s Grand Tour,” in Listen to This! (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010) 95.
 OctaCycles, EnneaCycles, and Chicken-wire Torus

Douthett, Jack and Peter Steinbach. “Parsimonius Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations,
and Modes of Limited Transposition,” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998), 247-8.
 Towers Torus, and Cube Dance

Douthett, Jack and Peter Steinbach. “Parsimonius Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations,
and Modes of Limited Transposition,” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998), 250, 254.
 Power Towers

Douthett, Jack and Peter Steinbach. “Parsimonius Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations,
and Modes of Limited Transposition,” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998), 256.
 Pipeline

Douthett, Jack and Peter Steinbach. “Parsimonius Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations,
and Modes of Limited Transposition,” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998), 257.
 Week 3: Rhythm and Meter

Week 4: Rhythm and Meter II: More Rhythmier, More Metrickier

“Pyramid Song” from Amnesiac (2001)
Beginning ~30s
“Pyramid Song” from Amnesiac (2001)
Drum entrance
One possible “Pyramid Song” transcription
“Idioteque”
 Works Cited
Capuzzo, Guy. “Sectional Tonality and Sectional Centricity in Rock Music,” Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 31, No. 1 (2009): 157-174.

Cohn, Richard. “Introduction to Neo-Riemannian Theory: A Survey and a Historical Perspective.” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998):
167-180.

––––––––––. “Maximally Smooth Cycles, Hexatonic Systems, and the Analysis of Late-Romantic Triadic Progressions.” Music Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 1 (March,
1996): 9-40.

Douthett, Jack and Peter Steinbach.“Parsimonius Graphs: A Study in Parsimony, Contextual Transformations,
and Modes of Limited Transposition.” Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Autumn, 1998): 241-263.

Harrison, Daniel. “Hugo Riemann and Dualism.” In Harmonic Function in Chromatic Music, 252-64. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Hesselink, Nathan D. “Radiohead’s ‘Pyramid Song’: Ambiguity, Rhythm, and Participation.” In Music Theory Online, Vol. 19, No. 1 (March, 2013).

Krebs, Harald. “Hypermeter and Hypermetric Irregularity in the Songs of Josephine Lang.” In Engaging Music: Essays in Music Analysis, edited by Deborah
Stein, 13-29. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

––––––––––. “Metrical Consonance and Dissonance: Definitions and Taxonomy.” In Fantasy Pieces: Metrical Dissonance in the Music of Robert Schumann,
22-61. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Letts, Marianne Tatom. “I’m Not Here, This Isn’t Happening: The Vanishing Subject in Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’.” In Sounding Out Pop: Analytical Essays in Popular
Music, edited by Mark Spicer and John Covach, 213-243. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010.

Malin, Yonatin. “Metric Displacement Dissonance and Romantic Longing in the German Lied.” In Music Analysis, Vol. 25, No. iii (2006): 251-288.

Moore, Allan F. “Introduction.” In Analyzing Popular Music, edited by Allan F. Moore, 1-15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Ross, Alex. Listen to This. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2010.

Temperley, David. “Syncopation in Rock: A Perceptual Perspective.” Popular Music, Vol. 18, No. 1 (January, 1999): 19-40.

Thompson, Michael. “The Signature of Time in ‘Pyramid Song’.” In Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter, Happier, More Deductive, edited by Brandon W. Forbes and
George A. Reisch, 221-228. Chicago: Open Court, 2009.

Walser, Robert. “Popular Music Analysis: Ten Apothegms and Four Instances.” In Analyzing Popular Music, edited by Allan F. Moore, 16-38. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2009.
 Adam E. Shanley

University of Oregon
ABD Music Theory

shanley@uoregon.edu

This paper, along with the slides and class syllabus can be found at:

https://uoregon.academia.edu/AdamShanley