Talk:Echoes (Pink Floyd song)

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From [1]: "Return to the Sun of Nothing (Echoes) was done early on. Roger's original title for 'Echoes' was 'We Won the Double'. Return to the Son of Nothing was eventually redone and renamed 'Echoes'.

Factual enough? Nothing was also parts 1-36, and that was the original name for Meddle -Fizscy46 20:20, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

No, not factual. Your source is wrong. Andy Mabbett 20:33, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Or yours is - Fizscy46 00:44, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Here's two of my sources [2], [3]. Hope they help. Andy Mabbett 10:50, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Huh... interesting, very interesting.
Just something I noticed, the source I listed seems to appear on most of the Pink Floyd album pages (Including Meddle for this case). - Fizscy46 16:34, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I rearranged a few bits to make it look better in my opinion. Do this to the others? Also fixed a few links. RttlesnkeWhiskey 10:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks nice. I'd agree with "progressive rock" about as much as I agreed with "space rock" but it's not a big deal. --G0zer

Does anyone else hear coughing or some other noises around 1:12 or 1:13?

Contents

[edit] Regarding 2001

Can you describe how to sync the two up, so we can experience this? -- Karada 15:21, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

  • Just set it up so that the first ping of the song occurs as "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite" shows up on the screen. [[User:Livajo|力伟|☺]] 04:30, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I've put the section on the band denying that the sync is intentional back in. While linking to the sync page is good, it doesn't mean that you have to take out so short a section. Brother Dysk 12:56, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)

Why are we deleting the 'How to sync it up' section??? Why would anyone visit this article otherwise? Hello!!!

I hotly dispute the claim that "Echoes" was intentionally designed to be part of 2001 and that Pink Floyd was ever offered to do the score for the film. More from me later. Djproject 20:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

It's a matter of record, especially interviews in the early 90's discussing Waters's backmasked message to Kubrick on Amused to Death, that Waters did turn Kubrick down when the director asked him if he could use the "Atom Heart Mother" suite when scoring A Clockwork Orange. I've often suspected that if Waters ever did say something along the lines of regretting turning Kubrick down, it was in reference to this incident, and had nothing to do with 2001, and if you have info supporting that, I'd love to hear about it. - dharmabum 23:16, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I played Echoes alongside the "Jupiter" section from 2001. There's little correspondence between the changes in the music and the visuals in the movie.--MackORell 13:05, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Assuming your timing was right, I'm surprised you didn't notice that they go rather well together - at points it seems almost as good as a visualization plugin for an MP3 player, I quite enjoy watching it. At very least, if synced correctly the song should end at the exact same moment as the film.
That said, "Echoes" was recorded long before VCRs were around making the technology to reproduce the film in the studio very difficult. I highly doubt that it's intentional, as enjoyable as I may find it to watch, just an entertaining coincidence. - dharmabum 19:35, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Phantom of the Opera plagarism

There was an interview with Waters in 1992, after Amused to Death was released, where he says that after trashing on Andrew Lloyd Webber in "It's a Miracle" he was staying in a rental house in the USA. He noticed they had "Phantom of the Opera" in their CD collection and decided to throw it on, as he claims he'd never heard ALW before and wanted to make sure he hadn't made an idiot of himself by trashing on him. He put it on, and not only had he decided that ALW was shite within a few minutes, he realized the overture was "Echoes"; he said that life was too short to bother with a lawsuit. That's why I removed the section saying he wrote the lines about ALW in "It's a Miracle" as payback, as this interview seems to indicate he'd already recorded "It's a Miracle" before discovering the plagarism. If anyone demands it I can dig up the interview, but I'm short on time at the moment. - dharmabum 06:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Meaning

The quote “the potential that human beings have for recognising each other’s humanity and responding to it, with empathy rather than antipathy.” in the interview cited seems to me to be a comment on Dark Side rather than Echoes; in fact, I can't find a single mention of the song on that page. If this is correct, it should probably be moved... Caterpillar 36 16:34, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree; the article as linked with the quote is definitely referring to DSotM, not "Echoes". On the other hand, the quote could very easily be applied to the lyrics of "Echoes": Strangers passing in the street, by chance two separate glances meet, and I am you and what I see is me... and so on.
I think the first step would be to confirm that the external source is correct, and didn't misattribute Waters's quote to DSotM rather than "Echoes", or is potentially taken out of context and possibly has a piece of the interview like "... antipathy. We'd explored the idea in songs like "Echoes" before...", you get what I mean?
I'll scan the books I have to see if the quote appears anywhere else. Commenting out the text from the article using the <!-- and --> markers until this can be confirmed wouldn't be a bad idea, either. - dharmabum 08:29, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Commented out. Here's the only other source I found in a quick search for the quote - it describes it as a comment on Echoes, but doesn't really give a source... [4]. It's an interview in Rolling Stone, right? So is that a possible source? Caterpillar 36 15:51, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I haven't had any luck so far finding the original Rolling Stone interview online (their own website only has interviews back to 1997), and it's not in any of the books I have on hand, but I'm still looking. Note that it's the Wikipedia article that says it's from a Rolling Stone interview, and that may not be correct. This is the best database of interviews I know of online but there are few or none from the correct period. The other source you found is pretty mediocre - full of misspellings and the inaccurate comment that it was the first time they really wrote together ("Atom Heart Mother" comes to mind, for instance). The search continues... - dharmabum 22:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, that source I cited definitely wasn't meant to be used, just as evidence that there may be a better source out there somewhere. And holy shit, I found some stuff on the site you linked! Wonderful, this is progress. I didn't find the exact quote, but I looked around for "empathy" and I found a few useful ones!:
"The song Echoes, a long, drawn-out piece, has a lyric about strangers passing on the street that's become a recurrent theme for me, the idea of recognizing oneself in others and feeling empathy and a connection to the human race." - [5]
"I look back to a song like "Echoes" (from the 1971 Floyd album Meddle), which has the lines "Two strangers passing in the street/By chance two passing glances meet/And I am you/And what I see is me." It's that connection that is central to all my work -- not just with other men, women, and children, but with whatever you want to call God. " - [6] and [7]
It certainly looks like this element should be kept in and some of those articles referred to. Caterpillar 36 23:55, 17 April 2006 (UTC) (whoops, that was definitely me)

Why was the meaning section deleted? The quote "the potential that human beings have..." was originally said about the song Echoes and he later said that about DSotM. But that is the point of the song. He has also stated (for example if you watch the Dark Side of the Moon documentary) that Echoes was the first step towards what was finally realized in DSotM. The source that was used for that quote either misquoted him or incorrectly sourced it but that quote was Roger Waters describing the meaning of the song Echoes. - Anon

For why, read the discussion above. It's just commented out for the time being until we can find a good source, since the one used in the article will confuse anyone going to it and not seeing a mention of "Echoes" anywhere at all. I'm sure it applies to "Echoes" as well myself, we just need to find a good source, especially since it's a direct quote. - dharmabum 22:28, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
Apparently he says the quote or something very close to it in the "Dark Side of the Moon" documentary. I'm trying to get a transcript though of what exactly it is. If anyone else has this movie or can get a copy of it then that would be helpful (though the film is probably not the original source for the quote). -Anon 4/21/06

[edit] Alternate lyrics

perhaps this section ought to be condensed -- the three transcriptions are largely similar, and they all seem to be refinements of the longtime echoes faq entry. there are quite a few sections in the faq reconstruction that simply aren't supported by recently propagated, clearer recordings of the source material.

additionally there is a very clear recording not mentioned here, from 15 may 1971 in london, which i think casts a good deal of doubt on the berlin transcription, and would provide an exellent complement to the rome transcription.

anyone? --G0zer 21:08, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

i have added a transcription of the 15 may 1971 recording. i still think this section could be improved. different people hear different things in different records of different shows. the best would be to allow readers to hear for themselves. it would be trivial to provide an audio file of a recording i have, but i'd like to request a copyright review first.

the wikipedia fair use guidelines identify four major factors used by u.s. copyright law to determine fair use of a work.

  1. i believe that the purpose of including the clip is clearly a nonprofit educational use.
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work is somewhat problematic. it is taken from a recording which cannot be verified as authorized nor as unauthorized, since the maker of the recording is not known. the provenance of the recording over the past 35 years is also not known.
  3. the clip i propose is 0m:51.273s in length. this makes it approximately 2.7% of the duration of the commercially released recording.
  4. i believe the effect of this inclusion upon the market for the commercially released recording and composition would be practically nonexistant. it is an old, low-fidelity recording of a very small excerpt of the composition. its only value is as a reference source for the development of the song's lyrics.

To me this sounds like Monster v. Turner [8] but I am by no means an expert. --G0zer 18:29, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know much about copyright law, but I know that when Pink Floyd was going through FAC I needed to add music clips, and the guidelines I was given for fair use audio clips was less than 30 seconds in low-quality (sub-128kbps) OGG format. Now this clip is a little longer, but I think that considering the overall length of the song, the informational purpose it's being used for and the fact it could in no way noticeably impact sales of the song make it reasonable to consider fair use. - dharmabum 20:57, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm more than willing to buy the rest of the changes to 15 may 71 in edit 54783811 [9], but "an in that..." doesn't make any sense and I've replaced it with the more plausible "and". Unless a really clear recording surfaces, people are never going to agree on what they're hearing. I think this underscores the need for an audio sample. Perhaps someone has server space in a jurisdiction where this is very clearly permissible? --G0zer 03:02, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Synthesizer(s)

For some reasons, I was sure that they used synths in Echoes, right the drone sound that in the article is reported to have been created by Waters with his bass. Anyone has any clue? Brian Wilson 20:48, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll look for an exact citation, but I've heard Gilmour comment that Obscured By Clouds was the first Pink Floyd album to use synthesizers. BotleySmith 20:04, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
obscured by clouds was for sure the first use of the VCS3 synth. i think it is unlikely that any synth was used on echoes. --G0zer 20:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe in the "Main theme" off the 'More' album they use a synth (I guess a minimoog) for those notes resembling a sort of wha-wha, which was an oscillator with a ADSR modulated cutoff frequency. Possibly the same occurred in 'Let there be more light' from "A saucerful of secrets". Earlier synths didnt have any keyboard, so when musicians are interviewed, they use to refer to "oscillators" but actually they mean such kind of synths. I cant believe that they didnt use even some self-made oscillators in Ummagumma's "The narrow way"; maybe they just want to keep "confidential" such info, I am a musician myself and I can understand/agree with this policy. Brian Wilson 22:08, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the sounds you mentioned on More and Saucerful are just pedal-filtered Farfisa organ. As for the oscillators on Ummagumma... well, if you want to call THOSE synthesizers, then Pink Floyd were using synths as far back as their first album, because the ascending sine wave during the refrains of "Bike" (You're the kind of girl...) was produced by an oscillator made to change pitch with varispeed. But that's really not what we'd consider a synth nowadays, just an electronic pulse altered with tape effects — same thing with "The Narrow Way". Watch "Echoes Pt. 2" from Live At Pompeii: you'll see Roger playing the bass with Dave's metal slide bar to make the noise in question. BotleySmith 20:00, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
So, Pink Floyd have NEVER used minimoog? hmmmmm...... The pedal you mention could have been just a wha-wha, sort of phasing effect that is controlled by the potentiometer inside the pedal and not by its oscillator. To me it seems a synth envelope-controlled sound, but I need to listen on a great Hi-Fi equipment, that I don't have for now :( Brian Wilson 22:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
There no such envelope-controlled oscillators (ie. none that aren't simply phased or varispeeded with tape effects/pedals) in the Floyd catalogue until O.B.C. — there are sources, which I will attempt to dig up, that back me up here. However, Richard did use a Minimoog onstage — from the 1974 tour until The Wall shows. BotleySmith 03:28, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Here's a source for the claim that the first time they used synth was on Obscured by Clouds, about halfway down the page. - dharmabum 20:21, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

With regard to the above comment

the ascending sine wave during the refrains of "Bike" (You're the kind of girl...) was produced by an oscillator made to change pitch with varispeed. But that's really not what we'd consider a synth nowadays, just an electronic pulse altered with tape effects

please note that there is no need for a varispeed or a tape effect to change the frequency of an oscillator, it is done by mean of a simple potentiometers.--Doktor Who 19:29, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fretless bass played by Mr Gilmour

Jaco Pastorius was not the first fretless bass player? Most of music magazines that I read from 1984 to 1994, reported that Pastorius innvented the fretless bass guitar.Brian Wilson 15:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Pastorius invented the instrument in the late 1960's, so this in no way pre-dates him. However, I can't find anything to support whether or not the actual instrument used here by Gilmour is fretless. BotleySmith 00:58, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Organs

The only organ they used was Farfisa? Farfisa is just an Italian manufacter, it sounds very strange to me that Hammond organs are almost never mentioned in Wikipedia, as most of articles regarding prog rock bands state. Brian Wilson 15:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Where do we claim that they used Farfisa exclusively? "Wright plays brief phrases on the Hammond organ, which slowly increase in intensity." BotleySmith 01:02, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] C# or B?

I'm not the one who made the most recent edit changing "high C#" to "high B", but I was curious. An earlier edit summary indicates that an official tab book lists the note as C#. Frequency analysis of the first note indicates that it is within 1 or 2 cents of B.

If someone would care to analyze the other notes in the introduction, we can determine definitively whether it is in fact a B, or whether the piano is merely one half-step out of tune and it is a C# sounding B. --G0zer 06:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

To my ears, the very first note sounds like a B. But the introduction is improvised overall around the key C# minor (as is a large part of the song). Try putting the album on and playing along on piano and see what you think. It's probably more obvious on Pompeii. --Ritchie333 16:44, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, then I'm afraid you don't have perfect pitch and/or your piano is out of tune. I counted the cycles. It's a B. —ptk✰fgs 17:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I just said in the above paragraph. --Ritchie333 17:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Instrumentation

What is this ?

A throbbing wind-like sound is introduced, created by Waters vibrating the strings of his bass guitar with a steel slide and feeding the signal through an Italian tape echo unit called the Binson Echorec. This starts increasing in volume as high pitched guitar 'screams' enter, resembling distorted whale song. They were actually created when Gilmour discovered the sound by accidentally reversing the cables to his wah pedal[citation needed]. Early live recordings of Pink Floyd performing the song "Embryo" in 1970 also feature this noise.

The Pink Floyd used oscillators dating from their first album, a Moog or Minimoog is used in Main Theme, from album More. With all due respect, they seem not even capable to remember in which The Wall songs Wright played, so I am not surprised that they deny to have ever used simple oscillators or synth before 1972.--Dr. Who 01:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The technique described is visible in Live at Pompeii IIRC. —ptk✰fgs 04:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
With regard to live performances in general, Pink FLoyd didn't use to take with them the whole arsenal of instruments that they used in recording studios, at least not before DSOTM. "One of these Days" is played very differently in Live at Pompeii: along the first part, Waters plays the same notes that he plays on the original LP, but Wright doesn't plays almost any chords on his organ, indeed such chords are played by Gilmour, that uses a technique similar to many Allan Holdsworth's works, and even to David Sylvian's in Gone to Earth 2nd CD. That technique changes guitars' sound so that it seems a keyboard: the signal enters a volume (loudness) pedal, then goes into an echo unit, the guitarist keeps the volume pedal on "mute" before and while he plays the strings, soon after the attack-delay stage, he increases the loudness on the pedal. The echo is added only to a attack-less sound, the metallic attack-decay of the guitar strings is not heard at all. The result is a sort of synth-like sound. I am not sure if Waters did the same with Echoes, but I am sure that in recording studios they used synths more often than they are willing to admit. Cheers to everyody. :-) Dr. Who 21:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Well, seeing as the live bootlegs from the early 70's (unadorned with overdubs, unlike Pompeii) sound EXACTLY the same as the LP, with no sign of synths in the lineup, I'm reluctant to admit that they went out of their way to produce on regular instruments what could easily have been done on synths. However, I recently come across someone (Danny Carey of the band Tool) who claims to have replicated the "eerie" patch on VCS3 used in the making of "Echoes". Maybe he knows something that I don't. By the bye, Gilmour personally went through the Wall multitracks to confirm who played each note of that album. You can find the result of his search here. BotleySmith 22:15, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
The point is that synths and effects were VERY HEAVY and BIG those days! Maybe only Kraftwerk and Keith Emerson dared to take almost everything with them in live performances. I have myself recorded a whole minisuite almost 15 years ago featuring my Cimar-Ibanez bass guitar (Fender Precision like) treated with a digital reverb (Boss RV-1, 12 bit) and played by mean of .... it's a secret! So, I am not saying that it is impossible, just that there are some subtle differences that I noticed, between those methods. Gigs shouldn't be regarded as a source of information in reference to studio work and techniques. What do you mean with this:"I recently come across someone (Danny Carey of the band Tool)..." ?Dr. Who 22:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
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