Discipline (instrumental)


"Discipline" is an instrumental composition by the progressive rock band King Crimson. It is the title track on Discipline, the band's return album after a seven-year hiatus. The piece is about five minutes in length and serves as the album's conclusion.

Composition

It has a faster tempo and more of a new wave pre-techno sound compared to the preceding instrumental, "The Sheltering Sky". It contains heavy influences of minimal music in the form of a repeating theme with subtle variations introduced over time, creating a hypnotic effect.
The composition undergoes many time signature changes. There are two main guitars which are often in a different time signature, giving the song a chaotic and intense feel. Many times the guitars play similar patterns, but one drops a note making them go either out of sync or change time signatures. During the piece the two guitars of Belew and Fripp, respectively, move through the following sequence of pairs of time signatures: and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and.
Throughout the composition, the drums play in - the Bill Bruford drumming video Bruford and the Beat builds up to an explanation of the pattern used and includes a live performance of the track interleaved with an interview with Robert Fripp about aspects of the track. In other interviews, Fripp has explained that the track was composed as an exercise in discipline — no single instrument is allowed to take the lead role in the performance, nor to play as simply an accompaniment to the other instruments, but each player must maintain an equal role while allowing others to do the same.