Important Technical Features

• Guitar sounds use plenty of processing — distortion, feedback, fuzz, phaser, echo/delay, Leslie speaker
• Large amounts of reverb and delay used to produce unreal-sounding textures; could be used on any part of the mix such as vocals, guitars, keyboards, or solo instruments like flute
• Phasers and flangers popular for similar reasons
• Tape loops and ambient recordings used to add strange non-musical sounds and textures.
• Like the music, the production tried to achieve the highest technical excellence possible — use of lush reverbs, delays and expensive— sounding layered recordings
• Guitar sounds covered a large range of sounds, from various clean sounds, use of effects like chorus, flanger and phaser to full-on heavy-rock distorted and fuzz sounds
• Synthesisers like the Moog and ARP were fairly new instruments but were used extensively alongside other electronic keyboards such as electric organ and electric piano. Often used for solo work rather than sound effects.

The Album

• The album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios, in two sessions, between May 1972 and January 1973, engineered by Alan Parsons.
• The album is frequently used as an example of a concept album. This is an album in which its tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical.
• Sometimes the term is applied to albums considered to be of “uniform excellence” rather than an LP with an explicit musical or lyrical motif. There is no consensus among music critics as to the specific criteria for what a “concept album” actually is.
• The recording sessions made use of some of the most advanced studio techniques of the time; the studio was capable of 16-track mixes, which offered a greater degree of flexibility than the eight- or four-track mixes they had previously used, although the band often used so many tracks that to make more space, bouncing down was used.
• In ‘Money’, Waters had created effects loops from recordings of various money-related objects, including coins thrown into a food-mixing bowl taken from his wife’s pottery studio. This was achieved by splicing together recordings of these sounds to create a 7 beat effect loop.
• These were later re-recorded to take advantage of the band’s decision to record a quadraphonic mix of the album (Parsons has since expressed dissatisfaction with the result of this mix, attributed to a lack of time and the general lack of tracks/availability of multi-track tape recorders)
• At times the degree of sonic experimentation on the album required the engineers and band to operate the mixing console’s faders simultaneously, in order to mix down the intricately assembled multitrack recordings of several of the songs (particularly “On the Run”).
• Along with the conventional rock band instrumentation, Pink Floyd added prominent synthesizers to their sound. For example, the band experimented with an EMS VCS 3 on “Brain Damage” and “Any Colour You Like”, and a Synthi A on “Time” and “On the Run”.
• They also devised and recorded unconventional sounds, such as an assistant engineer running around the studio’s echo chamber (during “On the Run”), and a specially treated bass drum made to simulate a human heartbeat (during “Speak to Me”, “On the Run”, “Time” and “Eclipse”).
• Parsons utilised studio techniques such as the double tracking of vocals and guitars, which allowed Gilmour to harmonise with himself. The engineer also made prominent use of flanging and phase shifting effects on vocals and instruments, odd trickery with reverb, and the panning of sounds between channels.
• Snippets of voices between and over the music are another notable feature of the album. During recording sessions, Waters recruited both the staff and the temporary occupants of the studio to answer a series of questions printed on flashcards. The interviewees were placed in front of a microphone in a darkened Studio 3, and shown such questions as “What’s your favourite colour?” and “What’s your favourite food?”, before moving on to themes more central to the album (such as madness, violence, and death).