Bass Vid - Yes - The Gates of Delirium

0:00 - First section
8:03 - Second section (Instrumental)
16:11 - Third section ("Soon")

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OK, bear with me here because I'm gonna get long-winded on with this one, both musically (well, it IS a 22 minutes-long song!) and in writing.

For me, Gates has always been the most fascinating song from Yes' catalogue. I used to listen to it on loop on bus rides to and from school, and it had always been a fantasy of mine to learn and play it on bass (and with a band, but I still never got that chance).

I started learning and rehearsing the song on-and-off about two months ago. My objective was primarily to do a full length, one-take, no edits video cover of the song; an endurance race, but for bass, of sorts. I also wanted to take the opportunity to study and stay close to Squire's playing, phrasing and tone without having to resort relying on gear using a pick (no disrespect to pick players, I just suck at it).

Here we now are, with my humble (but lengthy!) homage to Yes and to Chris Squire's memory; certainly one of my favorite bass players ever, and me having learnt a lot from this experience on my own playing, memorizing techniques, and the aspects of my playing I want to improve.

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Now, I'm not experienced in writing up musical analysis at all, but still, allow me to share some ramblings and thoughts on what I think are interesting moments from the song - if I got any of this wrong or you have a different point of view to share, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

The "Listen" interlocking pattern;

One could say most of the song revolves around this pattern in different forms. Amazingly, I never managed to figure out if there is any logic in the construction of the rhythmic component of the pattern. Admittedly, I didn't look -that- deep into it; I think the thing to do would be to break it down into rhtyhmic cells and figure out if there is a pattern to how they're laid out. I ended up memorizing each different iteration as long non-repeating phrases. If anyone knows the secret to it, I'd be curious to know!

1:30 - First iteration; it's three parts here - voices (melody), guitar (melodic counterpoint), and bass+drums (rhythm);

5:49 - The melody part of the pattern takes center stage, supported by a wonderful harmony part from Moraz's mellotron choir (possibly with Jon Anderson's vocals layered in there?); I named the pattern after the lyrics to this section;

6:23 - Melody and rhythm parts now, with an amazing new counterpoint from the mellotron choir; this is an elongated version of the pattern with new chord changes; the pattern evolves over the changes, it does not seem to repeat or reiterate (that I could notice, at least!);

7:11 / 7:21 - Now just the rhythm part with the guitar's melodic counterpoint from the 1:30 iteration;

21:13 - You'd think they'd be done with using the pattern, but it does come back very subtly here (I had never noticed before having to learn the song!) - the rhythm part on the bass + a very soft plucked instrument (could it be Anderson's harp?) or... some sort of glockenspiel. Nice final twist when you're trying to get a perfect run at the song :)

To go further, one could even argue that many of the other melodic and rhythmic ideas used and developped in the song are variations on this pattern as well - the many rhythmic patterns used across the instruments in the instrumental middle section would be a good place to look, for example.

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Other interesting misc. tidbits;

17:41 to 17:56 - The bass part repeats the vocal part in canon for a short while, and joins in unison-ish at 18:00. Caught me off guard the first time I noticed, and I'm still amazed by this little piece of melodic writing on the bass; one of many examples of why I consider Squire a master at composing beautiful bass parts.

18:42 - I'm fairly sure you can hear the wires being "turned on" on Alan White's snare here!

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Huge thanks to Philip Roy for lending me his camera to shoot the video in glorious 60fps, doing some image correction and lending his time to produce the final render.

Please check out my band, Contemplator, if you're interested in hearing more stuff from me!
http://contemplator.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ContemplatorBand

Видео Bass Vid - Yes - The Gates of Delirium канала Christian Pacaud