Publication date: 4/30/2017
For the first eight measures of Led Zeppelin's "The Ocean," the time signature alternates between 4/4 and 7/8 time on a bar-by-bar basis, and the song later transitions into 12/8 for a section.
That sort of metric modulation, among other musical attributes, Brent Havens says, convinced him that his idea of combining an orchestra and a rock band to perform Led Zeppelin's music would work.
"I thought that was very clever and intriguing that rock musicians were doing that in the day," he says by phone from his office in Virginia Beach, Va. "I found that fascinating. ... But you don't sit there and listen to it and say, 'That's really interesting.' You just feel it."