The Decline Of Mood Music: Pink Floyd

How did the constant turmoil within the band Pink Floyd effect their musical moods and styles? Did “mood music” replace “messege music” after the mental deterioration of Roger “Syd” Barrett? Were these artists trying to escape their melancholies sustained by the unfortunate decline in health of their musical messiah, or were they using a new techniques to send subtle messages about rebellion towards political scandals and war, eventually rising to the development of musical counterculture?

The band now known as Pink floyd (previously Sigma 6 and The Abdabs) had been the voice of a new era in the 1960s and 1970s, incorporating new technologies such as manual sound boards that produce echoes and electronic distortions; they continued to

After his retreat back to Cambridge, the band fell in to a deep melancholy, and began to produce what they called “songscapes” (Roger Waters, youtube.com). Their sound after Barretts departure in 1968 was transformed from that of a man transmitting messages to the public about his ideals, emotions, and countercultural tendancies, with a side of psychadellic neuvau, to mostly instrumental records that were intended to provoke emotions in the listener that mimic the dispair and confusion of the rest of the band. Pink Floyd was constantly serarching for a direction after their songwriter had basically slipped in to a reclusive schitzophrenia. They had lost their guiding light, and thus began Pink Floyd’s age of “mood music”.

Their mostly instrumental album Ummagumma is a perfect depiction of how they temporarily set aside their need for a songwriter to produce skin-tingling instrumental sets that portray their dismay until they could find their way again. They were lost without Barrett, and had no words to describe their longing, only soothing soundboard echoes and aggressive arpeggios. Another great example of their wayward instrumental creativity is shown through Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun, and Let There Be

They became widley recognized for their 1975 album Wish You Were Here, containing the song “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, which was a great homage paid to their lost “heartbeat” of the band. Although they began to incorporate lyrics in to their music again, it was never the same without Barrett. The band lost Barretts strong English accent and creative fluidity of his experimental techniques, but gained a new muse: Tradgety, the loss of Syd Barrett.

Possibly one of the most famous albums produced by Pink Floyd, second to Dark Side of the Moon¸Which maintaned the top rated album for 741 weeks (youtube.com) was The Wall, which was eventually made in to a movie directed by Alan Parker (wikepida.com). The Movie was made to bring the album to life, and seems to be depiction of a combination of concepts: Richard Wright’s struggle with his father’s involvement in war, of the struggles with drugs and mental deterioration faced by Syd