Effect on Pink Floyd's "One of These Days" off the album Meddle

[vanessa]

I'm trying to find out what that effect (the on/off tremolo sound) that is used on bass, guitar, keyboard? I heard Roger Waters once say something to the affect that "We used this crazy Italian effect pedal that we found in our travels a BLANK-BLANK". I don't remember the name, or remember the interview...

Bummer...

[george]

wouldn't be too hard to replicate with a 555-based timer and a JFET set up as a switch?

[Ry]

I keep meaning to find a copy of 'Live at Pompeii' and look into this.  I remember a decent shot of Gilmore's pedals during that song, but I never payed much attention to it.

Ry

[LP Hovercraft]

It is a Binson Echorec.  He is doing a clever palm muted subdivision of every other note within the triplet, but echoed.  You can do this carefully with the same time setting as the beginning part, that's all. 

[KORGULL]

More info:
The bass is double tracked; Gilmour plays bass in one channel, Waters plays bass in the other channel.

Gilmour says:(taken from the book: Pink Floyd through the eyes of...the band, its fans, friends, and foes)

For some reason we decided to do a double track of the bass...The first bass is me. A bar later Roger joins in on the other side of the stereo picture.
We didn't have a spare set of strings for the spare bass guitar, so the second bass is very dull-sounding (laughs)

Also...(From the book: Another Brick in the Wall)...

A track that grew directly from a chance experiment in the studio, when Waters decided to plug his bass through Gilmour's Binson Echorec tape delay system.
Engineer John Leckie observed its genesis, "The track was based around that bass riff which Roger worked out using the Binson. He had the straight bass through one amp and the Binson signal coming out of another, and a DI line into the mixing desk. He fiddled around with the tape speed on the Binson until the echo was in exact double time with the bass line he was playing." The result was the clipped, hypnotic groove-laden bassline to this track. Dave Gilmour then double tracked Waters's original riff, and the two tracks were panned to opposite sides of the stereo spectrum. Originally this dual bass sound was so arresting that the piece was going to be made up using the sound of the bass only...

[niftydog]

I have pulled off a decent replication of this bass line using a simple delay. Set the delay to a time equivalent to the that between the first and third note of the triplets, then you play across the beat - playing fours against threes. In other words, the delay does the triplets while you play in fours.

What happens is this;
- you play the first note of the first triplet and the delay plays the third note of the first triplet - then (with delay regeneration) the second note of the second triplet.
- In the second triplet, you play the first note again, the "first triplet" delay fills the second note, then the "second triplet" delay fills the third note.

For the "bridge" section I play staccato triplets leaving the delay in circuit and the result is similar to what's on the record.

Sounds complex, but it's actually very easy when you're not trying to write down how it works! I think you'll find that this is similar to how Guy Pratt emulates the sound on Delicate Sound Of Thunder and possibly the other live concerts - although I wouldn't be surprised to find that they sample and trigger the original bridge bass part for authenticity!

[vanessa]

I don't want to play the song. Thank you for your help on that one. Niftydog you’re right on the money for using staccato triplets with the delay on. I can see how that could do it in a live situation. No I really wanted to build the pedal.

The part I am talking about is the middle part I think it's a bass guitar basically solo, there are some keyboards doing some Dr. Who style space noises then I think it was Nick Mason comes in with a track of his voice in slowed down saying "one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces", right after that the rest of the band comes in.

This is not the Binson Echorec or a tricky combo of this and palm muting. I read an interview with Waters talking about the effect that produced the On/Off tremolo that was used to get that effect. They used the Echorec on the beginning of the song on the basses. They may have used it in the background on this bridge part but this is not the main part of the effect you are hearing. Infact if you listen to the song they cut away from the parts they were doing earlier in the song to a solo track (bass?) with this effect on it.

[RDV]

I was just playing that bass part on my PT80 delay last night.

The effect Vanessa's refering to is a EMS VCS 3 synth with a analog input.

RDV

[vanessa]

I was just playing that bass part on my PT80 delay last night.

The effect Vanessa's refering to is a EMS VCS 3 synth with a analog input.

RDV

It may be the synth (in fact I think your right on that), but running into this effect that Waters describes. I hate to come off sounding strong headed on this one, but I do remember this interview and I even believe hearing it again at a later date as well. I also remember him going into more detail about this Italian effect saying they really thought it was way out there and wanted to use it for something but they never could find the right fit. He said it sat around for a long time until “One of These Days” came along. Maybe Waters was just throwing a curve at us?

[RDV]

From a David Gilmour Interview:

GW: Another technical point: the instrumental "One of these Days" was born when someone plugged a bass into a "Binson Echorec". What is this device?

DG: The Binson was an Italian made delay unit. It was strange because it didn't utilize tape loops. Instead, it used a metal recording wheel. [Binson's Echorec was basically a wire recorder - a precursor of magnetic tape. It had six knobs: an input volume, on to control the length, volume and tone of a swell, a three position selector knob. The selector accessed either echo (one repeat), repeat (more than one repeat) or swell (reverbs cleverly devised by feeding the outputs of the heads back to themselves), while the switching knob accessed 12 variations of these - GW Ed.]

You could get some wonderful delay effects that aren't attainable on anything that's been made since "One of these Days" evolved from some of my experiments with the Binson, as did "Echoes" [also from Meddle]. One day, Roger decided to take some of the techniques that I was developing and try them out himself on bass. And he came up with that basic riff that we all worked on and turned into "One of these Days".

For the middle section, another piece of technology came into play: an H&H amp with vibrato. I set the vibrato to more or less the same tempo as the delay. But the delay was in 3/4 increments of the beat and the vibrato went with the beat. I just played the bass through it and made up that little section, which we then stuck on to a bit of tape and edited in. The tape splices were then camouflaged with cymbal crashes.

RDV

[vanessa]

Wow that's cool. So it's H&H amp with vibrato that's doing that? How could I duplicate that on/off tremolo?

[The Tone God]

Just alittle too late to give the answer but it has been answer. Nowadays I think live Dave uses some rack mount multi-effects unit that has a very choppy tremolo for the part. I forget which one right now but it should be around the net somewhere.

As for duplication build a tremolo with something like a square wave LFO. CA trem does it.

...I think it was Nick Mason comes in with a track of his voice in slowed down saying "one of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces", right after that the rest of the band comes in.

Ah this is a little piece of Floyd lore. The voice is not Nick Mason but that of a radio DJ/critic, some rumours suggest it was Mr. "Whos Pink ?" but most believe not, that went on some tirade proclaiming to Pink Floyd he was going to "cut you into little pieces". The band got a kick out of it and took the tape, slowed it down, and slapped it on the open track of the album to piss off the critic. Kinda funny I think.

Andrew

[The Tone God]

double post

[Doug_H]

Ah this is a little piece of Floyd lore. The voice is not Nick Mason but that of a radio DJ/critic, some rumours suggest it was Mr. "Whos Pink ?" but most believe not, that went on some tirade proclaiming to Pink Floyd he was going to "cut you into little pieces". The band got a kick out of it and took the tape, slowed it down, and slapped it on the open track of the album to piss off the critic. Kinda funny I think.

Andrew

Actually the "monster voice" in OOTD is Nick Mason. There was a DJ named Jimmy (somebody) who used to criticize them a lot back in those days. They used to play tapes of him all spliced up ("cut into little pieces") in their concerts as kind of a joke. It may have been as an intro to OOTD which they were developing from a jam at the time. I don't remember and would have to look it up. In any case, the tapes and OOTD were all part of the same joke- kind of taking a shot at their 'favorite' DJ...

Doug

[The Tone God]

Ah. I heard they slowed it down so to reduce the likelyness of a lawsuit. Maybe for the album they re-recorded the line with Mason and slowed it down as to have the same effect without the lawsuit issue when the album comes out. I have seen one of the jams of OOTD where it had a the original voice. Cool stuff.

Andrew

[vanessa]

I heard that Waters and the Floyd are toying with the idea of going into the studio to record a new Floyd album.

[Bernardduur]

Wow that's cool. So it's H&H amp with vibrato that's doing that? How could I duplicate that on/off tremolo?

Buy or build a tremolo pedal

That stupid vibrato is a tremolo

[The Tone God]

I heard that Waters and the Floyd are toying with the idea of going into the studio to record a new Floyd album.

Yeah the rumour keeps bouncing around. I don't know. When I saw them perform at the Live 8 benefit Dave didn't look too thrilled. There may have been other reasons for that and of course I have my thories but I won't go into it.

My only concern is that they put out a crap album and end up being like all the other re-uniting has-beens.

Andrew

[vanessa]

I heard that Waters and the Floyd are toying with the idea of going into the studio to record a new Floyd album.

Yeah the rumour keeps bouncing around. I don't know. When I saw them perform at the Live 8 benefit Dave didn't look too thrilled. There may have been other reasons for that and of course I have my thories but I won't go into it.

My only concern is that they put out a crap album and end up being like all the other re-uniting has-beens.

Andrew

I saw it on MTV News, were Roger Waters was interviewed for this months Playboy magazine. He said they are very interested in getting into the studio possibly to record a new Floyd album, but waters reservations are that Gilmour fights about everything in the studio. He said something to the affect that "There is not going to be another Floyd album if it's going to be the hassle like The Wall, Wish You Were Here, and Animals was, but sometimes hassles have spectacular results".

I saw the look on Gilmour's face at Live 8. It was of both happiness and sarcasm. All the guys in the band seemed very happy to be performing again with Waters, but Waters's singing was horrible. You can tell it's been a while. I think give him a few gigs and rehearsals he'll be back in the swing of things.

[vanessa]

As for duplication build a tremolo with something like a square wave LFO. CA trem does it.

Do you mean a EA Tremolo?