Heart of the Sunrise

Originally by Yes, from the album Fragile. Recorded live in Brian's garage.

This is what happens when 5 old dudes get together on Tuesday nights to re-live their youth. Only now, we can almost play this thing. I'm playing a new-to-me 1980 Rickenbacker 4001 bass. We hope to go do a few shows under the name The Yes Men eventually.

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posted by Devils Rancher (14 comments total)

Damn...and here, I forgot my lighter...

Honestly, it's a bang-up job, this.
posted by askmeaboutLOOM at 8:10 PM on August 28, 2010

i'm impressed - this is a tough piece of music to do and you've done it
posted by pyramid termite at 10:56 PM on August 28, 2010

Good stuff DR.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:24 AM on August 29, 2010

Oh Yes indeed.
posted by MajorDundee at 12:25 PM on August 29, 2010

Wow! This makes me miss my 77' 4003.
posted by deadmessenger at 1:28 PM on August 29, 2010

It'd pretty funny to be doing this kind of stuff again, because I had pretty much gone 180º away from *notesnotesnotes* in my playing for the last... long time... (I embraced New Wave in the early 80,s and have been a pretty song-oriented player since then) and at first I didn't think this would be my bag when I got asked to do it, but it is strangely gratifying to be mostly pulling it off. I wanted to be Chris Squire REAL BAD when I was 13, though I sold my last Rick in '80 and have been playing Fenders ever since, until now. The neck on the thing is a goddam 2X4, but the sustain is pretty rad.
posted by Devils Rancher at 1:30 PM on August 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

astounding! an old favourite of mine performed very well indeed
posted by Jonesisdying at 11:02 PM on August 31, 2010

Excellent! I trust you'll be doing Close to the Edge next.
posted by Grangousier at 11:25 AM on September 1, 2010

hehehahaa... *ahem* Seeing as how I'm learning this stuff by ear -- I... kinda doubt it. (amazing though it is)
posted by Devils Rancher at 12:22 PM on September 1, 2010

You guys deserve a medal for this. Great job!
posted by tunewell at 7:15 PM on September 2, 2010

The full set looks like it'll be:

Starship Trooper
South Side of the Sky
Heart of the Sunrise
Perpetual Change
Yours Is No Disgrace
Siberian Khatru

I'll post an IRL performance notice if we ever book a gig (we know 4 of those, and just started on the last 2 this week).
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:36 PM on September 2, 2010

Wow, as a true Yes fan, you "old" dudes have hit the mark! Can I come by the garage? I'll bring my special Geritol/Red Bull punch! Then we all can stay up until the heart of the sunrise!
posted by Disbro at 2:59 PM on September 4, 2010

Had the wonderful experience of ears tuning in, then slowly recognizing the song. Do you mentally count or just play it by feel? Same question applies to composition in unconventional time signatures - which comes first? And of course: your effort paid off.
posted by AppleSeed at 6:40 AM on September 5, 2010

Do you mentally count or just play it by feel?

Mostly by "feel," but you can't really call it that. One thing about Chris Squire's playing is that he's not improvisational or spontaneous at all, so once you've learned the phrase, that's it. If I'm improvising in odd time (I played a couple shows in an all-improv band with a drummer who refused 4/4) you might have to count a bit to get your bearings, but not so with this stuff. There's a spot or two here and there where you need to tap your foot for a transition or something, but as far as counting while I play, no. Learning the stuff initially, I had to count a few segments just to figure out what was going on, but I mostly listen to the phrases, then string them together.

A song in my mind kind of looks like a player-piano roll of notes -- up and down for frequency, and forward in time. Mentally mapping these things is an interesting exercise, since I don't read standard musical notation. I've drawn a couple roadmaps of arrangements, but they're positively runic to anyone else.

The spot so far that's given us the most trouble time-wise was a bit in Siberian Khatru that turns out to be a bad tape edit. Headphones have revealed quite a few of those -- there's 2 obvious ones in HotS, and three in Siberian Khatru, and one huge, glaring one in Starship Trooper, and maybe more. They didn't actually play through much of this stuff in the studio, initially. We've had to reference Yessongs just to figure out what they did live in place of these edits a couple of times.
posted by Devils Rancher at 10:30 AM on September 5, 2010