KING CRIMSON FRAME BY FRAME
Band: King Crimson
Song: Frame by Frame
Album: Discipline (Studio), Absent Lovers (Live 1984), B'Boom (Live 1995), On Broadway (Live 1995)
Frame by Frame has a couple of different sections, but the most interesting is the interlocking verse section in 7/8. Here, Adrian Belew plays a repeating guitar figure fourteen semiquavers long (i.e. one whole bar of 7/8) whilst Robert Fripp plays the same figure but misses the last note, making a figure thirteen semiquavers long. When you play the two together, they slowly move apart and then back together again. Fripp's altered version starts on the last semiquaver of the second bar and returns to unison with Belew's part just before the two modulate up to Am from F#m.
Fripp plays the whole thing in strict alternate picking, which can feel pretty unnatural in places but it keeps your hand locked into the 13/16 pattern better than trying to change it to fit the 7/8 bars Also, its stops you overemphasising the first note of each group of thirteen. Fripp is very much one for evenness, even when the notes and stresses are jumping about all over the place. The pattern makes you want to stress the high notes but try to avoid making this too heavy.
Belews' s 7/8 figure locks in with the drums and bass all the time so is the easier to follow. However, there are various live versions where the drummer (or drummers) do further strange things on top of the all this. The live version from On Broadway is probably the most messed up.
Song: Frame by Frame
Album: Discipline (Studio), Absent Lovers (Live 1984), B'Boom (Live 1995), On Broadway (Live 1995)
Frame by Frame has a couple of different sections, but the most interesting is the interlocking verse section in 7/8. Here, Adrian Belew plays a repeating guitar figure fourteen semiquavers long (i.e. one whole bar of 7/8) whilst Robert Fripp plays the same figure but misses the last note, making a figure thirteen semiquavers long. When you play the two together, they slowly move apart and then back together again. Fripp's altered version starts on the last semiquaver of the second bar and returns to unison with Belew's part just before the two modulate up to Am from F#m.
Fripp plays the whole thing in strict alternate picking, which can feel pretty unnatural in places but it keeps your hand locked into the 13/16 pattern better than trying to change it to fit the 7/8 bars Also, its stops you overemphasising the first note of each group of thirteen. Fripp is very much one for evenness, even when the notes and stresses are jumping about all over the place. The pattern makes you want to stress the high notes but try to avoid making this too heavy.
Belews' s 7/8 figure locks in with the drums and bass all the time so is the easier to follow. However, there are various live versions where the drummer (or drummers) do further strange things on top of the all this. The live version from On Broadway is probably the most messed up.
When you first play Fripp's part in 13/16 you'll find that it feels progressively more wrong the further you get into the passage and you just have to trust that it's going to lock up again with the 7/8 pattern in a few bars time. Once you've got it to sync up, it's worth going back and listening to how the two parts move against each other. Ideally, you should reach point where you can hear the two working together.
Other tracks that do similar things are Discipline from the same album and Thrak in its various forms.
Adam Moore www.evesound.com
Other tracks that do similar things are Discipline from the same album and Thrak in its various forms.
Adam Moore www.evesound.com