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Polyrhythms in "First Tube" by Phish

Subject: Tubular
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 00:53:09 -0500

It's all about the dotted eighth notes.

All the strange rhythms in "First Tube" seem to be based on eight notes
from the guitar in the space of every six beats of the main rhythm.  In
other words, the guitar is simply playing dotted eighth notes.  Part of
the reason this sounds so weird has to do with the way this causes it to
shift relative to the bass:

    (BTW, you'll probably need a monospace font to make sense of this;
    proportional spacing will mess up the alignment.)

    gtr x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x  x
    bs  x  x  x x  x  x x  x  x x
    drm .   o   .   o   .   o   .

The first three are together, the next two are a sixteenth note late,
the next one is right in the middle, and the next two are early.  After
six beats, everything lines up again.  Also, this shows that in each set
of eight notes on the guitar, the first one lines up with a bass drum
hit, and the fifth one lines up with a snare hit.

The thing that turns this fairly straightforward polyrhythm into a
serious audio illusion is the fact that the guitar is emphasizing notes
in sets of three.  Since the rhythmic structure suggests grouping the
guitar's notes into sets of four, this produces something that is very
confusing overall.

So here's an attempt to represent how the parts fit together:

     |                                                                       |
g  x x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x      x x
b    *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *
d    .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .

     |                                                               |
g  x x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x  x  *  x       x x
b    *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *  x  x *
d    .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .   o   .

Stars indicate accented or prominent notes.  The vertical bars indicate
where the parts are glued together.  That is, the vertical bar at the
end of the first line indicates the exact same moment in time as the
vertical bar at the beginning of the second line.  The one at the end of
the second line connects back to the beginning of the first.

(This should make it fairly easy for Kyle to figure out how to tap the
riff while playing the bass line.  :^)

The section after the first set of the main riff with the weird guitar
rhythm is based on the same thing---dotted eighth notes grouped into
sets of three.

The part where the guitar hits the same chord over and over is also just
based on dotted eighth notes.  If you count guitar attacks in groups of
eight, you'll notice that the first one of every group lines up with a
downbeat.  Similarly, if you count the bass or drum pattern in 6/4,
you'll notice that there's a guitar attack on every "one" beat.  There
are 42 guitar attacks because the passage lasts for eight measures of
4/4.  This gives us 128 sixteenth notes to work with.  The guitar plays
every three sixteenth notes, and 128 divided by 3 is 42.667.  Hence, the
passage has 42 attacks because that's what there's room for.

Cool.  This alone was worth the price of the album.

Math rock indeed.

Pojundery,
Cliff McCarthy