[Glice]

Yeah, right so, basically - I was trying to transcribe the whole of the guitar line. The problem is that I don't have any means of blocking out the drums or bass and they keep interfering with the guitar line. Also, it's difficult to transcribe a song that is doing your fucking head in. Apologies for that, but I'm going to go insane if I have to listen to this song any more.

00:00-2:36

Notes are a blues Em - E, G, A, B, D (minor pentatonic less 2nd & 6th). The basic pattern is that G octave (opening notes) for 8 then Em (lower G with the E on the B string or on the 12th fret E-string). If you could imagine the opening bars, less the rests, it'd be a G octave for 2 quarter notes, G quarter, A 8th B 8th, G octave for two (it's actually one with a rest); second bar is 3 qG-octaves, 2qs EM. That's the first theme, and the one that runs through the whole of the first section.

The second theme is a melodic one - up around the 13th fret of the e-string, G, E, D, E, D-E (octave lower) [for the G-octave part) then B-D-E for the Em of our first theme.

So the theme for the first section is our Octave-Gs (8q) > Em (2q) [2 bars], followed by [blues] melodic for two bars - so far, so good. The basic theme in itself is a piece of piss - you could probably teach most 'playing guitar for a year' sorts that kind of thing; the problem is that Beefheart doesn't let the musicians settle into a groove. Notes aren't sounded for whole measures, and there isn't a bar from 00:00> 2:36 that doesn't have a rest in it. And this is why I started to get annoyed. There's very, very little here melodically - there's no variation on the basic blues pattern, the notes don't jump about modally. Not very much happens to the notes. They're cut in half, they stop when they shouldn't. If Beefheart was a genius, it certainly wasn't of melody, but it may have been of rythm.

In fact, what Beefheart does (something that ME Smith does from time-to-time) is to be the only one keeping time - the vocals are very steady, keeping a relatively constant time. "Ba da da be da be da-de-da [rest] ba da ba da [little rest] be da", or 1 2-3-4 5., 1 2 (3) [rest 2], 1 2 3 4 [5], 1 2 [3 4 5].

In terms of learning it - you could nail the basic theme in a minute; getting the rests in the right places would take longer, but not too long if you were commited. You'd probably have to commision someone to tab it though. You'll need a Beefheartphile, because I can't listen to this song any more.

2:36> 4:00

Brief section of a major scale E-G#-B-B[2]; D-C#-B-B>E taking us away from the Em of our opening section. Not very much on the guitar here, giving way to the clarinet (or other reeded instrument) 'solo'. This bit is a blues scale again, missing a 2nd and 4th (or has an 'ambiguous' 3rd if you prefer). I think it's melodic minor as it seems to have the raised third but the lowered 7th (fucking right too, there doesn't seem much point venturing into jazz at this point).

4:00> 5:30

We get some fiddling about with seconds (F) for three-note runs, and a little bit of moving the 8.-16-8.>4 of the earlier section (G-A-G>E) into A-G-A-B>E [16/16/16/8/4--rest]

5:30 - end

Little bit of spazzy guitaring.

The synopsis, from my perspective, is that it's going to be fuckin difficult for any poor bugger stuck with transcribing this. It's almost unbearable trying to decide which rest belongs where. Well, the truth of the matter is that I'm not a very good transcriber - let's not forget that.

Essentially, Beefheart doesn't borrow any notes (as in the classical idea of slurring notes between measures) or steal any time (as in Jazz's 'swinging') - it's very regimented. What he does do (which is also common to, say, glitch music) is to assume that a very simple melodic idea (G>Em is barely a song, I'm afraid) is a straight line and cut bits out.

Rather than Da dee dee da daaa, de da duh da daaa it's more
Dadedee ___daaa___, ded__du_da da__. I would be very interested to see if a proper musicologist could find a logic behind the rests - I can't help but feel that there's no reason for him to cut out sections of the (in-itself sparse) melody other than to bolster what is a melodically poor song. Maybe he's emphasising the lyrics...

Sorry. Poor effort on my part. I never want to hear this song again.

Edit: reading back my first post - there's only one theme, with 3 or 4 basic variations. After that it's non-repetitious, but maybe I'm actually an old man and don't consider that groundbreaking. I'M GOING TO LISTEN TO SOME MAHLER NOW.