Signals from Ophiuchus

The solution

How could anyone match these jagged lines with Procol Harum songs?

The graphs below show the solo drumming of BJ Wilson, which - as any true Procoholic knows - is heard at the beginning of the songs Repent Walpurgis, Bringing Home the Bacon, Backgammon and She Wandered Through the Garden Fence; Power Failure has solo drumming in the beginning, but here one graph shows a small part of the drum solo.

You can get two correct matches if you recognize that Repent Walpurgis and She Wandered Through the Garden Fence start with almost identical drum patterns. Graphs 2 and 4 are very similar, so that's probably them. But while the rhythm in She wandered ... stays constant throughout the introduction, Repent Walpurgis gets syncopated before the organ enters. Number 4 is uniform - that's the first 4.5 seconds of She Wandered..., and No. 2 is Repent. The graph shows the 5.5 seconds of drumming, from the beginning, cut just as the organ melody begins

Backgammon starts with a very constant beat. No. 3 shows a very constant pattern throughout - there's the match (just over 8 seconds, by the way).

Bringing Home the Bacon is famous for its "missing" first beat. If you look at graph number 5, you'll se that the first rhythmic cell in the graph has four distinct beats, and the second five. There's the clue - 7.5 seconds of BJ gold.

Just No 1 left then - a more intense graph, indicating it comes from the drum solo. Perhaps you can even see the 5/4-rhythm in the distribution of the beats.

The winner of the very nice long-sleeve white polo shirt with the Procol Harum '30 year AWSoP' logo on was Greg Panfile … congratulations! …write and claim your shirt from Shine On.