Pink Floyd's The Wall Instrumental History

December 25, 2003 7:43 PM

On the movie version of Pink Floyd's The Wall, there's a short instrumental piece before "In The Flesh" (I think), with a guitar and flute, the guitar part starts something like this:

E||-----------------0----|----------------------|-----------------0----|----------------------|-----------------0----|-----------------||
B||------------1---------|--1-------------------|------------1---------|--1-------------------|------------1---------|--1--------------||
G||-------2--------------|-------2---------2----|-------2--------------|-------2---------2----|-------2--------------|-------2---------||
D||--2-------------------|------------2---------|--3-------------------|------------3---------|--4-------------------|------------4----||
A||----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|-----------------||
E||----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|----------------------|-----------------||

Does anybody know the history or name of the piece, and hopefully have an accurate tab of it? I've played it forever but never seem to have got it quite right.
posted by signal to media & arts (4 comments total)

Haven't seen that movie in ages, but the riff you posted sounds like something I always thought was part of "Empty Spaces". A quick tab search only turns up the lead part from the album version of that song for me, though.

(Unless I'm getting it completely wrong--ASCII tabs suck ass at representing rhythm.)
posted by arto at 10:26 PM on December 25, 2003

That looks like the beginning of the guitar part for "Is There Anybody Out There?"
posted by Khalad at 5:53 AM on December 26, 2003

You nailed it, Khalad, thanks!
posted by signal at 6:11 AM on December 26, 2003

Damn, double damn. Beat the the punch on Pink Floyd trivia. As far as correct tab -- the last of the three versions on your link is best, but there are niggling details that drive me batshit. Mayhap it's just the limits of ASCII TAB.

And a close listen will show that the guitar line differs between the album and film recordings of the song; I personally think the album recording is a little prettier. So for parts of the song, "right" is a matter of perspective.

As far as history -- IIRC it's just a little something David Gilmour wrote. And for whatever reason, he didn't feel comfortable playing it for the album sessions, so he had in a flamenco guitarist to do the original recording.
posted by cortex at 8:27 AM on December 26, 2003