One of These Days (instrumental)
One of These Days (instrumental)
Main page

One of These Days (instrumental)

logo
Community Hub0 subscribers
What are your thoughts?
Be the first to start a discussion here.
Be the first to start a discussion here.
One of These Days (instrumental)

"One of These Days" is the opening track from Pink Floyd's 1971 album Meddle. The composition is instrumental except for the spoken line from drummer Nick Mason, "One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces." It features double-tracked bass guitars played by David Gilmour and Roger Waters.

The predominant element of the piece is that of a bass guitar played through a delay (Binson Echorec) unit, set to produce repeats in quarter-note triplets. The result of this setting is: that if the player plays simple quarter notes, the added echoes will produce a pattern of quarter note – eighth note, quarter note – eighth note. Pink Floyd would again use this technique on the bass line for "Sheep". This riff was first created by David Gilmour on guitar with effects, then Roger Waters had the idea of using bass instead of guitar, so they recorded the song on two different bass guitars.

Each bass part is hard panned into one channel of stereo, but one bass sound is quite muted and dull. According to Gilmour, this is because that particular instrument had old strings on it, and the roadie they had sent to get new strings for it wandered off to see his girlfriend instead.

The piece is in B minor, occasionally alternating with an A major chord.

The distinctive keyboard accents on this track are composed of three components: A Hammond organ forms the 'fade in', followed by a "Stab" composed of a second Hammond organ with percussion stop, overdubbed with an acoustic piano fed through a Leslie speaker, as was also used on "Echoes". For live versions, the 'fade in' part was played on a Farfisa organ.[citation needed]

The threatening lyric, a rare vocal contribution by Nick Mason, was recorded through a ring modulator and slowed down to create an eerie effect. It was aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 DJ who the band supposedly disliked because he tended to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young's radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical, thus figuratively "cutting him into little pieces".

Possibly the most interesting thing about "One of These Days" is that it actually stars myself as vocalist, for the first time on any of our records that actually got to the public. It's a rather startling performance involving the use of a high voice and slowed down tape.

— Nick Mason,

See all
User Avatar
No comments yet.