Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
The Greatest Concert, that NEVER really happened!
A few months ago, I published a re-mastered version of Pink Floyd’s final North American performance of their 1975 tour … audio only (youtu.be/rMCSJvX1T_0). Despite the popularity of The Dark Side of the Moon, the encore performance of Echoes was the real highlight of the show. The fans that night were all calling out for “Echoes” … it's a Floyd thing ... a song less successful in sales, but more popular to the true Floyd fan.
Relistening to the performance, I remembered just how much I really liked Echoes and how advanced it was for its time. This sent me down a rabbit hole, starting with trying to recreate the “submarine pings” for the song’s opening. Now you could download a patch and have the sound in 30 seconds, but that would be too easy. The original sound was created by playing a mic’d grand piano through a Leslie speaker cabinet, so I set up four mics on my piano and after a few days I had the sound pretty close to the original recording. That completed, I thought it would also be fun to to recreate the guitar in the ”seagulls” section. The sound that was created by accidentally plugging cables into a wah-wah pedal incorrectly. Getting close was relatively easy. Gilmour probably used a Cry Baby pedal, but I found an old VOX came the closest.
With the two most iconic sounds mastered, I decided to give the rest of the song a go. A month later, I had studied the instrumentation and recorded most of the parts. The things that I thought would be easy, turned out to be challenging. For most of the song, Nick Mason never really plays a beat. He just is constantly doing fills, and never the same fill twice in a row (although many that start with a cymbal crash on beat two). Similarly, Richard Wright’s keyboards are more of a jam than a pre-scripted musical piece. In the “funky beat” section, he double tracked the Hammond organ, but rarely repeats the same pattern twice on either track.
Finally, I had the music recorded, but like my Ivor Wynn Stadium performance, I wished there was some video. Further down the rabbit hole I went as I tried to recreate the performance that I witnessed in 1975. I started by digitally recreating a stage, complete with the Floyd truss screen. I can't tell you how many hours I spent on this, but check the power indicator lights on the amps and it will give you an idea. I added lights, smoke explosions and even some sort of coloured foam to the stage show. Then I created a separate video to display on the truss. Next, I added the musicians, a bunch of video of me playing the Floyd parts using green screen to put musicians on to the stage. One challenge was that I had recreated the album version, not the live version, so guitar and keyboards were double tracked. I decided to add extra guitarists and keyboard players to the stage.
Now I had the Greatest Concert … that Never happened.
For Floyd fans, I’ve included a dozen “Easter Eggs” for you to spot …
00:00 Start of Video
00:56 (1) The background video on the truss screen is the truss video used for the Dark Side of the Moon performance in 1975
01:11 (2) The truss video is from the video for Shine On You Crazy Diamond off of the Pulse album
01:15 (3) The guitar intro is the lead for Shine On You Crazy Diamond, not Echoes (I always thought these two songs were similar in structure
01:34 (4) The truss video includes graphics from the Time video from 1975
02:43 (5) The truss includes flashes of the Pink Floyd collage used in the video from performance of Echoes
03:16 (6) When the band sings “The Echo of a Distant Time”, the truss video includes graphics from the Time video from 1975
05:24 (7) The truss video includes the Pink Floyd’s reunion performance of Breathe at Live 8
05:29 (8) The Vocals are from the isolated vocal track from Breathe off of The Dark Side of the Moon … I always knew those two tunes were similar!
07:00 (9) The truss background includes a few graphics from the original video release of Shine On You Crazy Diamond
17:20 (10) The truss includes more scenes from Floyd’s Pompeii performance of Echoes
18:49 (11) The album cover for Meddle is used as the truss background
19:30 (12) The Wall font is used when the band sings “Through the window in the Wall”
For a Karaoke version of this song, click here ... youtu.be/mjUqjEOVdRA
For a Guitar Play-Along Backing Track, click here ... youtu.be/5FTJzKLBKaw
#PinkFloyd #Echoes
The Greatest Concert, that NEVER really happened!
A few months ago, I published a re-mastered version of Pink Floyd’s final North American performance of their 1975 tour … audio only (youtu.be/rMCSJvX1T_0). Despite the popularity of The Dark Side of the Moon, the encore performance of Echoes was the real highlight of the show. The fans that night were all calling out for “Echoes” … it's a Floyd thing ... a song less successful in sales, but more popular to the true Floyd fan.
Relistening to the performance, I remembered just how much I really liked Echoes and how advanced it was for its time. This sent me down a rabbit hole, starting with trying to recreate the “submarine pings” for the song’s opening. Now you could download a patch and have the sound in 30 seconds, but that would be too easy. The original sound was created by playing a mic’d grand piano through a Leslie speaker cabinet, so I set up four mics on my piano and after a few days I had the sound pretty close to the original recording. That completed, I thought it would also be fun to to recreate the guitar in the ”seagulls” section. The sound that was created by accidentally plugging cables into a wah-wah pedal incorrectly. Getting close was relatively easy. Gilmour probably used a Cry Baby pedal, but I found an old VOX came the closest.
With the two most iconic sounds mastered, I decided to give the rest of the song a go. A month later, I had studied the instrumentation and recorded most of the parts. The things that I thought would be easy, turned out to be challenging. For most of the song, Nick Mason never really plays a beat. He just is constantly doing fills, and never the same fill twice in a row (although many that start with a cymbal crash on beat two). Similarly, Richard Wright’s keyboards are more of a jam than a pre-scripted musical piece. In the “funky beat” section, he double tracked the Hammond organ, but rarely repeats the same pattern twice on either track.
Finally, I had the music recorded, but like my Ivor Wynn Stadium performance, I wished there was some video. Further down the rabbit hole I went as I tried to recreate the performance that I witnessed in 1975. I started by digitally recreating a stage, complete with the Floyd truss screen. I can't tell you how many hours I spent on this, but check the power indicator lights on the amps and it will give you an idea. I added lights, smoke explosions and even some sort of coloured foam to the stage show. Then I created a separate video to display on the truss. Next, I added the musicians, a bunch of video of me playing the Floyd parts using green screen to put musicians on to the stage. One challenge was that I had recreated the album version, not the live version, so guitar and keyboards were double tracked. I decided to add extra guitarists and keyboard players to the stage.
Now I had the Greatest Concert … that Never happened.
For Floyd fans, I’ve included a dozen “Easter Eggs” for you to spot …
00:00 Start of Video
00:56 (1) The background video on the truss screen is the truss video used for the Dark Side of the Moon performance in 1975
01:11 (2) The truss video is from the video for Shine On You Crazy Diamond off of the Pulse album
01:15 (3) The guitar intro is the lead for Shine On You Crazy Diamond, not Echoes (I always thought these two songs were similar in structure
01:34 (4) The truss video includes graphics from the Time video from 1975
02:43 (5) The truss includes flashes of the Pink Floyd collage used in the video from performance of Echoes
03:16 (6) When the band sings “The Echo of a Distant Time”, the truss video includes graphics from the Time video from 1975
05:24 (7) The truss video includes the Pink Floyd’s reunion performance of Breathe at Live 8
05:29 (8) The Vocals are from the isolated vocal track from Breathe off of The Dark Side of the Moon … I always knew those two tunes were similar!
07:00 (9) The truss background includes a few graphics from the original video release of Shine On You Crazy Diamond
17:20 (10) The truss includes more scenes from Floyd’s Pompeii performance of Echoes
18:49 (11) The album cover for Meddle is used as the truss background
19:30 (12) The Wall font is used when the band sings “Through the window in the Wall”
For a Karaoke version of this song, click here ... youtu.be/mjUqjEOVdRA
For a Guitar Play-Along Backing Track, click here ... youtu.be/5FTJzKLBKaw
#PinkFloyd #Echoes
