Earlier, in Yes's Our Song...

At the end of last month's* post, I suggested that, earlier in Yes's "Our Song," there is another n-against-powers-of-2 cycle that does not quite reach its completion, and this interruption could make the completion of the later 5-against-powers-of-2 cycle all the more satisfying.

Below I have sketched out that earlier almost-cycle, which starts at 0:41. In this case, n = 3. I have chosen to retrospectively notate this music in 4/4. Although there is little to nothing to support this meter during the instrumental intro to the verse (0:41-0:53) and the first verse (0:53-1:13), its material repeats every 16 quarter notes, and the music of both the pre-chorus (1:13-1:28) and chorus (1:28-1:48) are much more clearly in 4/4, grouping these measures clearly into twos and fours. In short, my 4/4 notation of 0:41-0:53 gets a head start on what follows, for better or worse.

A triadic progression in bright synthesizer unfolds onsets three quarter notes (a dotted half note) apart, and a later bass-guitar addition subdivides this 3-quarter pattern into a 3-eighth pattern. Since each of these patterns begins on beat 2 of the first 4/4 measure, if it were to continue, one of its onsets would land on the big downbeat, shown in green, at the start of a span of 16 quarter notes (2-to-the-power-of-4). But it does not: rather, it peters out and a unison riff in guitar and bass, with assorted drum hits joining the notes marked with accents, knocks the implied continuation of each 3-pattern off its downbeat-targeted course by displacing it backwards an eighth-note duration, shown with red arrows. This happens repeatedly underneath the entire first verse.

What I have withheld thus far (because, in full disclosure, I did not think of this until after I wrote the end of last month's blog), is that the first instance of this riff actually precedes the first instance of the triadic progression, and the 3-pattern of the former leads right into the 3-pattern of the latter, as shown below. This obviously changes the narrative of "targeting" and "knocking off."

This being said, the riff could have both initiated the 3-pattern and, with an adjustment an eighth note later, ushered this pattern to its big-downbeat cyclic completion, as notated below.

It does not do this -- which, again, sets up the idea that the later completion is more satisfying -- but it could have. For the skeptic who thinks that such big-downbeat-finding displacements of a riff have no precedent, I will next post a discussion of one such well-known displacement from a pop song released during the year before "Our Song."

* (actually, three months ago, as COVID-19 set back this blog a bit, so I will be backdating the next couple of posts)