UMass Lowell Pink Floyd Ensemble

Interview

Segment 1

(Music: "Speak to Me," "Breathe," "On the Run" and "Time")

Floydian Slip (FS): "Floydian Slip", an hour of music by Pink Floyd. I'm Craig Bailey and this is show #1291. Opening the show this week, selections from "Dark Side of the Moon," recorded by The Pink Floyd Emsemble at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell. We're featuring the recording start to finish on this week's show. Joining us are Dr. Alan Williams, director of the group; along with Joel Ruben-Meyer, one of the guitarists; and vocalist Kaitlin Whiteman.

Thanks for joining us. Alan, I'll start with you. "Dark Side of the Moon," one of the most famous albums ever made. Argueably, perhaps, one of the best albums ever made. At least you didn't set the bar too high!

Dr. Alan Williams (AW): Part of what you said, you want to do something that's worth the time and investment. I think if you're going to ask a lot of students to really delve deeply into a recording because that's how they learn their parts was really deep listening to it, I didn't want it to be an album that you get bored with. And as any Pink Floyd fan knows, it's almost infinite how much you can discover every time you listen to that album. There's something else to contemplate. The other thing is you're casting about for recordings that will lend themselves to the instrumentation that you have available in a student group.

And when I thought about "Dark Side of the Moon," I thought, "Well, right, it's got a lot of overdubbed guitars. For sure I can get my hands on guitar players," but it doesn't require an orchestra and a horn section. And it started to feel like, "Okay, this is something that 12, 15 students could probably pull off." And when we got the group together to analyze the record, you went through every song, listening and thinking, "Okay, who's going to do that. Who's going to do that?" And we realized, "Right, we can actually cover everything. There's nothing missing here." So that's part of it.

And I think there's some other albums in the Floyd catalog — we're going to do "Wish You Were Here" in the spring — but otherwise students were like, "Let's do 'The Wall.'" And I'm like, "Well, you get the orchestra and the chorus and we'll figure it out." So there's certain types of recordings that lend themselves to this.

And we're not really in the business of being a tribute band. It's much more for students to just get into how to pull apart a recording by ear and then use that as you learn your parts and for guitar players and Joel, you could probably speak to, this is you've got to learn the part, but you also have to learn the sound and there's so much effects that are so much a part of "Dark Side of the Moon" that you can't just play the part with any willy-nilly sound. Joel, you spent some time I think trying to match tones, right?

Joel Ruben-Meyer (JRM): Yeah. Well there's a website that I used to do a little bit of cheating to get a place to start. I think it's called gilmourish.com where they catalog all the effects that he used. Basically all the distortion tones are all fuzz, but once you get the right pedal, you still have to listen really closely to match the settings and get it to be a similar sound, which I probably spent way longer than I should have doing that kind of thing for this.

FS: What kind of guitar were you playing, Joel?

JRM: I was playing a Stratocaster — Mexican Strat — my favorite guitar.

FS: So that was probably no coincidence: That was David Gilmour's choice of guitars.

JRM: Definitely, yeah. Well I already had it and I just figured it would be a crime to not use that for this album.

FS: This is a for-credit class, right?

AW: Yes, they get one credit.

FS: So Kaitlin and Joel, when you signed up for this course, did you know what you were going to be doing?

Kaitlin Whiteman (KW): Yes. Yes, of course we have a lot of classes. We have a requirement for ensembles almost we have to reach by our graduation and for my major, it's eight. But for everyone else, it's 16. So they have to get a lot of these one credit courses in.

FS: How much did you know about Pink Floyd, Kaitlin and Joel, at the beginning?

KW: I saw the listing and I had already listened to this album hundreds times. So I had it memorized at this point. I really wanted to be a part of it.

JRM: I actually was fairly new to Pink Floyd and "Dark Side of the Moon." Obviously I knew the big hits "Money" and "Time." I listened to it so many times this semester and it's definitely one of, if not my favorite album now after going in. I figured I'd get sick of it after listening to it so many times. But like Alan said earlier, every time I listened to it, I found something a tiny bit more that I didn't get the previous time.

FS: We're talking with members of Umass Lowell's Pink Floyd Ensemble. We'll continue with their cover of "Dark Side of the Moon." "The Great Gig in the Sky" is next.

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Segment 2

(Music: "The Great Gig in the Sky" and "Money")

FS: "Floydian Slip," an hour of Pink Floyd. I'm Craig Bailey, and this is show #1291. Special show this week. It's the broadcast debut of a new recording of "The Dark Side of the Moon" by the Pink Floyd Ensemble at the University of Massachusetts–Lowell. We had "Money," and before that, what I think is a real highlight of the project: "The Great Gig in the Sky."

I think actors strive to play Macbeth, and I think female vocalists strive to sing "Great Gig."

KW: True.

FS: Kaitlin, you were one of three vocalists we heard on that track?

KW: Yes.

FS: How did you learn the words?

KW: I had to listen to my section over and over and over again in the car, which is a little precarious because every stop light, I'm like, "Try and go back to the 2-minute 30-second mark." But yeah, it was not that hard to learn just because I've heard it many times to begin with.

FS: So I have to ask, did you guys get an A on this?

KW: I did. (Laughter) I'm assuming everyone else did, too.

FS: Do you want to answer that Joel? You don't have to. I don't want to put you on the spot.

JRM: I'm not actually sure, because both of my ensembles are listed under the same name. So I'm not sure which ensemble I got a grade for, but whichever one it was, I got an A.

FS: Well, I give you both an A. Alan, too. We're talking with members of the UMass Lowell Pink Floyd Ensemble. More from their recording of "Dark Side of the Moon": "Us and Them," that's next.

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Segment 3

(Music: "Us and Them" and "Any Colour You Like")

FS: Broadcasting from the dark side of the moon every week, this is "Floydian Slip," an hour of Pink Floyd. I'm Craig Bailey, and this is show #1291. Special program this week. We're playing "Dark Side of the Moon" by the Pink Floyd Ensemble at Umass-Lowell — start to finish. That was "Any Colour You Like" and "Us and Them."

Alan Williams is Professor of Music at the school, and the group's leader. Alan, not only did you remake a classic album — and did it well — but you did it during pandemic.

AW: We knew going in that we were going to have to figure out how to do this in isolation. Over the summer, I started leasing this space in a mill building. We have a lot of mill buildings in New England, as you probably know. So we'd set up this little studio and I knew that at the beginning of the semester, I said, "You guys, I think I've got a way for us to do this that will be a way for us to get together. Maybe not all of us, but most of us in a room and perform it in some half version of a recording and half version of an actual performance. There won't be an audience, but we will get to interact.

What we really did was strategize at the beginning of the semester about how to learn everybody's parts. And we used this really simple software program that's really designed for elementary school kids to make little tunes together. It's very limited, but it's kind of like a Google doc. It allows students to put down a part, hear what someone else has done, add their part to it.

People would put their part down, my habit every morning was to get up and check all of the files to see who had added their part, listen it and say, "Oh, that's great, that's great. Moving on. Let me send it to the next person." Or email somebody back and say, "Good, but it's really out of tune or you maybe missed a chord sequence, here" or whatever it might be.

FS: We'll finish up with "Brain Damage/Eclipse," that's next.

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Segment 4

(Music: "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse")

FS: Peering into the saucerful of secrets every week, this is "Floydian Slip," your weekly hour of Pink Floyd. I'm Craig Bailey, with show #1291.

"Brain Damage" and "Eclipse," the final two tracks from "Dark Side of the Moon" performed on this week's show by the University of Massachusetts Lowell Pink Floyd Ensemble. They recorded the album over a few days in November, and we've been spending the hour with some of the people who made it.

So Kaitlin and Joel, what are your long-term plans outside of college? How many years do you have left? And are you planning on going into music?

KW: I have one semester left and I'm majoring in composition for new media. So I'm hoping to do more composing in the media field I guess. I'm looking to get into movies or something. Maybe start singing more, but I'm definitely focusing on composition right now.

FS: What about you Joel?

JRM: I don't have any super concrete plans of what I want to do. I know I want to continue to be involved in music, absolutely. I want to do technical stuff, maybe work in a studio, do live sound, all that sort of stuff. But no specific plans at the moment. And I'm going into my third semester. So I've got a little ways to go before I'm done.

FS: Got some time to figure it out.

JRM: Yeah.

KW: I just wanted to say that I don't think any of us would have had the passion that we had in our performance and preparing if it weren't for Alan and his passion for this project.

JRM: Absolutely.

KW: I know it could have been done worse, and this is probably the best it could have been. So I'm really grateful for Alan.

AW: That's awfully kind. All of the students with no exception came in fully prepared, enthusiastic. And like everybody, I've been in pandemic too, I'm bored out of my mind, let's do something. I kind of had a lot invested in, "I hope the students come and deliver something great because I need it to be great just personally."

I'm just thinking everybody in this band is going to go out and do great things whenever they work with people in any context, because we're learning to do things collectively that can't be done individually.

FS: All three of you, thank you such much for joining me.

AW: Thank you for having us and thank you for exposing our performance to the world, especially of hardcore Floyd fans. That's a real honor.

JRM: Yeah, that you so much.

KW: Thank you.

FS: Kaitlin Whiteman, Joel Ruben-Meyer and Dr. Alan Williams from the Pink Floyd emsemble at UMass Lowell. You can watch them in the studio making their recording of "Dark Side" on YouTube. And we'll be watching for news of their remake of "Wish You Were Here" coming this spring.

I'm Craig Bailey. This has been "Floydian Slip" program #1291. Find us online at floydianslip.com. Write to us at pink@floydianslip.com. We'll be back next week. "Floydian Slip" is a Random Precision Production.