"I Robot"

Recently, I was thinking about the synth phrase at the beginning of "I Robot."  I vaguely remembered a comment Alan Parsons had made about the perceived shift in its rhythm, and I eventually tracked this down again in the liner notes in the legacy edition of I Robot:

I played a 7-note sequence which was continuously 'looped' by the synth [the EMS Synthi-A].  I was fascinated by the fact that the sequence could be interpreted in different ways according to where, within the seven notes, the downbeat (or the first beat of a 4 beat bar) was placed.  Most people hear this sequence as having a certain rhythmic pattern when it first starts, but without anything on the sequence actually changing, the entire feel changes when the drums enter and establish a new downbeat.

I figured out how this works.  When the part fades in, the perceived rhythm is:

(This is two iterations of the sequence; I felt that having more than one would be a better illustration.)

Since there's nothing to indicate where the downbeat is and that C note is held the longest, it seems to occur on the first beat.  But actually, that C note is tied across the bar line.  The sequence is really: