Analysis_of_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon

How Pink Floyd fused traditional rock instruments along with Synthesizers, effects, overdubbed voices and sounds from everyday mundane appliances to achieve the sound of The Dark side of the moon' The Dark side of the moon! Before Dark side the majority of rock n roll bands would spend little time in the studio in order to get back on the road as that was where the money was. However as the results show, the time, which Pink Floyd spent on Dark Side, was well spent. Floyd fused there traditional instrumental and personal set up with David Gilmour (vocals and guitar) Roger Waters (bass and vocals) Nick Mason (drums and percussion) and Rick Wright (keyboards) along with the using non-traditional instruments such as Synthesizers, mundane everyday house hold appliances, sequencers, loop machines and countless other sounds and voices to achieve what eventually became Darkside of the Moon. This album was not only a sonic and musical masterpiece, it showed other bands that exploring new technology and effects was a way forward for music. In “The Book of secrets” it lays down what the album in my eyes is really about “the aim was to make and album-but without using musical instruments. The Floyd’s Roger Waters remembered; “There was a lot of going into the studio and chopping wood…And you’d spend weeks and weeks recording a rubber band…Weeks and weeks Wasting time”(Bradley, Eaton and Hooley , Page 146).And what my goal in this essay is, is to show how they approached the recording of this unique album, and how Floyd fused traditional rock instruments with Synthesizers, effects, overdubbed voices and sounds from everyday mundane appliances to create the music which is on Dark side of the moon. The album begins with the track “Speak to me”. And for twenty two seconds the listener has to bear a strange uncomfortable silence. The first sounds on the album and this song are that of an egg timer, an old grandfather clock and cash machine. This is very interesting because Floyd use those three appliances through out the album to great effect. The second noise the listener hears is that of a man talking and he seems to be having a conversation with himself and then he begins laughing. This to me is even more uncomfortable than the first twenty two seconds of silence because the man which we hear laughing and talking seems to be insane…As the voice says “I know im mad, ive always been mad” The first brilliant part of editing on Dark side comes directly after “Speak to me” as the listener notices that the track is changing…Wait what' The song has changed. Floyd used the eerie mood from “Speak to me” to lead into the second track “Breathe” a form of editing which was relatively untouched at the time! The song starts. Gilmour uses a Fender Stratocaster through a fender twin reverb amplifier, a classic Amplifier for Clean guitar tone. He delivers a massive Eminor chord strums away and just changes it to an Amajor chord. An that’s the core of the song. Floyd’s music is complex however it is usually based on a basic core. Mason accents Gilmour’s chords with a lightly accented beat on his bass drum, snare and ride cymbals. Gilmour delivers like a sonic architect and lays down lap steel melody which is basically just the notes E-B-C* played one after the other. On the VH1 documentary show “classic albums” they go through the album and show how each instrument is performed in this track. The two melody instruments in this track are Gilmour’s lap steel and Wrights keyboard accenting the end of each chord on Gilmour’s rhythm guitar track, which is, layered which a chorus-reverb type sound. In the documentary Waters joking say’s how the song came about ”im not sure how the song came about, we just jammed and said lets just play eminor and A for two hours…Yeah that will take up five minutes he he”. However Wright goes through the arrangement for the keyboard and he says” the sound of the chords are totally down to a chord I heard on the Miles Davies album “kind of blue””. The uses of synthesizers come into the fold with the next track “on the run”. The Synthesizers which Floyd used on the track was an EL Synth EA with a built in MIDI keyboard and sequencer. In the documentary Gilmour explains how he came up with the melody for “On the run” sequenced it and then took the sample of the melody and sped it up an slowed it down to his own leisure. He says, ”the El was the main Syheziser we used, it has the hi-hat element build in. Then we treated it with filters and with other oselators to give it this vibrato noise”. The track itself has a foreboding feel to it. The rhythm of Synthesizer sample gives the impression that you are actually “on the run”. Recording of running footsteps also add to the anticipation that something is going to happen. With the voice of the Madman coming in again in parts of the song and the backwards guitar fading in and out of the track leisurely, the song is both interesting and intense. The end of the track has sound effects from helicopters and then a sudden silence followed by a person running and catching their breath. The way in which Floyd fused the sample and synthesizer with the backwards guitar in this track had never really been done before. The track showcases unusual recording of traditional instruments and the use of effects and Synthesizers to convey the action of being “on the run”. Tick tock tick tock tick tock! “Time”! The song has an explosive beginning with an eruption of alarms from many old grandfather clocks and the constant ticking of numerous other clocks and then a sudden pause comes with the inevitable beating of a metronome to symbolize the beating of a person’s heart! Floyd sampled numerous different clock sounds to achieve this masterpiece of layering. The song has a two minute and thirty second introduction, which is simply Gilmour’s phasers saturated guitar riff along with masons synchronized drumming to the metronome beat which builds with anticipation as the track develops. The track also features Wright playing a collection of keyboards and sythns such as Farfisa Organ, Wurlitzer electric piano, VCS3 synthesizer. A rolling stone Magazine reviewer described the album “Even though this is a concept album, a number of the cuts can stand on their own. "Time" is a fine country-tinged rocker with a powerful guitar solo by David Gilmour and "Money" is broadly and satirically played with appropriately raunchy sax playing by Dick Parry, who also contributes a wonderfully-sated, breathy solo to "Us And Them." The non-vocal "On The Run" is a standout with footsteps racing from side to side successfully eluding any number of odd malevolent rumbles and explosions only to be killed off by the clock's ticking that leads into "Time."(Lloyd Grossman, Rolling Stone, 5-24-73).Gilmour’s guitar solo in this very track is one of the highlights of the album it is achieved with a fender Stratocaster a hi –watt amplifier head a 4x12 cabinet and a fuzz box. On the next track “Great gig in the sky” Floyd remind the listener of the Theme in the track “Breathe” with a very similar melody on Gilmour’s lap steel It also has the exact same chord progression for the majority of the song with a Eminor chord just landing to an Amajor chord. The song has yet another example of overdubbed voices with yet another mans voice coming and and saying “and I am not frightened of dying, anytime will do I don’t mind” it is clear that the theme of this song is death and the afterlife. The other part of this song that has to be mentioned is the Improvisational vocal performance on the track. In Speak to me: the legacy of Pink Floyd's The dark side of the moon By Russell Reising, Reising says “the erotic charge added visually by the black clad trio of Sam Brown, Durga McBroom and Claudia Fontaine is surpassed only by their soulful wailing during “The Great Gig in the Sky”, where each, bathed exclusively in either blue or red light, takes her turn at a segment of Clare Torry’s original. Like a choir in a baptist church and the celebrants of a pagan ritual, the singers feel each note with and intensity that transcends either spirituality or sexuality”(Russelll Reising,Page 22).For me Torry’s vocals are the highlight of this amazingly beautiful track. “Money”! The song begins with a sample from a mechanical cash register. Roger Waters put together the cash register tape loop that plays throughout the song. It also contains the sounds of tearing paper and bags of coins being thrown into an industrial food-mixing bowl. The intro was recorded by capturing the sounds of an old cash register on tape, and meticulously splicing and cutting the tape in a rhythmic pattern to make the cash register loop effect. The has an Iconic bass riff in B from Roger waters. The track begins the unusual time signature for rock music 7/8 time, then just before and during the guitar solo the song changes to 4/4, then returns to 7/8 and ends in 4/4 again. The song also features Dick parry on saxophone who is also featured on the track “us and them”. Gilmour’s Guitar is soaked in a a treble booster based effect and it also is clear that he changes the tone from the verse to the solo by using an overdrive pedal. On The vh1 classic albums dvd during the segment for “Money” Wright says ”A lot of things from Darkside are fairly magical, without intent ally making them happen. It just happened and I thing that’s one of the great things about money, is that it does change time signatures” The track “us and them” starts with echoes from the previous track ”money”. A solid drum beat from mason along with the voice speaking saying ”I dunno I was really drunk at the time!” also there is a man shouting through a gramophone. It was a first for Floyd in many aspects it was one of Pink Floyd's first uses of female backup singers. They brought in Liza Strike, Leslie Duncan and Doris Troy to sing harmonies. Troy had a hit on her own with "Just One Look." The song features David Gilmour playing a fender telecaster which is a harsher tone to his traditional fender strat. Russell Reising states about the track “”us and them”,of course, bewails various dichotomies that plague what is obviously envisioned as a fallen social world-us/them, with/without, war, power,and all the hierarchies that such divisons entail”(Russell Reising,Page 23). The track Also features dick parry on saxophone and has Wright playing a Hammond organ along with a Roland keyboard and grand piano. “Any colour you like” is really like a continued version of breathe! The track is really a jam track in which Floyd jammed around a series of chord progressions. The song features Wright playing a sampled falling keyboard line with Gilmour laying down a rhythm guitar track and a lead guitar track which is saturated with a uni-vibe guitar effect which makes his lead guitar line sound like two guitars plying together. The song used advanced effects for the time both in the keyboard and the guitar. The VCS 3 synthesizer was fed through a long tape loop to create the rising and falling keyboard solo. In and interview with Phil Rose which is featured in the book ”Which One's Pink': An Analysis of the Concept Albums of Roger Waters and "Pink Floyd”” Roger Waters explained the approach towards the track and title “Any Colour You Like' is interesting, in that sense, because it denotes offering a choice where there is none. And it's also interesting that in the phrase, 'Any colour you like, they're all blue,' I don't know why, but in my mind it's always 'they're all blue', which, if you think about it, relates very much to the light and dark, sun and moon, good and evil. You make your choice but it's always blue."(Phil Rose ,Page 167) The last two tracks on the album “Brain damage” and “Eclipse” are similar to “Speak to me” and “Breathe” as they both are edited in such a way that the tracks link in flawlessly together. They are also similar in structure as “Breathe” and “Eclipse” are very much jamming track with are accented and complemented by Wrights fluidity on the keyboards and Gilmour”s soaring guitar lines which are soaked in a treble tremolo effect. It is though that the song was written about Syd Barrett although the members of Floyd have never admitted it. The track “Brain damage” features more examples of overdubbed voices with laughing coming in and out after the phrase of a lyric. To me the song brain damage reminds me of “strawberry fields forever” by The Beatles. Then the album comes to a close with “Eclipse” which features a breathtaking keyboard solo from Wright on his Hammond organ. I really hope that I showed not only how Pink Floyd fused traditional rock instruments along with Synthesizers, effects, overdubbed voices and sounds from everyday mundane appliance but how they created the sounds, structures and from simple experimentation with instruments, effects and testing themselves by bringing in musicians to play instruments or overdub vocals and voices which they could not produce themselves. They knew there was no limit to their creativity by doing it this way I hope this essay shows just how beneficial Pink Floyds experimentation was to music in general an how it paved the way for many more artists to follow suite.