First things first - get your free transcription here.
This one is straightforward fun.
Years ago, I’d be in my college gym, and inevitably the playlist included Guns N Roses’ Paradise City.
Even at the time, the was one bar I found jarring.
I’d be in my daily practice, with a metronome, trying to get my timing down to a minute degree…
…then I’d come into the “real world” for a gym break, and hear…something I couldn’t place.
On the transition between verse and chorus, GNR’s Steven Adler plays a series of “machine gun” 16ths on the snare, then 2 thunderous 8ths as the pickup into the next bar,
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that those 8ths were…a little ahead. “Whatever,” I thought, and went back to studying odd-meter jazz, or Dave Hollinden percussion ensemble music.
Last week, hearing Paradise City - where else - at the gym, it finally hit me: “this is in 15/16”.
Not that it was intentional. But that the “warp” of that bar was so extreme that it was functionally missing a 16th.
Excited, I ran to the studio to see if it worked out. Sure enough, if you loop just that “pre-chorus” bar, you can play seamless Matt Garstka/Tigran Hamasyan 15/16 over the top, and it actually sounds pretty cool.
Now, do I think this is really what GNR had in mind?
Of course not.
The reality has more to do with the band’s relationship with drummer Steven Adler, and with Adler himself.
And in this video, we get into all of it.
Hope you enjoy!