PINK FLOYD MEDDLE

The composition uses many progressive and unconventional musical effects.The ping sound heard at the beginning of the song was created as the result of an experiment at the very beginning of the Meddle sessions. It was produced through amplifying a grand piano and sending the signal through a Leslie rotating speaker. Gilmour used the slide for certain sound effects on the studio recording, and for the introduction in live performances from 1971 to 1975. A throbbing wind-like sound is created by Waters vibrating the strings of his bass guitar with a steel slide and feeding the signal through a Binson Echorec. The high pitched electronic 'screams', resembling a distorted whale song, were discovered by Gilmour when the cables were accidentally reversed to his wah pedal.[1] The "choral" sounding segment in the middle of the song was created by placing two tape recorders in opposite corners of a room; the main chord tapes of the song were then fed into one recorder and played back while at the same time recording. The other recorder was then also set to play what was being recorded; this created a delay between both recordings, heavily influencing the structure of the chords while at the same time giving it a very "wet" and "echoey" feel.[2] Harmonic "whistles" can be heard produced by Wright pulling certain drawbars in and out on the Hammond organ. Rooks 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"). The 2nd half of the song where Gilmour plays muted notes on the guitar over Wright's slowly-building organ solo was inspired by the Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations".[3] The song concludes with a rising Shepard-Risset glissando.