hey welcome to 12tone! back in 2017, we did a video about Comfortably Numb that, statistically
speaking, everyone watching this video has probably already seen.
but Pink Floyd is one of those bands that continued to grow, experiment, and change
a lot over their career, so I thought it'd be good to look at another one of their biggest
hits from a different era, maybe something off their best-selling album, Dark Side Of
The Moon. and what better song to grab off that album than their sarcastic send-up of
materialism, Money.
normally this is where I'd play you a recreation of the intro, but Money doesn't actually start
with music: it starts with a cash register.
this is an example of what's called an organic loop, where non-musical sounds are put together
in a musical context, creating a sort of musicality of the mundane.
it's a great way to communicate very specific concepts: like, yes, you could try to write
music that makes your listener think of money, but you'd be hard-pressed to find something
that does it better than the sound of jingling coins, so why not just use that? in fact,
I've heard it claimed that Money was the first ever use of an organic loop in popular music,
which is a very hard claim to verify, but whether or not it was literally the first,
it was definitely an early pioneer.
after a little bit, the bass comes in, playing the riff that pretty much defines this song:
(bang) there's a lot to look at here, but let's start with the most obvious: there's
only 7 beats.
most music we listen to breaks up into chunks of either 3 or 4, so using a number as complex
as 7 instead makes the music feel almost lopsided, like its pieces don't quite fit together neatly.
but Money does a really clever thing with this: it introduces the 7-beat pattern in
the organic loop, before you're actually listening for a sense of metric hierarchy, so you just
get used to this pattern of 7 sounds, and by the time the bass slides in we're already
familiar with the structure.
in this case, the riff mostly breaks up into groups of 3. in the first group, we start
on a low B, jump up to a high B, then walk back down to the low B, stopping at F# along
the way.
this outlines a B power chord, telling us what the root is without giving us much information
on the overall tonality.
after that we jump down to a low F#, then walk up through A back to B. at this point,
we've completed 6 of our 7 beats and so far we're mostly just playing roots and 5ths.
the A tells us we're probably in B minor, but its position in the walk-up means it doesn't
really stand out melodically. if this riff was only 6 beats long, I think it'd be pretty
boring.
check it out: (bang) fortunately, though, that's not what happens: right when we think
we're done, the riff turns around, drops back to A, then suddenly leaps up to D, the minor
3rd. it's a new note, probably the most interesting one here, and it's positioned on a beat that
exists outside of the overall metric structure, giving every bar its own little twist ending.
it's such a good payoff, tying the whole riff together perfectly, and it's the reason why
Waters can get away with playing it over and over, with very few interruptions, for the
first three minutes of the song.
it does change a couple times, though.
the first is subtle, and comes with the vocals. when Gilmour sings the "you get a good job"
line, Waters switches things up and plays this.
(bang) it's basically the same thing, but he's swapped the high B for a D in order to
match the melody.
Gilmour, though, doesn't quite return the favor: when we get to the end of the riff,
where Waters plays a D again, Gilmour overshoots it and sings an E instead, creating a sort
of tension that implies that maybe, just maybe, he might not be entirely sincere in his assertion
that, and I quote, "you're ok".
this line also does some fun stuff with the rhythm.
if you look at how Gilmour sings "you get a good job", the accents fall on the words
"get" and "job", but if we look at the bass part, the downbeat actually happens while
he's singing "good", which gets almost no emphasis at all. this almost gives the sense
that we've changed time signatures, and makes this section pretty difficult to count if
you don't know what's going on, but really the vocals are just singing with a different
pattern of accents than everyone else.
it's a cool, kinda disorienting effect.
eventually the time signature does change, though, when the bass plays this: (bang) here,
we've switched to the much more common time signature of 4/4.
sort of.
actually, there's half a bar missing here, which means in total this section is 14 quarter
notes long, so we could technically still write it in 7/4, but if we look at it like
that the accent pattern is complete chaos, so I think most people will feel this as a
metric shift.
on notes, though, this is pretty interesting: they start by outlining F# minor, then E minor.
in the key of B, these are the V and IV chords, and walking from V to IV and then back to
I is a pretty classic Blues move.
it gives you a sense of the tonality without actually creating a strong sense of resolution,
because Blues songs aren't really big on letting you rest.
the only note that really stands out to me here is this F natural, which isn't in the
key, but it's just serving as a passing note between the roots of the two chords, which
is another common feature of the Blues.
that's basically all that happens until the saxophone solo, which starts over the bass
riff but then moves to this: (bang) which is just the same riff but built around E instead.
again, E is the IV chord, and here it's providing a sort of reprieve from the endless B minor,
giving the soloist another harmonic landscape to explore.
inserting the IV chord to break up a long run of I chords is yet another Blues move.
after the sax solo comes the guitar solo, where things… change.
a lot. for starters, we're back to 4/4. and not, like, a weird, sneaky 4/4 where we sometimes
lose track of half a bar.
no, this is just straight-up common time.
the section is built on top of three main bass riffs, this one: (bang) which outlines
B minor, this one: (bang) outlining E minor, and this one (bang) outlining F# minor.
each of these riffs is built around a descending half-step line, which makes it feel like we're
just constantly falling.
interpret that symbolism however you want.
anyway the way these riffs are put together is… ok, you know how I've been pointing
out that various parts of this song are references to the Blues?
well, this section is more than just a reference, it's a straight-up Blues form.
specifically, it's a variation of the 12-bar blues pattern, which is four bars of the I
chord, two bars of IV, two bars of I, then V, IV, I, I, lather, rinse, repeat.
this version, though, makes two big changes to that structure.
first, it doubles the length, so we've got 8 bars of I, four bars of IV, and so on, making
it technically a 24-bar blues.
the other change is that instead of this IV chord near the end, the whole band comes together
to play this: (bang) which is just a big, dramatic walk down the minor scale, with an
extra note added in at the end in order to make it all fit properly.
this is reminiscent of a device called a turnaround, where the final bar of a 12-bar Blues is replaced
with something big and loud in order to emphasize the return to the beginning, but in Money
they hit that turnaround early, so after it's done we still have four more bars before the
pattern actually repeats.
I'm not entirely sure why: my best guess is just that the transition from the F# riff
to the E riff doesn't sound great 'cause the first one ends on an E already, so slapping
the turnaround over the E chord avoids that awkward move.
that's not a great explanation, though, so if you have a better guess please let me know.
I want to take a second, though, to acknowledge how appropriate it is that this song borrows
so heavily from the Blues.
a lot of Blues songs are either directly or indirectly about the struggles of poverty,
so using those forms in a song that sarcastically praises the relentless pursuit of profit results
in a pretty scathing critique.
it's a clever use of the musical vocabulary in order to make a point through association.
anyway, they play through the 12-bar pattern 3 times, and in order to make it work for
that long, they need to play with dynamics. in the first section, everything's big and
loud, the drums are crashing through, and the guitars are soaked in reverb. for the
second time, though, that all changes: the drums switch to mostly just high hats, and
the guitars lose most of their effects, taking on a much drier tone.
this makes it feel calmer, quieter, and more intimate, which they maintain until that big
walk-down, setting up the third time through where everything is big and crashy again.
the solo itself is also interesting: it sounds like a guitar duel, but as far as I can tell
Gilmour played all the guitar parts, so he's kinda just battling with himself.
it's a neat effect.
and that's pretty much it.
after that we go back to the main bass riff, play through those sections a few more times,
then end with this (bang) which is just the last bit of the riff looped forever until
it fades out, 'cause the pursuit of money never actually ends.
or something.
who knows?
before we go, though, I have a quick announcement: I'm gonna be taking July off this year, so
in order to make sure I'm still publishing, I'll be hosting some guest videos, and I'm
looking for guests.
so if you make educational videos of any kind, even if your stuff's not music-related, I
made a video over on my side channel with more information on how that's gonna work.
I also talked a bit about why I'm doing this, so if you're just curious about that, you
can go check it out too.
link, as always, in the description.
oh, also, go subscribe to my side channel! it's called 19tone and right now I'm using
it mostly for announcements so the youtube algorithm doesn't punish me for making them,
but I have some plans for more experimental content that will hopefully go up there at
some point.
and hey, thanks for watching! this song was chosen by my patrons over on Patreon, so if
you want to help pick the next song we analyze just head on over to Patreon and pledge at
any level! you can also join our mailing list to find out about new episodes, like, share,
comment, subscribe, and above all, keep on rockin'.
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