Classical Composer Reacts to Set Controls For The Heart of the Sun (Pink Floyd) | The Daily Doug 

The absolute BEST version is the Live From Pompeii video concert, late at night, with herbs.

A totally genius song! The version from Live at Pompeii will be my cremation song. Happy times 🤣

The other tracks on the first side of this double lp , namely Astromine Dominée, Careful with that Axe Eugene and Saucerful of Secrets are simply brilliant recorded live. Original, creative and great musicians. It inspired me then and for the next 50 years. Long live Pink Floyd

One of my favorite PF albums. Trailblazer songs like this and the music of Hawkwind, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk set the groundwork for today's EDM genre.

I still love listening to my old Pink Floyd LP's before they became huge. Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Saucerful of Secrets, Umma Gumma, Meddle, Obscured by Clouds, More...

And all of you small animals, the wind DOES cry Mary.

It's a love song

Doug, this was previous to Dark Side & less commercially sounding. Glad they never went full commercial.

I can put Planet Caravan by Black Sabbath and this tune( one of my favorite Pink Floyd tunes ) on repeat, the 2 tunes complement each others in my opinion.

Saw them @ the carousel in '69. The Umagumma tour. Mind blowing to a high school kid. I saw the next 3 times they came to S.F.

The 'gorgeous' bit with the high Major 3rd is Rick's improvised part--again a basic RW piece but without the additions of the other players it's a different composition altogether. No Syd involved in this live version from Ummagumma. You might also find interesting the title track of 'A Saucerful of Secrets' as one of those definitive 1968 progadelic suite pieces that defined the genre, the others being Procul Harum's 'In Held Twas In I', Hendrix's side 3 of Electric Ladyland: 'Rainy day...'segues into '1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be'...into 'Moon Turn The Tides Gently Gently Away' and then a reprise of 'Merman'. And The Nice's 'Ars Longa Vita Brevis'.

These are amazing tracks on the live sides. Sounds like Nick was in the jelly jungle of orange marmalade (incidentally, a song by The Lemon Pipers) with that mesmerizing and awesome drum rhythm. Because the audience sounds are not there, it sounds like it was performed in the studio, though I don't think it was. The bootleg version from San Diego, Golden Hall 17 Oct 1971 (part of their first US tour after the release of Meddle) is one of the best out there and Gilmour's guitar is even more psychedelic, it's probably my recommended favorite version. Sound quality is not bad for a bootleg recording and the rest of the tracks are just as good. Meddle was a transition point for Floyd especially with Echoes which was included in the tour. There were some big performances from late '71 onwards.

Haven't heard much of the older Pink Floyd stuff, was thinking that damn this is one long intro until i realized it was the actual song.

Doug, if you haven't heard it yet, Roger does a really cool jazzed up more rock and roll version of this on his solo tours: not better, just different: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-niOeryWbFp4.html Worth checking out. Also, you need to react to Careful with That Axe Eugene by Pink Floyd (The Live video version from Pompeii is probably the best version)

For many years, I thought the title/lyric was "Set, the controls for the Heart of the Sun" Why would the Egyptian god of War and Chaos be manning the controls of a stellar furnace? "Must be 'high poetic-art' that plebes like me aren't fit to fathom." Everything changed the day I wore my prescription glasses instead of the reading glasses I found in the laundry room. The things you learn when you don't have to have to guess 1/2 the letters on the page...

Mason plays with mallets, he also finally plays the gong with his recent band GREAT SHOW, if you can catch it.

Doug, it's time to go look at Syd's contribution to Floyd. You need to listen to interstellar overdrive, astronomy domino, Bike, and his final recording with Floyd, Jugband Blues. You will not be disappointed.

PF's period with Sid is the most interesting, keep on digging into the past....

Remember that the central section of this track that audiences heard live was sent to them in full surround sound. The album track cannot reproduce that experience.

Hi, Doug. If you like one, listen to Saucerful of secrets, my favorite track on the live section of Ummagumma

OSI put out a modern cover of this song. It's just as incredible

Totally loved the improv version of PINK FLOYD - without this you wouldn’t have the later Floyd - there’s a nice version on David Gilmour at Gdańsk - herbal substances are mandatory! Rick Wright at his finest. This is Umma Gumma live version - don’t think Syd is on this - he was on the studio version..

Let's hear it for the Parker Solar Probe!

More than half a century has passed and Nick Mason never had to drum this hard in his life again. xD I don't like late 60's, early 70's Floyd that much until Meddle but live performances from 69-70 are amazing from PF. They were another beast in concert than in studio even at that time.

Hey Doug, just found your channel recently, and I love your videos, especially the Pink Floyd ones. I wonder, any thoughts on reacting to video game music? There are some great compositions out there. The OST for Castlevania Symphony of the Night is a classic go-to. Others to consider are for the Souls games, Bloodborne, Hollow Knight, Final Fantasy. I could go on, but I'll leave it here. Cheers!

I am no expert at all, but I think they are emulating the Indian classical sitar music, which often start with a slow theme and then speeds up to improvised part.

PF at their head-trippy best.

For a change of pace, you might try some Thomas Dolby. My suggestions would be 17 Hills or The Toad Lickers.

The era of pInk Floyd I love the most .Even prefer this to the DSOM stuff

Sorry to spam you Doug but I so badly want to see your reaction to HI REN by the artist Ren. It's an extremely powerful piece of music and art. I think you'll love it and possibly get teary-eyed. It's that powerful and important.

I am sure they were influenced by theRadioponic Workshop.. Also rhis has a Sufi vibe.

And a thousand krautrock bands were born.

I thought Syd Barrett was already in the nut house ?

This track is strictly for tripping

WHo would support Doug reacting to Deerhoof?

If you want to see a glitchy video of me riffing on that track with too many pedals, here you go ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-P6y7HIs2Vmw.html

i like the live one on ummagumma better

Only wish they had added a sheet of Pink Floyd's acid 🤣

Music to hallucinate to

One of my favourite Pink Floyd songs, also love the live version from the 1972 Pompeii concert

Floyd would have been nothing without the genius of Richard Wright,

This was recorded live at Mothers in Birmingham, UK and I was there. Mother's was THE go to venue for all prog rock bands at the time, and was in a carpet warehouse. Unfortunately, it was destroyed a few months later in a fire. It was an amazing performance and experience and was so good to be released on Ummaguma. These are treasured memories for me.

"The fundamental principle of musique concrète lies in the assemblage of various natural sounds recorded on tape (or, originally, on disks) to produce a montage of sound. During the preparation of such a composition, the sounds selected and recorded may be modified in any way desired-played backward, cut short or extended, subjected to echo-chamber effects, varied in pitch and intensity, and so on. The finished composition thus represents the combination of varied auditory experiences into an artistic unity." That isn't what Floyd are doing here, all the sounds you can hear are being played in real time using conventional musical instruments played unconventionally - metal objects being rubbed against the guitar strings being the main source for the ethereal sounds on this track as well and Richard Wright's Farfisa organ, all processed with tape echo and or reverb

The video from Pompeii 1971 has them perforrming this song.

"That's gorgeous." Yep!!! After 45 years of listening to this music, I am still only half believing that anybody made music like this. Pink Floyd were way more than the sum of the parts.

My favorite line from this 1968 song is "Witness the man who raves at the wall."

And at the other end of the scale around the same time Pink Floyd did a really early (almost proto-metal) track The Nile Song 😉

Gregorian chant with an African drum beat.

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams was friends with the band and in one of the Earls Court gigs (not this one sadly), played guitar with them on stage on his 42nd birthday (a number important to HHG fans). He altered the final episode of S1 HHG to have the team steal a black, frictionless spaceship destined to plunge into a star as part of the light show by the intergalactic rock band 'Disaster Area' who are, apparently, based on PF who were breaking up at the time...this track no doubt inspired the re-write.

I saw Nick Masson last October in Montreal and he finished his first set with this song. Great song, great show! You have to watch the film Pink Floyd at Pompeii!

There's a version from their performance for KQED in San Francisco from the AHM tour that was very hard to find until a few years ago. The version of this song is among the best parts of the show. Nick Mason is criminally under rated. 🤘🧙‍♂️🤘 Rich the Ancient Metal Beast

The Pompeii period is definitely my favorite Floyd era.

My favorite version of this is their live from Pompeii album/movie. It shows them performing this song live.

Purchased this double album when it came out. Many a night with the lights out and 'Set The Controls ...' at max volume. Thanks for your reaction/assessment video, Doug. Of all the prog-rock bands that I heard back in the day, I never heard 'The Floyd' live in concert. Yes, this along with 'Astronomy Domine', 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene' and 'A Saucerful Of Secrets' were all live tracks. The second disc were studio tracks ... one each by the band members. Sid does not play on this album at all. But, he did play on the studio track (along with parts by Gilmour) for this song, which appeared on 'A Saucerful of Secrets' album. The album's title supposedly comes from Cambridge slang for sex.

That was my first listen to this one, too. My friends and I would have driven along rural Kentucky hilly curvy back roads at 10 miles an hour blissfully listening to this if we had known about it then. We did love Atom Heart Mother, Dark Side of the Moon, and many others during some of the best conversations 3 women in their 20's can enjoy. Now we're in our 60's and can't enjoy driving at night. Time......

Pink Floyd with Syd was certainly interesting and his radio friendly singles helped to get them played on the radio in the UK, plus labels at that time allowed bands to take their time and blossom.. Especially Harvest. Roy Harper being a shining example. I'm not quite so sure about the early stuffs popularity in the US... BUT, they wouldn't really have gone anywhere and would have been one of the lost bands if it wasn't for the input and musical directorship eventually of David Gilmour. Our years of listening back in the sixties and seventies promoted an appreciation of an artists complete catalogue so that if you came in on Pink Floyd like I did at Ummagumma then I went and got all the albums before that over a period of time. So you appeciatd how they had grown. Keep on Rocking.

I have told this before many times on other videos related to Pink Floyd. Considered circumstances of time, technology and society, they are to be paired with Bethoven in terms of influence, relevance, body of work and musical brilliance. Nothing less.

This is the very track that lead me from the path of the NPC Normies and off into the progressive marches of music back in early 1970. It was an English Literature class at senior school. A student teacher asked us to sit down quietly and listen to this track so that we could write about our reaction/feelings to it. I knew once I'd heard this that this was the direction in which I wanted to travel. And 53 years later, it's taken me into regions that I could never imagine. I prefer the live version (on UmmaGumma) to the studio version. I bought A Saucerful of Secrets soon afterwards.

Love what Doug says about musique concrete and how he prefers Pink Floyd's version to what they teach in music school.

The studio version (this one) is from A Saucerful of Secrets (1968). Here's the image of the front cover. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Saucerful_of_Secrets

Definitely got the forbidden planet vibes nobody does music like this that's what makes pink floyd so unique

Masterpiece Track Masterpiece Album Pink Floyd The Epitome Of Music SHINE ON 💎 🎼☮️👊🇨🇦 Levels Of A Guitar Player 1 BEGINNER 2 ADVANCED 3 PROFESSIONAL 4 EXPERT 5 LEGEND 6 GOD OF THE GUITAR 7 DAVID GILMOUR 🎧

Hands down best version of this song is the version from Live from Pompeii film!

...Roger's live version from "In the Flesh" is also very good.

Doug, have you listened to anything from the album Obscured by Clouds? The band were producing soundtracks at the time, this album features on the French film La Vallee. I think you would find it interesting as a score writer yourself. You will recognise the odd chord progressions you heard on Atom Heart Mother. I would recommend either Burning Bridges or Mudmen.

The original studio version of 'A saucerful of secrets' piece is a must in this field

this whole album is such a musical journey, but these live cuts are something else. Such a great tune and thanks for the vid!

Can you react to Careful With That Axe Eugene live at the Brighton Dome 1972?

My favorite song by Pink Floyd ever!

Your story @ 9:55 very funny...! Doug, really need to take a listen to Billy Cobham's "Sea of Tranquility". The man beats those drums like they owe him money...!

Mr Vy can't tell the difference between the sound of a cymbal and a gong!

It's a stunning track that made me want to travel and adventure as a kid. Here I am still all these years later after quite some time in the Mediterranean. ✌

This reminds me of Indonesian Degung music.

Love it when Doug does Floyd, Camel n Genesis, the GOATS.

Lol was hoping you'd tell me what scale they were using. Guessing Phrygian if there's a flat 2

Watch live in pompei a concert without an audience nick is incandescent

I love this version of the track. The studio version is good, but this leaves it for dead. I love how the band almost dip into Tangerine Dream territory halfway through. Still leaves me wondering how this was played live like this.

I hear this One 2 times LIVE on 2016 with Waters live on México City, one night on the FREE CONCERT on the Zocalo in México City, over 300, 000 hilarius and HIGH fans! jajaja... you need to react to this show...is on youtube!

Doug you are spot on with the nuances of this album. If like me you have followed them from the beginning you would know the importance of this album. It’s utterly brilliant and follows their early Live stuff.

Sun of Light... or Son of GOD! Ho hum - try Cirrus Minor( from same era. Or a real shocker, 'Careful with that axe Eugene'- the version from the double LP 'Umma Gumma"[ Probably get banned in these grim hearted Autbhoritarian times - like Napoleon XIV's "They're coming to take me away ha ha" or Judge Dredd's 'Big .10' Even wonder if David Bowie's extraordinary LP "The Man who sold the World" 'correct'...? Then again the Eagles disturbing 'Hotel California ' hit still gets away with it: maybe folks don' t get the lyrics... T'other day submitted bucket list for consideration..Forgot to include Family's extraordinary LP "Music in a Dolls Ho." or the mindbending hit 'Weavers Answer'Also the Entirely Brilliant ( 1/2), LP' -quite unique -Story of Happiness Stan... absolutely epic!![ Meaning of Life in 20 mins.OK]Plus coming down a tad Greasebands' " Laughed at the Judge"Stunning ! Plus early Strawbs, Lindis farne & The Who plus Van Morrisons 1st Band , Them .) Stateside- some - Grateful Dead tracks, to Jefferson Airplane Creedence C. Steely Dan, Link Ray,& R. Dean Taylor.Also Kraftwerk &Incredible String Band... Never forgiven in Orthdodox UK Folk circles..... Yeah .. can see why Any way 'nuff for now. Give my regards to thoe Upstairs!: which reminds me now... Steps from Beyond( Paul Brooks)- Origjnal, 'State label!!! & Kraftwerk( Kraut rock)but I mentioned themI think earlier Meantime Mongol Rock: Hunnu Guren and Hü= lot of fun. Bloody Savages...!

You should really check out Hawkwind's "You Shouldn't Do That" some time from the "In Search of Space" album from 1971, but make sure & enjoy some herb while doing so for the full experience. Acid was the ultimate back in the day, but herb would do just fine. It's really a mind twister!

Until you see live footage of this you would never know that Roger is on the gong and vocals and doesn’t play bass until after the interlude. Before the interlude the main riff is played by Dave on guitar.

Doug, your technical analysis, whether it is of the music or the lyrics, delivers the tangible value that directly benefits me as a musician. But it is the soul food that I find from your enthusiasm and your non-judgmental attitude that is always very peaceable. Not that a little controversy now and then is bad; I am sure the way you'd handle it if it does arise would be beneficial too. Perhaps It is the unapologetic honesty and openness with which you deliver your content that instils the peace I find here. There is nothing dry about the content either, unless perhaps if we're talking about alcoholic beverages and that you seem to enjoy too. This is all very encouraging and motivating. Thank you, Doug.

This version does not include Syd ... it's the ummagumma version, recorded live at Mother's Club in Erdington in 1968 .. I was there, and Syd most definitely wasnt.. if I recall, the original version is on "Saucerful of Secrets" .. the transition album ... and if you look at the front cover of ummagumma you will see that the last photo of the receding outside of the room is the cover image of Saucerful... in fact ummagumma was the band's first attempt to show that they were still pink Floyd without syd ... Consider the studio album .. the first of the two disks of ummagumma and you will see/ hear each member showing what they can do ... And to quote a discographer . ""Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" was first performed with Barrett in 1967.[41] The success of the track was such that it remained in their live setlist until 1973 where it appeared in a greatly extended form.[42] Waters later performed the track during solo concerts from 1984 and later.[43] Waters borrowed the lyrics from a book of Chinese poetry from the Tang Dynasty, like Barrett had used in "Chapter 24".[44]"

This is definitely the version from Ummagumma (I have been listening to both versions for over fifty years). Gilmore and Barret both play guitar together only once on Jugland Blues from Saucerful of Secrets.

I love this song. It's so profound, sends you in a trip... Right to the heart of the Sun!

Pre-DSotM Pink Floyd is too blasphemous for most classical music teachers. It appeals much more to English teachers. This era of Pink Floyd was when they were still trying to find a new identity after kicking Syd out of the band. With Syd, they were almost like a Psychedelic Beatles pop-group. After Syd, they dropped the '60s pop sound and we were left with this almost eerie psychedelic era. Richard Wright still wrote some happier feel-good songs, and Roger Waters wrote pieces like this. David Gilmour was a mixture of both.

Love Floyd but have another request. James Gang Rides Again. Tend my garden. Peace.

Of course hes going to like pink Floyd. Its people now in thier 70s who either liked floyd or disliked. At least until (money) released. Before dark side of moon came out 'playing live after a song was finished 'you could hear a pin drop' in american audiance's. People were handing floyd 'money' just to play the song. Pink floyd was underground wasnt something most people listened. Terrified shit scared of saucer full secrets. Even with

Saw Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets tour last year where they played this (perfectly). Nick said he was so happy that he finally got the gong mallet out of Roger Waters’ hands. 😂 Having said that, I’m afraid most of the early psychedelic Floyd does nothing for me personally. Flame away, my shields are up!

Of course hes going to like pink Floyd. Its people now in thier 70s who either liked floyd or disliked. At least until (money) released. Before dark side of moon came out 'playing live after a song was finished 'you could hear a pin drop' in american audiance's. People were handing floyd 'money' just to play the song. Pink floyd was underground wasnt something most people listened. Terrified shit scared of saucer full secrets. Even with

Here's a cover of this song with Mike Portnoy and Kevin Moore, formerly Dream Theater members- ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qpeSxr4uEyA.html

If you've got a yen for more interesting music in the musique concrète arena you could do a lot worse than listen to some Can. This is actually the second time this week I've heard the term, the first being on a #KEXP live session with Jah Wobble who recorded some albums early in his career, post Public Image Ltd, with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from Can, who themselves studied with Stockhausen as I understand it.

What about Alan Parson's Tales Of Mystery And Imagination ?? 💫✨

Wrong album cover showing, this is from A Saucerful of Secrets, not Ummagumma

Please, react to A Saucerful of Secrets (live), Ummaguma version or any live version. This one really has a big emotional impact on the celestial voices part.

"Writers: Laurie Suzanne Meyer, Roger Waters, William Orbit". Whut!?

Do yourself a favor and watch/listen to Live at Pompei! All your favorites with an added kick!

Syd did not play on this live version from 1969 but, allegedly, did on the album version from Saucerful of Secrets.

Although Roger Waters gets accredited with so much of the credit for this and other Pink Floyd material, to be clear, this track was at almost completely down to the legendary and sadly missed Richard Wright, keyboard player.