Record­ed at Abbey Road stu­dios by Alan Par­sons, who had pre­vi­ous­ly worked on The Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road and Let It Be, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon broke almost as much son­ic ground as those albums. “The band chose the world-renowned stu­dio, as it was home to, at the time, some of the most advanced record­ing tech­nol­o­gy ever pro­duced – includ­ing the EMI TG12345 mix­ing con­sole,” writes Antho­ny Sfirse at Enmore Audio.

Par­sons made taste­ful yet total­ly spaced-out use, as the Poly­phon­ic video above shows, of syn­the­siz­ers, stereo mul­ti­track record­ing, and tape loops. Then there’s David Gilmour’s leg­endary gui­tar tone—so essen­tial to a cer­tain kind of music (and to Pink Floyd cov­er bands) that gui­tar ped­al design­er Robert Kee­ley has built an entire “work­sta­tion” around the gui­tar sounds on the album, even though most play­ers, includ­ing Gilmour, will tell you that tone lives in the fin­gers.

The album is a per­fect syn­the­sis of the band’s strengths: epic song­writ­ing meets epic exper­i­men­ta­tion meets epic musicianship—three musi­cal direc­tions that don’t always play well togeth­er. The late six­ties and sev­en­ties brought increas­ing com­plex­i­ty and the­atri­cal­i­ty to rock and roll, but Pink Floyd did some­thing extra­or­di­nary with Dark Side. They wrote acces­si­ble, riff-heavy, blues-based tunes that also set the bar for philo­soph­i­cal­ly exis­ten­tial, wist­ful, melan­choly, sar­don­ic, funky, soul­ful, psy­che­delia, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing one for the oth­er.

How the band went from cul­ti­vat­ing a cult under­ground to spend­ing 741 weeks—or 14 years—at the top of Billboard’s albums chart after the release of their “high con­cept lyri­cal mas­ter­piece” in 1973 is the sub­ject of a series of eight videos pro­duced by Poly­phon­ic. See the first, which cov­ers “Speak to Me/Breath,” at the top, and oth­ers below. New videos will be released on the Poly­phon­ic YouTube chan­nel soon.

The approach is an admirable one. Too often the great­ness of clas­sic albums like Dark Side of the Moon is tak­en for grant­ed and glossed too quick­ly. The album’s mas­sive com­mer­cial and crit­i­cal suc­cess seems proof enough. We may not know much about Pink Floyd our­selves, but we acknowl­edge they’ve been thor­ough­ly vet­ted by the experts.

But if we want to know our­selves why crit­ics, musi­cians, and fans alike have heaped so much praise on the 1973 album—and shelled out hard-earned cash by the mil­lions for records, con­certs, and merchandise—we might learn quite a lot from this series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Pink Floyd Films a Con­cert in an Emp­ty Audi­to­ri­um, Still Try­ing to Break Into the U.S. Charts (1970)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

There may be no instru­ment in the clas­si­cal reper­toire more mul­ti­di­men­sion­al than the cel­lo. Its deep silky voice mod­u­lates from moans to exal­ta­tions in a sin­gle phrase—conveying dig­ni­fied melan­choly and a pro­found sense of awe. Hear­ing a skilled cel­list inter­pret great solo music for cel­lo can approach the feel­ing of a reli­gious expe­ri­ence. And no piece of solo music for cel­lo is greater, or more pop­u­lar­ly known, than Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach’s Cel­lo Suite No. 1 in G Major. Bet­ter known as the “Pre­lude,” the first of six Baroque suites Bach com­posed between 1717 and 1723, the piece has appeared, notes the Vox Ear­worm video above, “in hun­dreds of TV shows and films.”

You’ve heard it at wed­ding and funer­als, in restau­rants, in the lob­bies of hotels. “It’s so famous, that if you don’t remem­ber its title, “you can just google ‘that famous cel­lo song’ and it will invari­ably pop up.” What is it about this piece that so appeals? Its con­stant, rhyth­mic move­ment con­ceals “what’s most com­pelling about it”—its sim­plic­i­ty. “The whole thing just takes up two pages of music, and it’s com­posed for an instru­ment with only four strings.” The Ear­worm video goes on to explain why this enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar, decep­tive­ly sim­ple piece is “con­sid­ered a mas­ter­piece that world-class cel­lists… have revered for years.”

Bach’s cel­lo suites “are the Ever­est of [the cello’s] reper­to­ry,” writes Zachary Woolfe at The New York Times, “offer­ing a guide to near­ly every­thing a cel­lo can do—as well as, many believe, chart­ing a remark­ably com­plete anato­my of emo­tion and aspi­ra­tion.” World-class cel­list Yo-Yo Ma has in fact been trav­el­ing the world play­ing these pieces to bring peo­ple togeth­er in his “Days of Action.” He recent­ly released the video below of the Pre­lude, demon­strat­ing the out­come of a life­time of engage­ment with Bach’s cel­lo music.

Ma plays this piece as “the musi­cian of our civic life,” writes Woolfe, appear­ing at col­lec­tive moments of both grief and cel­e­bra­tion, “to make us cry and then soothe us.” What we learn in the Vox video is that the cel­lo suites come from music designed to lit­er­al­ly move its lis­ten­ers. “With­in each suite are var­i­ous move­ments named for dances.” Cel­list Alisa Weil­er­stein demon­strates the Prelude’s beau­ti­ful sim­plic­i­ty and helps “decon­struct” the piece’s ide­al suit­abil­i­ty for the instru­ment “clos­est in range and abil­i­ty to express to the human voice.”

What’s inter­est­ing about Bach’s six cel­lo suites is that they were writ­ten by a non-cel­list, “the first non-cel­list com­pos­er to give the cel­lo its first big break as a lead actor,” writes musi­col­o­gist Ann Wittstruck. He drew on Baroque social dances for the form of the pieces, which increase in com­plex­i­ty as they go. The pre­lude is loos­er, with arpeg­gios cir­cling around an open bass note that gives the first half “grav­i­tas.”

As the piece shifts away to the dom­i­nant D major, then to “cloudy” dimin­ished and minor chords, its mood shifts too; with­in sim­ple har­monies play a com­plex of emo­tion­al ten­sions. Its sec­ond half wan­ders through an impro­visato­ry, dis­so­nant pas­sage on its way back to D major. Weil­er­stein walks through each tech­nique, includ­ing a dis­ori­ent­ing run down the cello’s neck called “bar­i­o­lage,” which, she says, is meant to cre­ate a “feel­ing of dis­or­der.”

Per­haps that’s only one of the rea­sons Bach’s Pre­lude res­onates with us so deeply in a frag­ment­ed world, and fits Ma’s har­mo­nious inten­tions so well. It’s a piece that acknowl­edges dis­so­nance and dis­or­der even as it sur­rounds them with the joy­ful, styl­ized move­ments of social dances. Music crit­ic Wil­frid Mellers described Bach’s cel­lo suites as “mono­phon­ic music where­in a man has cre­at­ed a dance of God.” But they were not rec­og­nized by his con­tem­po­raries with such high praise.

Com­posed “just before Bach moved to Leipzig,” Woolfe writes, “the cel­lo suites, now musi­cal and emo­tion­al touch­stones, were lit­tle known until the 1900s. It was thought, even by some who knew of them, that they were mere­ly études, noth­ing you’d want to per­form in pub­lic.” Now, the most famous cellist—and per­haps most famous clas­sic icon—in the world is trav­el­ing to six con­ti­nents, play­ing Bach’s cel­lo suites in 36 very pub­lic con­certs. Learn more about his Bach project here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works. Bril­liant.

Watch J.S. Bach’s “Air on the G String” Played on the Actu­al Instru­ments from His Time

Down­load the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach for Free

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Hope you enjoy your week­end…

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via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Ital­ian Street Musi­cian Plays Amaz­ing Cov­ers of Pink Floyd Songs, Right in Front of the Pan­theon in Rome

Icon­ic Songs Played by Musi­cians Around the World: “Stand by Me,” “Redemp­tion Song,” “Rip­ple” & More

Record­ed music his­to­ry is filled with instru­ments that appeared for a brief time, then were nev­er heard from again—relegated to the dust­bin of too-quirky, heavy, awk­ward, tonal­ly-unpleas­ant, or impos­si­ble-to-tune-and-main­tain. Then there are instruments—once they assumed their basic shape and form—that have per­sist­ed large­ly unchanged for cen­turies. The Mel­lotron falls into nei­ther of these cat­e­gories. But it may in time tran­scend them both in a strange way.

“Of all of the strange instru­ments that’ve worked the edges of pop­u­lar music,” writes Gareth Bran­wyn at Boing Boing, “the Mel­lotron is prob­a­bly the odd­est. Basi­cal­ly an upright organ cab­i­net filled the tape heads and record­ed tape strips that you trig­ger through the key­board, the Mel­lotron is like some crazy one-off con­trap­tion that caught on and actu­al­ly got man­u­fac­tured.”

First made in Eng­land in 1963, it appeared in var­i­ous mod­els through­out the sev­en­ties and eight­ies. It has reap­peared in the nineties and 2000s in improved and upgrad­ed ver­sions, all lead­ing up to what Sound on Sound called “the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed Mel­lotron ever,” the 2007 M4000. In the video above Alli­son Stout from Bell Tone Synth Works, a music shop in Philadel­phia, PA, demon­strates a much ear­li­er, far less advanced M400 from 1976.

Not only did the Mel­lotron beat the odds of remain­ing an unwork­able pro­to­type; the pro­to-sam­pler became a psy­che­del­ic sig­na­ture: from “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” to the Moody Blues and David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” It pop­u­lat­ed ear­ly prog rock, thanks to Yes’s Rick Wake­man, who played on Bowie’s space rock clas­sic in 1969, and to Ian McDon­ald, who fell for the instru­ment that same year as a found­ing mem­ber of King Crim­son. (See enthu­si­as­tic YouTu­ber “Doc­tor Mix” play Mel­lotron parts from well-known songs above.)

The instrument’s slight­ly cheesy, Lawrence-Welk-orches­tra-like sounds some­how fit per­fect­ly with the loose, spa­cious instru­men­ta­tion of prog and psych rock; its sound will live as long as the music of The Bea­t­les, Bowie, and every­one else who put a micro­phone in front of a Mel­lotron. Yet in most of its iter­a­tions, the Mel­lotron has lacked the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a melod­ic instru­ment that sur­vives the test of time. It is finicky and prone to fre­quent break­downs. It is lim­it­ed in its tonal range to a series of tape record­ings of a lim­it­ed num­ber of instru­ments.

In the case of the Mel­lotron M400 at the top, those instru­ments are vio­lin, flute, and cel­lo. Do the sounds com­ing from the Mel­lotron in any way improve upon or even approx­i­mate the qual­i­ties of their orig­i­nals? Of course not. Why would musi­cians choose to record with a Mel­lotron at a time when ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers were becom­ing afford­able, portable, and capa­ble of an expres­sive range of tones? The answer is sim­ple. Noth­ing else makes the weird, warm, war­bly, whirring, and entire­ly oth­er­world­ly sound of a Mel­lotron, and noth­ing ever will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Mel­lotron: A Groovy 1965 Demon­stra­tion of the “Musi­cal Com­put­er” Used by The Bea­t­les, Moody Blues & Oth­er Psy­che­del­ic Pop Artists

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

We here at Open Cul­ture love to see how well known and well loved songs pop up all over the globe in new and inter­est­ing forms. These cov­ers could be played on very un-rock instru­ments, or on ones we’ve nev­er heard of. We’ve seen schoolkids sing songs that their grand­par­ents loved, and we’ve heard senior cit­i­zens singing death met­al. Music unites us in trou­bling times, and we need more of it.

The above video from Play­ing for Change imag­ines a world where peo­ple from all four cor­ners of the earth play and sing a song togeth­er, and makes it real through the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy and inter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

It start­ed in 2005 when Mark John­son heard street musi­cian Roger Rid­ley singing Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me” in San­ta Mon­i­ca. Struck by Ridley’s emo­tive voice, he returned with record­ing equip­ment and began a process of bring­ing the world to join in. John­son record­ed Grand­pa Elliott in New Orleans shar­ing a verse, Wash­board Chaz pro­vid­ing wash­board rhythm, then Clarence Bekker in Ams­ter­dam tak­ing a verse, the Twin Eagle Drum Group pro­vid­ing a Native Amer­i­can rhythm, and so on. By the end of the video, John­son had racked up fre­quent fli­er miles and stitched togeth­er a cohe­sive track.

Years lat­er, the Play­ing for Change non-prof­it has accu­mu­lat­ed an impres­sive back cat­a­log of cov­er songs and has helped fund 15 music pro­grams world­wide.

One take­away is this: the world agrees on Bob Mar­ley. Whether he’s being polit­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al, every­body seems to get it. Here’s “War” fea­tur­ing Bono. Also see “Redemp­tion Song” here:

Oth­er stars have done guest spots to bring aware­ness to the project. Bun­ny Wail­er, Manu Chao and Bush­man singing “Soul Rebel”:

Most recent­ly, they record­ed “The Weight” with Rob­bie Robert­son and Ringo Starr:

And we always enjoy this ver­sion of the Dead­’s “Rip­ple.”

The videos are heart­warm­ing, but the music stands by itself with­out the glo­be­trot­ting. For those who need a good vibe injec­tion to start 2020, start here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Music Is Tru­ly a Uni­ver­sal Lan­guage: New Research Shows That Music World­wide Has Impor­tant Com­mon­al­i­ties

BBC Launch­es World Music Archive

Behold the MusicMap: The Ulti­mate Inter­ac­tive Geneal­o­gy of Music Cre­at­ed Between 1870 and 2016

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.