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"Echoes" is a song by Pink Floyd , including lengthy instrumental passages, sound effects, and rock Improvisation . INTRODUCTION Written by all four members of the group (.'' PERSONNEL
MUSICAL ANALYSIS "Echoes" ranks among the most ambitious and musically diverse Pink Floyd songs. The lyrics begin with a marine theme, inspired by the Sonar -like sound created by Wright when his grand piano's high C# was sent through a Leslie Rotating Speaker (this was reportedly done as an experiment at the very beginning of the ''Meddle'' recordings). Ad lib notes on the same Leslie-inflected piano fade in and gradually build up from seemingly random notes into a backing harmony. Gilmour then enters with a soft, mid-tempo Guitar Solo that features extensive use of his trademark expressive bends. Bass and then drums enter, as guitar and the Leslie-piano continue through the vocal passages of the first verse. These are harmonized by two voices, Gilmour's and Wright's, and assume a leisurely delivery. The opening lyrics place the listener at an underwater location where 'everything is green and submarine'. A Chord Progression of C#m, G#m, F#m, G# hints at musical themes explored in later albums. Gilmour plays a chromatic riff between verses, accompanied with A and C#m chords, which eventually segues into his second solo. This contains more of his conventional trademarks, featuring multiple guitars harmonizing at various points. The drumming becomes more energetic and the guitar is in a higher Register than in the introductory passage. This second solo eventually gives way to the song's first Break . The guitar solos and backing riffs are replaced by a drum and bass groove with an almost Funk -like chordal backing. The distinctive muted guitar part of this portion was reportedly inspired by the Beach Boys song " Good Vibrations ". http://brain-damage.co.uk/general/dg06z.html The third guitar solo begins over this with a less controlled feel and more prominent improvisation. Then, a distant second guitar starts accompanying the first with Distortion , Feedback , Wah Pedal and Whammy Bar effects. The latter technique provides this solo with exaggerated pitch bends that resemble those of a Slide Guitar (although Gilmour does not use one for this recording). Wright plays brief phrases on the Hammond organ, which slowly increase in intensity. These organ fills, along with the bass and drum groove, begin fading away as the lead guitar gradually becomes more distant. 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. Early live recordings of Pink Floyd performing the song "Embryo" in 1970 also feature this noise. In the second half of the "Echoes" interlude, the screams die down to become background noises under the sound of Gull s, which were added to the music from a tape archive recording (as had been done for some of the band's earlier songs, including "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun"). Eventually, the entire ensemble is faded into a sustained Farfisa organ chord underneath a reprise of the sonar-like 'pings' from the introduction. Volume swells on the guitar accompanied by sustained organ chords combine to create a stark contrast to the screams of the previous interlude. This texture strongly suggests the feeling of clearing air and receding winds after a violent storm. Gilmour starts strumming muted notes from B to F# to D to E (rhythmically reminiscent of Another Brick In The Wall ) on the guitar over a slowly-building organ solo. The drumming becomes a combination of quick ride cymbal work and tom-tom fills. Eventually, a glissando guitar riff with echo and distortion create a massive buildup of melodic tension, and in an anticlimactic moment, this segues into the soft vocal strains of the third verse. Unlike the previous verses, this is accompanied by intermittent guitar fills. After a final refrain, the song recedes into another wind-like noise: a tape loop of multi-tracked ascending male voice glissandos, similar to the effect of a Shepard Tone . A soft Call-and-response passage between guitar and keyboards retreats into more improvised phrases, before the chaotic 'winds' finally take over to end the song. EARLY VERSIONS The piece had its genesis in a collection of musical experiments written separately by each band member, referred to as "Nothing, Parts 1-24". Subsequent tapes of work in progress were labelled "The Son of Nothing" and "The Return of the Son of Nothing"; the latter title was eventually used to introduce the as-yet unreleased work during its first live performances in early 1971. During this stage of its development, the song's first verse had yet to be finalized. It originally referred to the meeting of two celestial bodies, but perhaps because of Waters' increasing concerns that Pink Floyd was being pigeonholed as a fan, proposed that the band call its new piece "We Won The Double " in celebration of Arsenal 's 1971 victory, and during a 1972 tour of Germany he jovially introduced it on two consecutive nights as "Looking Through the Knothole in Granny's Wooden Leg" and "The March of The Dam Busters ", respectively. http://support.uni-oldenburg.de/~floyd/english/echoes/meddle.html ALTERNATE LYRICS Lead vocals on . Later, an improved tape of the 5 June 1971 Berlin show surfaced. The quality is superior, although there is still excessive Reverb and an unrelated conversation in the audience near the taper masking Wright and Gilmour's voices. From the far more coherent-sounding lyrics, this transcription was made: Planets sitting face to face Bound to the ire of life, how sweet! If purposely we might embrace The perfect union deep in space Ever might this once relent And give us leave to shine as one Our two lights ''(unintelligible three syllables; "Singing better"?) Than one light can And in that longing to be one The parting sun's sound is gone For soon you've got to travel on And on and on, around the sun Additionally, there is a recording from the 20 June 1971 concert in Rome. Some lines are still inaudible, but there is a large difference lyrically compared to the Berlin show 15 days before. The first verse is as follows: Planets, meeting face to face, Unto the other cried: "How sweet! If, painlessly, we might embrace The perfect union deep in space, Heaven might this once relent And give us need to shine as one Our two lights here for every one Night's splendour." And in that longing to be one, The parting summons' sound is gone, I see you've got to travel on, For on and on, around the sun. A third recording is extant from 15 May 1971, taken at the Crystal Palace in London during the 1971 Garden Party festival. Like most early recordings of "Echoes", the tape is lacking clarity and there is significant Tape Hiss present. However, the vocals at the performance had been Mixed much louder than the instruments, so the lyrics are more audible: Planets meeting face to face, one to the other cry, how sweet, if endlessly we might embrace a perfect union deep in space, if heaven might this once relent and give us leave to shine as one, our two lights here forever one light blended, then in that coming to be one the parting summons' sound is drawn. I see you've got to travel on, and on and on around the sun. LIVE PERFORMANCES "Echoes" was first performed in public on April 22, 1971, entitled "The Return of the Son of Nothing", using the unrevised 'planetary' lyrics. These remained in place until sometime in late July, and the song was first introduced as "Echoes" on the sixth of August, 1971. It was staple of Pink Floyd's live performances from 1971 until 1975, and was also played eleven times in 1987, near the beginning of the '' A Momentary Lapse Of Reason '' tour. Most recently, David Gilmour has performed the song on his 2006 tour. Unlike the ''Atom Heart Mother Suite'', it was relatively easy for Pink Floyd to reproduce "Echoes" onstage (as can be seen in '' Live At Pompeii '') without requiring additional musicians, though the swapping of keyboard sounds sometimes proved problematic. Originally, Rick Wright would start the song by playing the grand piano through a Leslie speaker, then switch to the Hammond organ just before the first verse, switch again to the Farfisa Organ during the 'seagull' middle section, back to the Hammond again for the last verse, and finally to piano for the outro. This required Roger Waters to provide the piano 'pings' at their re-entry after the middle section. The Farfisa was later dropped from the live keyboard setup and all its parts played on the Hammond instead. Starting in 1974, a saxophone solo from Dick Parry was added directly after the first verse, which was augmented by backing vocals from Venetta Fields and Carlena Williams. All three of these artists had been added to Pink Floyd's touring party to take part in the Dark Side Of The Moon performances. The last time the song would be played by all four members of Pink Floyd was at the Knebworth concert to close their 1975 world tour. During performances given by the 'three-man' Pink Floyd in 1987, "Echoes" was played in a much shorter form than usual, and often as part of a medley with "Signs of Life". It was ultimately dropped because David Gilmour did not feel 'right' about singing the lyrics and his backing artists played its music without the touches of improvisation that make "Echoes" a powerfully affecting piece. For Gilmour's 2006 tour in support of '' On An Island '', Wright was part of the touring band and performed his original harmony vocals and keyboard parts. Their arrangement of the song was close to full-length, clocking in at around 20 minutes. While Dick Parry is also part of the tour, his saxophone solo was dropped. These performances were greeted with much enthusiasm by fans and critics reviewing the concerts. SYNCHRONIZATION It is rumouredhttp://www.synchronicityarkive.com/node/152 that "Echoes" synchronizes with when played concurrently with the final segment (entitled "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite"). "Echoes" was released 3 years after the film and is 23 minutes and 31 seconds in length, the same as the "Infinite" segment. Sounds in the middle part of the song suggest to some listeners the feeling of travelling through an alien world. The drone vocalizations heard in the final scenes of ''2001'' seem to match with the discordant bass vibrations in the middle of "Echoes" as well the choral glissandos of its finale. Some argue that there are moments when the song and film soundtrack are nearly indistinguishable. Another notable link occurs during a change in scene at precisely the moment when guitar and keyboards crescendo as the lyrics re-enter for the final verse. Almost as a bonus, the early lyrics contain references to planets, which seems entirely suitable for the film's depiction of Jupiter and its moons. using CGI . Although no member of the band has ever declared the synchronization intentional and the technology to play back film in a recording studio circa 1971 would have been expensive and difficult for the band to acquire, Roger Waters is sometimes quoted as saying that the band's failure to contribute music on the film's official score was his "greatest regret". Kubrick would later ask the band if he could use portions of the ''Atom Heart Mother Suite'' in his film A Clockwork Orange . Pink Floyd turned him down on the grounds that the music would sound silly if excerpted out of context; nevertheless, a copy of the album Atom Heart Mother is displayed behind the counter of a record shop in the film. Years later, in an interesting postscript to the Kubrick/Floyd connection, Roger Waters asked the filmmaker's permission to include sound clips from ''Space Odyssey'' into his 1992 album '' Amused To Death ''. Waters' intention was to sample the dialogue and breathing sounds from the scene immediately prior to "Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite", when Dave Bowman deactivates the computer HAL 9000 . These were to be mixed in during the instrumental introduction to "Perfect Sense, Part One". After much deliberation, permission was declined in the interest of upholding Kubrick's own precedent of not granting such requests. Instead, Waters inserted his own shouting, whispering and breathing in a Backwards Message that refers to Kubrick by his Christian name. However, a Live Recording from his 2000 solo tour uses the original film dialogue as Waters intended. PLAGIARISM In interviews promoting ''Amused to Death'', Waters asserted that Andrew Lloyd Webber had plagiarized themes from "Echoes" for sections of the Musical '' The Phantom Of The Opera ''; nevertheless, he decided that life was too short to bother filing a lawsuit regarding the matter. REFERENCES |