Echoes (Pink Floyd song)
October 30, 1971
Echoes is a blend of British rock group Pink Floyd, containing long instrumental parts, sound effects and improvisations.
Description
That by all four members of the group ( Roger Waters, Richard Wright, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason) written Echoes is the finale of the album Meddle. The play runs over a length of 23:31 and occupies the second side ( B -side ) of the release of the album on vinyl record completely. Additionally, it is as the title number 5 in a shortened version on the best-of album called Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd included. It is the third longest composition of the group after Atom Heart Mother ( 23:35) and the composite Shine On You Crazy Diamond, which has a playing time of over 26 minutes. Compared to these two songs Echoes is not divided into different components, but the composition was composed of different fragments. It was used for the film Live At Pompeii as the beginning and end, and in the surf film Crystal Voyager accompanied the song in full length movies breaking waves in the evening sun.
Noteworthy is the intro, in which Richard Wright on his wings by constant repetition of a single high tone ( a three coated h) mimics the sound of a sonar. The wing is played in a Leslie Cabinet, an organ amplifier with rotating speaker. The sound gets thereby a strange tremolo. Therefore, the sound is quite different from that of an unreinforced played wing. The Beatles have this sound effect first used in the "White Album " in the song Do not Pass Me By.
The sound experiments in the central part of Echoes clearly refer to the previous albums A Saucerful of Secrets and Ummagumma. Roger Waters produced on his bass guitar with a bottleneck due to uniform circular motion eerie howling sounds while guitarist David Gilmour produced shrieking reminiscent of gulls screaming sounds using reversed connected wah-wah pedal, also known as the seagull effect (Eng. gulls effect) were. Richard Wright is just quietly audible with his Hammond organ, which was coupled to either a volume pedal or the internal volume control has been operated while playing.
The piece ends with a rising Shepard - Risset glissando. (see Shepard scale)
Contributors
- Richard Wright: keyboards, sound effects, vocals
- David Gilmour: vocals, guitar, fretless bass guitar, sound effects
- Roger Waters: Bass, Sound Effects
- Nick Mason: drums, percussion, sound effects
Trivia
- If you switch the film 2001: A Space Odyssey at the beginning of the last chapter "rebirth" the tone of the movie dumb and can instead the piece Echoes synchronized to run (so that the first " sonar ping " the word " Jupiter" appears), arising some interesting analogies. For example, the music fits almost at the various psychedelic images.