New Obscured by Clouds documentary.

[raelnyc]

I have just completed a new documentary on OBC.

OK, so I know you'll have seen many (if not all) of the photos before but I put a lot of effort into cleaning them up and colourising them.
This uses both AI and old-fashioned manual methods. There is no 'on-click' solution.... yet!

The studio film has also been enhanced and the sound-track is partially isolated to allow vocal separation.

I never like to ask questions on forums as I enjoy keeping the docs under-wraps until I release them,
However, I really wanted to know more about the following:

1. The Belsize Park photo session. Every time I go looking for images from this day I see another one I have never seen before.
This time around it was the one of Nick (Christ-like) on the floor.
I would like to know are there any others that I didn't include?

2. The electronic drums.
I really couldn't find anything about exactly what model these were.
Perhaps they were fed through the VCS3? or (as I suggest in the doc) they may have come from the Moody's Graeme Edge?

3. The alternative lyrics on Free Four.
I wonder why these were recorded and included in the movie, yet differ on the record? Very strange.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the doc and what other info / photos I could have also included.

[YYZ]

Your work is awesome.
Thank you.

[buffalofloyd]

Hell yeah dude, these are really great!!! Keep doing what you're doing man This is definitely one of my favorite albums so it's pretty awesome to see this get some love.

[goldenband]

2. The electronic drums.
I really couldn't find anything about exactly what model these were.
Perhaps they were fed through the VCS3? or (as I suggest in the doc) they may have come from the Moody's Graeme Edge?

I've read a claim that they used some version of the Maestro Rhythm King, but I have no idea whether that's true.

[Paul]

A few minutes in and it looks great! love the photos. Looking forward to watching this. Thank you for sharing!! Keep up the great work.

[svaerige]

The alternative lyrics on Free Four

just put Your restored extra verse right into the album version (between the second and third verses) - it turned out to be in fact a near-perfect extended version

many thanks

[Simond]

I spent a very enjoyable sunny afternoon in L4 (0TH) yesterday and came home to find this. Icing on the cake! Up to the high standards that you've previously set. I'll be honest, it's not an album that I particularly know because it came out around the time that I started to lose interest in the band. But, having watched this, I'll certainly go back and revisit it. I'm not familiar with the photos, the footage or the music so it was all a revelation to me and extremely well done. Thanks.

[Blackstrat]

Great work as usual. I've always enjoyed PF most when they're up against a deadline and having to knock out some product quickly.

[Alanko]

The drum machine question is interesting. The Chamberlin Rhythmate dates back to the 1950s, and used tape recordings of rhythm patterns, essentially as a drum equivalent of a Mellotron. By the 1960s, machines like the Bentley Rhythm Ace used electromechanical components to create selectable sequences of rhythms, with transistor white noise shaped to create snare hits, etc. Pink Floyd used an electromechanical drum machine, like the Rhythm Ace, during the soundcheck for the Royal Festival Hall gig in 1969. There is footage of this machine in action, with Roger ramping up the tempo control on it. It doesn't, however, sound like the drums on Obscured by Clouds. It does, however, demonstrate that the band were happy to experiment with electronic drums as early as 1969.

Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come recorded their album 'Journey' in 1972. This features a drum machine on all tracks, but again it sounds like a '60s electromechanical drum machine; quite crude and basic! Around this period both Can and Kraftwerk used Farfisa drum machines as well (Kraftwerk hacked theirs to be triggered by metal pads and wired-up sticks).

In most cases, these drum machines were built into combo organs or sold as outboard equipment for home musicians, show bands and backing bands for light entertainers. They were not marketed as cutting-edge technology for experimental rock bands. They weren't exactly hip!



In short, I have two thoughts on one! Drum machines weren't a novelty by the early '70s, but were basic in function and obviously synthetic in tone. Artists generally didn't use them as a replacement for acoustic drums or for the unusual texture they provided.

I think the drums on Obscured (and just the title track, to be clear) are a blend of a live snare drum and electronic elements. No technology would reproduce a snare drum sound that faithfully in the early '70s beyond a Mellotron-type tape replay machine. Conversely a snare drum could be mic'd up and patched through a VCS-3. With enough filtering (high and low-pass), some extra resonance or ring-modulation, you could get that dry, restricted sounding snare. The deeper rhythm pattern could simply be a patch created on the VCS-3, but to my ears it doesn't sound too different to the clockwork sound Roger Waters was able to make with a P Bass by dampening the strings. I think the same P Bass drum sound is heard on the intro of Childhood's End. Add some sluggish optical compression to a bass with the strings dampened and two adjacent strings plucked rhythmically and you would get a similar tone.

[Blackstrat]

Arthur Brown used a Bentley Rhythm Ace on Journey, and it is apparently the first album to use one all the way through in lieu of a traditional rhythm section. I'm fairly sure the one PF are using at the RFH rehearsal is a Rhythm Ace, although possibly an Ace Tone one, just from how similar it sounds to the one on Journey (especially the part on Time Captives where Arthur speeds it up)

[Alanko]

Blackstrat the RFH drum machine was a Delsonics Auto Rhythm De-Luxe.

[ozorio floyd]

I think it was the best documentary you made related to Pink Floyd!

[TheMoebLoop]

For anyone wondering about the electronic drums on "Obscured by Clouds", please check post #12 on JerryIsBored's thread on Nick's drums at the Gear subforum.

[JerryIsBored]

2. The electronic drums.
I really couldn't find anything about exactly what model these were.
Perhaps they were fed through the VCS3? or (as I suggest in the doc) they may have come from the Moody's Graeme Edge?

They were a set of electric bongos made by a Japanese company called Mica-Sonic. I never found out how Nick ended up with them, but they were some of the earliest electric drums to my knowledge. He kept them in his kit for live performances of OBC/WYI until those songs were dropped from the show.

[Frankymole]

I am watching it now, absolutely brilliant work.

[raelnyc]

Some interesting comments here regarding the drums. Thanks guys.
I'd love to see anymore of the Belsize Park photos if anyone has any that I could not find.
The video seems to be re-liked on Youtube. The general consensus being (correctly in my opinion)
that Obscured is a much overlooked classic.

[Alanko]

Are there any photos of Nick with a Mica-Sonic bongo set? There are lots of studio photos from the Obscured sessions, or perhaps only a single session. Nick's kit isn't well captured in any of them as he appears to be tucked away in a corner and behind baffles. The Rototoms appear in his live kit in 1972, but I've not seen any photos with the Mica-Sonic bongos. They would be quite small, so a roadie could realistically have brought them onstage for only the songs they were needed on.