Oliver Boldt
For this post I wanted to talking about one of my favorite songs by Radiohead: 15 Step. As the opening track of the album In Rainbows, 15 Step uses light, clean guitar strumming and a rapid, punching drum machine combined with acoustic drums. The song’s title is actually a reference to a drum machine and its time signature; a basic drum machine typically comes with 16 steps, which is 4 measures of 4 beats. Using all of them gives a song a 4/4 time signature. In 15 Step, only 15 out of 16 steps are used, giving it a unique time signature.
Here is the studio performance of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bahTUVLXZw&ab_channel=SalvaMu%C3%B1ox
It’s a really unique track. The percussion is intense, but is offset by the light guitar tone and chords, creating an impactful but slightly playful sound. Similarly, the vocals are high and shift from light to powerful, going in and out of falsetto, helping to make this playful but emotional tone.
Here’s a live performance of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgjWVIDN9rQ&ab_channel=pzy
This one is unique because it’s at the 2009 Grammy’s, with just Thom and Jonny from the band performing with what I believe is a percussion section from a school band. It’s really cool that, in order to compensate for the large amount of instruments being played through the drum machine, they used a full band percussion section. The sound that you get from this performance is much bigger and more dramatic than the studio recording, and I think it’s a great take on the song.