"Any Colour You Like" is the eighth track on the English band

Pink Floyd Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics an ...

's 1973 album, '' The Dark Side of the Moon''. It is an

instrumental An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to inst ...

written by

David Gilmour David Jon Gilmour ( ; born 6 March 1946) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and member of the rock band Pink Floyd. He joined as guitarist and co-lead vocalist in 1967, shortly before the departure of founding member Syd Barrett. P ...

Richard Wright Richard Wright may refer to: Arts * Richard Wright (author) (1908–1960), African-American novelist * Richard B. Wright (1937–2017), Canadian novelist * Richard Wright (painter) (1735–1775), marine painter * Richard Wright (artist) (born 19 ...

and

Nick Mason Nicholas Berkeley Mason, (born 27 January 1944) is an English drummer and a founder member of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. He is the only member to feature on every Pink Floyd album, and the only constant member since its formation i ...

Composition

The piece itself has no lyrics and consists of a synthesised tune which segues into a guitar solo (some scat vocals are added later; these were more prominent in live versions but are still audible in the studio recording). It is approximately three minutes, 25 seconds in length. The piece used advanced effects for the time both in the keyboard and the guitar. Richard Wright used a VCS 3 synthesizer which was fed through a long tape loop to create the rising and falling keyboard solo. David Gilmour used two guitars with the

Uni-Vibe The Uni-Vibe, also marketed as the Jax Vibra-Chorus,Harry Shapiro, Michael Heatley, Roger Mayer''Jimi Hendrix Gear'', page 120 Voyageur Press is a footpedal-operated phaser or phase shifter for creating chorus and vibrato simulations for elect ...

guitar effect to create the harmonizing guitar solo for the rest of the work. "Any Colour You Like" is also known (and is even listed on the ''Dark Side'' guitar tablature book) as "Breathe (Second Reprise)" because the piece shares the same chord pattern (albeit somewhat funkier and uptempo) as the album's second song " Breathe" and its reprise at the end of "

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

". It has also nearly the same chord sequence just transposed a whole step lower from

E minor E minor is a minor scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F, G, A, B, C, and D. Its key signature has one sharp. Its relative major is G major and its parallel major is E major. The E natural minor scale is: : Changes needed ...

D minor D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative major is F major and its parallel major is D major. The D natural minor scale is: Changes needed ...

. In the original liner notes, songwriting credits contain a typo with Nick Mason's last name listed as Marson. The origin of the title is unclear. Waters may have settled this question, in an interview with the musicologist and author Phil Rose, for Rose's collection of analytical essays, ''Which One's Pink?'':

Live versions

On earlier Pink Floyd bootlegged versions of the piece, there was no keyboard solo, and the work was a long jam piece called "Scat Section" or "Scat". Gilmour frequently sang along with his guitar solo and the band's female backing singers sometimes came up on stage and sang as well. In 1975, it was often extended, sometimes up to nearly fifteen minutes. Gilmour and the backing singers often sang along with it. In 1994, it was considerably modified, to be more keyboard-heavy, though not extended, as in all earlier performances. This version is included on ''

Pulse In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the n ...

''. Waters performed it in his 2006–08 ''The Dark Side of the Moon Live'' tour.

Personnel

– electric guitars,

scat singing In vocal jazz, scat singing is vocal improvisation with wordless vocables, nonsense syllables or without words at all. In scat singing, the singer improvises melodies and rhythms using the voice as an instrument rather than a speaking medium. ...

–

Hammond organ The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated ...

EMS VCS 3 The VCS 3 (or VCS3; an initialism for ''Voltage Controlled Studio, version #3'') is a portable analog synthesizer with a flexible modular voice architecture introduced by Electronic Music Studios (London) Limited (EMS) in 1969. EMS release ...

, EMS Synthi AKS *

Roger Waters George Roger Waters (born 6 September 1943) is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. In 1965, he co-founded the progressive rock band Pink Floyd. Waters initially served as the bassist, but following the departure of singer-s ...

– bass guitar *

– drums, percussion

References

;Footnotes ;Citations {{authority control 1973 songs Pink Floyd songs Rock instrumentals Songs written by Nick Mason Songs written by David Gilmour Songs written by Richard Wright (musician) Song recordings produced by David Gilmour Song recordings produced by Roger Waters Song recordings produced by Richard Wright (musician) Song recordings produced by Nick Mason 1970s instrumentals