Great Gig in the Sky pitch change

[Creek]

Alan Parsons had experiance working with the Beatles and the Hollies early in his career.

[Peter Beasley]

Of course it was a deliberate artistic choice. This is The Floyd after all. Next thing is someone will be asking why words came out backwards on 'Empty Spaces'.

[mosespa]

Kind of off-topic...kind of not...

Someone once posted a picture of Pink Floyd playing live, which showed that Wright had a lap steel guitar mixed in with his keyboards. The original poster wanted to know what that was about.

According to the ever-reliable (lol) Wikipedia:

In live performances of the song during the band's 1974-1975 tour, David Gilmour would play both lap steel guitar and the Hammond organ, allowing Richard Wright to concentrate solely on piano (his keyboards were arranged where he couldn't play both). David's pedal steel for Great Gig was located accordingly beside Rick's Hammond.

[Parrot of Doom]

Parsons was tape-op on AHM (I believe)

No, I just find it curious that none of the published material I've read (Harris, Povey, Blake, Schaffner, Mabbett etc) has cared to mention it. It must have occurred at the mixing stage, if it was a mastering problem the remasters, particularly the Mobile Fidelity remasters, would have eliminated it.

[my breakfast.]

I think some people in this thread need to go on an extensive journey of self-examination. Its one tiny bump in an entire album's worth of music. Who can truely say "Of course it was a deliberate artistic choice" without sounding like you are instantly jumping to the defence of a band that sold so many copies of that album I doubt anybody really cared.

Its a funny mental image, Pink Floyd in the studio, doobies and oysters a plenty.

Dave: "I think the spoken word extracts are too loud, and there isn't enough reverb"
Roger: "I think the spoken word extracts are superb, lets turn them up"
Rick: "Can I get an insignificant little pitch bend at the end of Great Gig please?"

Pitch bends and other glitches like that happen. You can hear Hendrix cough on Purple Haze. The Stones' 19th Nervous Breakdown has a pretty extreme pitch wobble on the fadeout....

Perhaps Pink Floyd didn't notice this little glitch when the first string of pressings was released. Perhaps is so synonymous with the track in their heads that they now keep it on every new release of TDSOTM even though you could iron out that glitch easily with protools.

A pitch change like that sounds a lot like an inconsistency in the motor speed within a tape machine at some stage of the recording/mixing process.

[mosespa]

Its a funny mental image, Pink Floyd in the studio, doobies and oysters a plenty.

Dave: "I think the spoken word extracts are too loud, and there isn't enough reverb"
Roger: "I think the spoken word extracts are superb, lets turn them up"
Rick: "Can I get an insignificant little pitch bend at the end of Great Gig please?"

Nick: "You know what would be fun? If we sequenced the whole thing in such a way that it matched up with The Wizard of Oz. I think that'd be quite nice."

I think some people in this thread need to go on an extensive journey of self-examination.

Awesome!

[Creek]

Nick: "You know what would be fun? If we sequenced the whole thing in such a way that it matched up with The Wizard of Oz. I think that'd be quite nice."

Good one...

[danielcaux]

Pitch bends and other glitches like that happen. Perhaps Pink Floyd didn't notice this little glitch when the first string of pressings was released. Perhaps is so synonymous with the track in their heads that they now keep it on every new release of TDSOTM even though you could iron out that glitch easily with protools.

A pitch change like that sounds a lot like an inconsistency in the motor speed within a tape machine at some stage of the recording/mixing process.

Was it Guthrie, Sax or Parsons who remixed the end of GGITS, crossfaded it with Money, when they were going to release DSoTM on CD for the first time? or was it a remaster? If they were going to change the end of the song, and they did, I'm pretty sure they would have noticed that glitch and correct it, if it was not an intended pitch change. But perhaps it was accidental but they thought it sounded OK and leave it, who knows.

I like who it sounds anyway.

[oz1701]

i always thought it was cool - like the tape running out at the end of knife edge, and king crimson did it too. I'm sure it was deliberately left in but that it was a happy accident.

I'm sure they would have fixed it otherwise.

[Peter Beasley]

Pink Floyd spent six months recording this album. They are known for meticulous attention to detail and liberal use of sound effects, voices and quirkiness. I find it inconceivable that no one noticed the pitch change during playback, mixing, editing or mastering, leaving it to be left in accidentally.

I believe it was deliberate manipulation of the tape to make the pitch rise and fall exactly a semi-tone - to give the attentive listener a little wake up on the dreamy long fade.

[J Ed]

so does it relate to the first cash register ring, which is much more extreme wakeup?
does anything analagous happen with the drones in prototypical 1972 versions, as heard on bootleg audience recording?

[my breakfast.]

The duration of the album is 42:59, just to get everything in perspective.

During live versions initially the track was much different. However consistent with all live 1972/1973 versions Rick was playing a piano of some sort, and it is pretty much impossible to make one change pitch on the fly, especially for such a small length of time.

To me it still sounds accidental. The pitch increases a semi-tone, fair enough, but it returns to normal pitch in a stair-step manner, not a clean sweep. Its also possible that tape machines with various speed settings would have a setting for changing pitch in certain incruments, such as semi-tones for ease of dubbing tracks etc, though this is not my domain of expertise.

[Creek]

The duration of the album is 42:59, just to get everything in perspective.

During live versions initially the track was much different. However consistent with all live 1972/1973 versions Rick was playing a piano of some sort, and it is pretty much impossible to make one change pitch on the fly, especially for such a small length of time.

To me it still sounds accidental. The pitch increases a semi-tone, fair enough, but it returns to normal pitch in a stair-step manner, not a clean sweep. Its also possible that tape machines with various speed settings would have a setting for changing pitch in certain incruments, such as semi-tones for ease of dubbing tracks etc, though this is not my domain of expertise.

Accidental or not,
it was clearly their intention to leave it in. With the production value of the rest of the album, I just can't see them leaving something they felt was undesirable. And with as many times as they listened to the playback there is no way they didn't hear it.

[Peter Beasley]

During live versions initially the track was much different. However consistent with all live 1972/1973 versions Rick was playing a piano of some sort, and it is pretty much impossible to make one change pitch on the fly, especially for such a small length of time.

Maybe I've missed something, but what's live versions got to do with it?

[J Ed]

I had asked if anything analogous occurs in live versions, particularly the prototypical 1972 versions
as possible evidence that the effect was something deliberate
Im tonedeaf so I cant hear it myself, but what Im wondering is does the altered pitch lead logically into that first cash register ring