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Rhythmic Dissonance and Intramusical Meaning in "Only Twin"
By Brendan Blendell
For many people (and certainly all of us here at Subdivider), music is one of the most important and ubiquitous parts of the human experience: it follows us into elevators and doctor's offices, it invades our favorites films and TV shows, and it surrounds us at parties and on road trips. Because of its omnipresence, we constantly make unique associations with certain songs and styles of music that affect our feelings when we hear them or similar pieces of music later on.
For example, most people could recognize the national anthem of Monaco as a patriotic song even if they've never heard it before; similarly, Adele's "Someone Like You" would probably come across as bittersweet just from hearing the first few seconds of piano. These types of associations are considered extramusical, because the meaning is contextual, subjective, and not intrinsic to the music itself. In other words, the impressions we get from music are often formed in regard to other pieces of art that have some sort of culturally agreed-upon meaning or from previous experiences that involved that piece of music.
Of course, the most obvious way we gain meaning from music is not from the music itself, but from the lyrics. Whether we're listening to Justin Bieber or a traditional Appalachian ballad, the vast majority of music derived from both the popular and folk traditions is heavily lyric-based.[1] That's why it's so surprising to us when a song like "Gangnam Style" becomes a big hit: for most American listeners, we have no idea what it's about. For many of the songs we listen to, musical forms generally follow the lyrical forms, making any type of purely musical meaning (other than genre, tempo, and other obvious characteristics) subsidiary to the lyrics.
Since musical meaning is often derived from playing into our expectations and then exploiting them, more experimental and unconventional styles can use techniques that subvert our understanding of musical tropes. Take, for instance, progressive rock. Prog rock is often associated with bands like Pink Floyd, Yes, and King Crimson, groups who were most successful in the 1970s. A new generation of prog rock bands have taken many of these techniques to the next level, including Oceansize, a now-defunct UK group whose style might best be described as "Radiohead meets Meshuggah."
Oceansize has a very diverse sound, but one of the most distinguishing elements of their style is the use of rhythmic dissonance, a generic term that refers to different rhythmic patterns or levels of complexity that clash in some way. While lots of contemporary pop songs use some form of syncopation, prog rock music tends to rely on more complex techniques like odd meters (where the beat structure is typically based off of prime numbers greater than three) and polyrhythm/meter (where there are multiple layers of rhythms that don't quite fit together). In the Beatles' “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” the "Mother Superior jumped the gun" section uses meters that switch between groupings of nine and ten beats, while the segment from 1:48 to 2:02 contains a polymeter between the drums (continuing the groups of two beats) and everything else (in groups of three beats). Similarly, the drummer in Demi Lovato's “La La Land” introduces a brief polymeter from 3:24 to the end of the song.
The song "Only Twin" from Oceansize's 2007 album Frames provides perfect examples of all of these techniques. It isn't really a song you can immediately enjoy because of the words, due to both their abstractness and incomprehensibility (full disclosure: I didn't even know most of the words until starting this article). Without diminishing the value of the lyrics, I would argue that most of the meaning listeners gain from "Only Twin" the first time arise from purely musical signifiers that are constructed in reference to each other, often called intramusical meaning.
The song begins with a soft electric piano playing a relatively slow continuous stream of notes. This line, especially as it initially only gets punctuated by quiet cymbal hits and sustained notes in the high end of the electric guitar, seems timeless, as if there's no broader sense of rhythmic structure in the song. In reality, the keyboard line is carefully grouped into fourteen groups of three notes and one group of four notes at the very end, which repeat for nearly the entire song. Before the full drum pattern enters at 1:12, the rest of the ensemble (excluding the vocals) organizes the grid of notes that the keyboard has already laid out into groups of two rather than three. This can be easily heard by counting the number of groups occurring between each bass note: 6, 2, 1, 6, 2, and 6.
Rhythmic structure in the beginning of "Only Twin"
By the time the drum beat enters, we've heard the electric piano line repeat over three times and become pretty accustomed to the rhythm and feel of the song, which is why it’s so jarring to hear the sudden rhythmic dissonance between the drums and the rest of the instruments. The technique used here is one of the most fundamental types of rhythmic dissonance: the 2 to 3 polyrhythm. A polyrhythm is defined as two or more rhythms occurring in the same amount of time that are not multiples or divisors of each other, so 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 2 to 6, and 3 to 6 would not be considered polyrhythms. In order to fit both groups of two and three within the same space, a subdivision needs to be created that is the smallest multiple of both rhythms. In the case of the 2 to 3 polyrhythm, 6 is the subdivision that allows us to count both the keyboard line and the beat. To complicate the rhythmic structure even more, the drums play a polymeter of five beats over the groupings of three beats.
Rhythmic structure after the entrance of the drums
At 3:17, a completely new section suddenly interrupts an instrumental repetition of the original line partway through. This new section keeps most of the established polyrhythm and polymeter patterns while creating a more rhythmically straightforward atmosphere overall by changing the keyboard line from an ascending/descending pattern in groups of (mostly) three to an inverted Alberti bass pattern in groups of four. The keyboard line now lines up more regularly with the beat (every four notes on the keyboard comes out to six beats), which allows the meter to have a more regular pulse (what musicians might refer to as 12/8 time). If you try counting along to every group of three beats, you’ll notice that each of these groups can be grouped further into four, creating a clear metrical structure.
Rhythmic structure in the middle of "Only Twin"
The climax of “Only Twin” starts around 4:15, when a choir takes the place of the main vocal line. At 4:37 an additional drum part briefly appears, pounding away at the same rhythm as the keyboard while the string section glissandos upwards. Right at 4:43, the drums immediately resolve both the polyrhythm and polymeter, finally matching the electric piano line that’s been playing continuously from the start. Since the keyboard rhythm was slightly slower than the beats before, the tempo also feels somewhat slower, helping release the tension that had been building up since the drums first started playing. The intensity gradually decreases over the last few minutes of the song, eventually ending at the same energy as it began with.
The key to "Only Twin" is its repetition: by reducing a seven-plus minute song to just two basic sections, our expectations change gradually rather than rapidly through the manipulation of texture over time. No two repetitions of the original section are played in the same way, allowing the song to continue developing and building up while also keeping a sense of stasis. There are twenty-three discrete sections within the song, seventeen of which are based off of the original electric piano line; the other six are located directly in the middle, separating the rhythmically dissonant sections from the rhythmically consonant ones. Oceansize’s juxtaposition of remarkably simple elements with fairly complex ones is the essence of a great prog rock song, one that creates just as much (if not more) meaning from subverting our musical expectations as it does from invoking extramusical associations.
[1]For more information on the distinctions between the popular, folk, and art music traditions in Western music, check out the chart on page 5 of musicologist Philip Tagg's article "Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice."
Run, Tommy, run
Did you get all you want?
Did you drink their world dry?
And extinguish all the sunshine?
I didn't say that I felt the same
You just took it as read
As I closed all the blinds
And put you to bed, and read you all the last rites
It serves as a warning to me
Just like most of these days do
Cause I just wish that I could've just left you there, sitting in your own shit
Cause I know that you would me, too
See, cause I've trawled through all this before
And I've bought that skinny tee
With a big, black gaping hole where the heart should be
That says, "baby, I renounce thee"
Don't you die on me now
A kiss is now a circus show
The big top tent and neon glow
Through spectacles of rainbow red
You never feel your love till it's dead
Arm's length keep him
I stab but don't injure
No blood ever pours
Empty as a hole, and ever-depleting
One and four makes us whole
A bankrupt sea of love
Cannot swim above
Empty as a hole, and ever-depleting
I recoil from the blast
And look around me though
Neither friend nor foe
Empty as a hole, and ever-depleting
