For this exercise we were tasked with finding keywords referring to the music production in Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd within a particular article, and then to research the concepts behind these keywords and gain further understanding of the technology employed. The key pieces of equipment and musical concepts which captured my attention throughout the article were as follows.
Tape manipulation is an important concept, though not used much any more it was a very prevalent technique at one time. It is essentially manipulating the recorded sound by cutting the tape it has been recorded on and joining it together in a new place, removing parts or altering the material in some way through physical manipulation of the tape itself. http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/tape-manipulation/5660
Synthesisers were also mentioned and have of course been an incredibly integral part of music production since their inception, continuing to be used in the majority of popular music to this day. A synthesiser itself is an electronic instrument which produces audible sound through digital or analogue processing. To be able to produce sound a synthesiser needs to be made up of an oscillator, a filter and an amplifier. There are different types of synthesis such as subtractive and additive. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-do-synthesizers-work
Particular synthesisers which were mentioned in the article were the Minimoog, the EMS VCS3 and the ARP String Ensemble The Minimoog was released in 1970 and was the first portable synthesiser, it was and still remains very popular; it is a three oscillator, monophonic, analogue synthesiser. The ARP was a synthesiser that was popularised in the late 1970’s and produced the sounds of a string ensemble, it made use of divide down technology so as to achieve full polyphony. Lastly the EMS VCS3 is an analogue mono synth created in 1969, this synthesiser has three oscillators and also features a distinctive matrix-based patch system, it was essentially a modular synth reduced to a portable size and was known to produce ‘sci fi’ sounds. https://www.moogmusic.com/products/minimoog-model-d. https://www.vintagesynth.com/arp/string.php https://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/vcs3.php
Pedals were also something mentioned throughout the article, effects such as octave and pitch shifting, ring modulation, and auto wah. Octave and pitch shifting pedals adjust the pitch of the sound that goes through them, the sound this can produce differs from pedal to pedal and depends on the technique you want it to produce; some will add a lower octave to fatten up the sound, some will harmonise with what is being played so the sound is doubled and it produces the effect that more than one instrument is being played and they can also be combined with delay and modulation effects to create interesting textures. A ring modulator is essentially a voltage controlled amplifier with a special input and tend to sound metallic or robotic. As for auto wah, which is also known as envelope filtering, is an effect where the filter of the signal is modulated by the envelope or transients of a signal, this means that the filters act according to the dynamics of what is being played. https://mynewmicrophone.com/what-is-the-auto-wah-envelope-filter-modulation-effect/. http://synthesizeracademy.com/ring-modulator/ https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-octave-pitch-shift-pedal-guide
The album ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ itself employed these pieces of technology in interesting and groundbreaking ways, making use of relatively new technology and studio experimentation to produce an overall brilliant record that was unlike anything that had been done before. They made heavy use of tape manipulation in the production of the album, which was a technique that had not really been seen before; the most interesting aspect of the record was the experimentation with synthesisers, this was a relatively new concept and synthesisers were not being utilised much in popular music at the time. Pink Floyd employed the use of the Minimoog and ARP String Ensemble throughout the record and also pioneered the way in which synths would be used going forward with their unique use of the EMS VCS3, creating electronic sounds which were used all the way through the album. They also used pedals in revolutionary ways, using techniques such as plugging a wah-wah pedal into an electric piano so as to sweep filter frequencies.