"One of These Days" | ||||||||||||
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Single by Pink Floyd | ||||||||||||
from the album Meddle | ||||||||||||
B-side | "Fearless" | |||||||||||
Released | 29 November 1971 | |||||||||||
Format | 7-inch single | |||||||||||
Recorded |
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Genre | Progressive rock, experimental rock, hard rock | |||||||||||
Length | 5:57 | |||||||||||
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Writer(s) | ||||||||||||
Producer(s) | Pink Floyd | |||||||||||
Pink Floyd singles chronology | ||||||||||||
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26 tracks |
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"One of These Days" is the opening track from Pink Floyd's 1971 album Meddle. The composition is instrumental except for a spoken line from drummer Nick Mason, "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces." It features double-tracked bass guitars played by David Gilmour and Roger Waters, with each bass hard panned into one channel of stereo, but one bass sound is quite muted and dull. According to Gilmour, this is because that particular instrument had old strings on it, and the roadie they had sent to get new strings for it wandered off to see his girlfriend instead.
The predominant element of the piece is that of a bass guitar played through a delay (echo) unit, set to produce repeats in quarter-note triplets. The result of this setting is, if the player plays simple quarter notes, the added echoes will produce a pattern of quarter note – eighth note, quarter note – eighth note. Pink Floyd would again use this technique on the bass line for "Sheep".
The piece is in B minor, occasionally alternating with an A major chord.
The distinctive keyboard accents on this track are composed of three components: A Hammond organ forms the 'fade in', followed by a "Stab" composed of a second Hammond organ with percussion stop, overdubbed with an acoustic piano fed through a Leslie speaker, as was also used on "Echoes". For live versions, the 'fade in' part was played on a Farfisa organ.
The threatening lyric, a rare vocal contribution by Nick Mason, was recorded through a ring modulator and slowed down to create an eerie effect. It was aimed at Sir Jimmy Young, the then BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 DJ whom the band supposedly disliked because of his tendency to babble. During early 1970s concerts, they sometimes played a sound collage of clips from Young's radio show that was edited to sound completely nonsensical, thus figuratively "cutting him into little pieces". The bootleg compilation A Treeful of Secrets contains a demo version of "One of These Days" in which the Jimmy Young collage loops in the background during the performance. However, the authenticity of this demo has not been confirmed.