Composition
The song starts off with an acoustic guitar, restrung in a fashion similar to Nashville tuning, but with the low E string replaced by a high E tuned two full octaves higher than normal. It plays arpeggios over E and D minor ninth chords. The alternate stringing allows for adjacent pitches (for example, the E, F♯, and G of the Em9 chord) to ring out separately on separate strings throughout the arpeggio. A fretless bass enters, also played by guitarist David Gilmour. Next to join in is the Fender Rhodes electric piano by Wright, Gilmour's vocals, and overdubbed acoustic guitar and drums at the start of the second verse. In the middle is a guitar solo which is played over the main melody of the song "Another Brick in the Wall" (in E minor and A minor, rather than D minor). After the solo, Roger Waters takes over on lead vocals for the rest of the song. The bridge contains the chord sequence from "Bring the Boys Back Home", ending on an E minor chord as well. A reprise of the instrumental introduction follows, augmented by prominent ARP Quadra riffs and a faintly audible sound of a drill. At this point, there is a piece of indecipherable whispering from the left channel. Drums and vocals then join in. At about 3:23 into the song, a sonar-like sound, similar to the ping in "Echoes", is heard.
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Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
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“Since body and soul are radically different from one another and belong to different worlds, the destruction of the body cannot mean the destruction of the soul, any more than a musical composition can be destroyed when the instrument is destroyed.”
—Oscar Cullman. Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead? The Witness of the New Testament, ch. 1, Epworth Press (1958)