north star tab
&
sheet music
north star tab
&
sheet music
Hello, rugrats!
Meepus here. Most of you will know me as the admin of the Discord server, but some of you may not know me at all.
This presents me with an opportunity to remind those lone wolves out there to join us in The Rat Chat, where you can pop in to see the Discord-exclusive band livestreams, check out the Rat Chat Book Club, organize meetups with other rats for the upcoming tour, plus lots of other things to make you feel like you finally found your pack!
Shilling for the Discord server aside, I’m here today to share with you something I’ve been working on recently: a complete full instrument transcription of north star!
For anyone who’s already sick of my yapping, scroll down to the bottom of this post for a portal to a Google Drive folder that contains a Guitar Pro file and sheet music for every instrument of the song.
For everyone else, keep reading for a mini deep dive into the song and some of my thoughts as someone who has heard every isolated note of this short-but-sweet track that's (for now) only available to Secret Hideout subscribers.
YOU HAVE A NORTH STAR
The song begins with a five-second introduction where layered vocals come in one-by-one (four vocal tracks total) over a pair of twinkling harps (which were some kind of hell to transcribe, despite them only going for a handful of seconds).
Each instrument builds on a C7 chord, creating a nice little crescendo that stops suddenly to make way for the first verse, where Casey’s voice has a chance to stand on its own after a brief commotion.
The majority of the song features Casey singing softly in falsetto, which goes well with the optimistic lyrics. Here’s a clip of the four vocal tracks from the introduction isolated, including a bit of the lead vocals in the first verse where you’ll hear some common Casey techniques, such as a very quick, smooth vocal run and rapid vibrato.
After being absent since the brief introduction, vocal harmonies return at the start of the first chorus, coming in alongside a pair of mellotrons and cellos to really start to fill out the track on the way to the big mood change in the bridge.
Check out the three isolated vocals in the first chorus, separately panned on the left, right, and center (lead) for easier listening:
This all leads directly into the mood change.
TENSION IN THE BRIDGE
While I can make tablature, it’s not always pretty, and I’d say a lot of that has to do with my very limited knowledge of music theory.
That lack of knowledge made transcribing this section of the song similar to what I imagine learning how to walk as a baby feels, except you have weird giraffe legs on your tiny human baby body, making a difficult thing even more difficult.
Me, handling tabbing this tension with grace
For anyone as musically simple-minded as me, let me try to explain what made getting this section down a bit tricky and how it led me to discover why this part of the song sounds so tense.
And, well, for anyone who is musically intelligent, feel free to read it anyway and have a laugh at my stupidity and the misery that came with it.
here we have three separate instruments playing three separate chords.
from bottom to top -
piano starting with Bdim which variates as it goes on (also note the quarter note rest at the start of each bar)
guitar playing a Bdim7 in between dead note strumming in a specific pattern
mandolin with staccato eighth notes all the way through playing a D half-diminished (also known as Dø), which is something I had never heard of until tabbing this song (i told you i was a baby).
INCOMING TALK THAT MAY BE COMING OUT OF MY ASS:
to my child-like eyes and ears, all of these use a Bdim as a base and get all wonky around it, throwing in things that scare me such as sevenths, half-diminished chords, differing patterns, and other things i probably don’t understand, creating a suddenly intense feeling.
something i have yet to mention in this section is the notable bass grooves, which extend all the way to the very last note of the song, playing a big part in both the tense bridge and the grandiose final chorus.
let’s take a quick look at this often amazing yet sometimes underappreciated instrument.
BASS TO THE END
The bass on north star is played by Alex Browne, who you’ll hear on eight tracks on the upcoming record (personal Meep bass fav: the title track of the album, happiness is easy).
Alex keeps an engaging rhythm throughout the entire song, but he really lets loose starting in the bridge and doesn’t let up until the very final note. His playing from bridge to close brings a lot to both sections - not just by feel, but technically speaking, too.
Here’s Alex’s full run over these two sections, the isolated bass audio being played over a video of the tab:
Combine this and everything I mentioned in the previous section with a new vocal melody and two sporadic and peculiar mellotrons and you have a bridge full of tension, leading us to a massive release when the chorus kicks back in, now with added toms and swelling cymbals to really accentuate the climax.
And that is north star!
If you took the time to read this not-expert-but-at-least-enthusiastic breakdown, thank you and/or my condolences, and if you only scrolled this far to get the tab, well, here you go:
Well done meepus!!! Very fun!
thanksssss meepussss :)))))
Very cool explanation of everything I know nothing about….except that it all makes for an awesome song!! Thanks Meep. 🙂
Thank you, Meep – this is great! Excited to try the bass part 🙂
Bravo to the moon!