Cycle

This 40-second string piece opens Morning Phase. It sets the tone for the rest of the album, but that wasn't Beck's original intention for the tune. He told NPR: "We actually did the strings at Capitol, so that was fortuitous; they have these studios down in the basement of that famous Capitol building, where Frank Sinatra and all these classic records were made. We were just creating some fragments, because I always want to have extra pieces." "I think when you hear a final record, a record like this, you hear about 20 percent of the actual music that was made," Beck added. "There's so many little pieces, and at the last minute I had about four or five of these fragments, and I just tried sticking them in different places. So it wasn't really thought out. It was kind of a piece that just fell into place - 'Oh, that works.' A lot of times it doesn't. You throw pieces away a lot."