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Pink Floyd's drummer, Tony Caliendo, has a lot to say about sounds. Making the Pink Floyd sound for real, without any backing tracks or CDs, is essential to his approach.
"In Pink Voyd, we all work a lot in our off time, to replicate the Pink Floyd sound. Even though I'm a drummer, I have a lot of parts that I have to play behind the drums that aren't drum parts. They're synthesize parts or guitar parts. So during the summer, I'll go up to the roof of the building where we practice. I'll take a guitar up there and the stars will be out and I'll just sit down and practice."
"That's critical in this band, to be dead on. And because there are only four of us, every musician is playing more than one instrument. We have to multitask six ways. I sing vocals, for drumming I use four appendages, and I'm hitting synth notes at the same time I'm drumming with one hand."
"When you look at stuff like that, that's challenge of why we love being in this band. If Walter were just playing guitar, if Chris were just playing bass, if Mike were just keys, and I was just playing drums, it would not be the challenge that it is. Thats's the magic. We play the Pink Floyd from every era, from scratch, with no sequences, no backing tracks, and no CDs. The most well-known tribute bands use the backing tracks, and it just doesn't have the same vibe as doing it live. They do because it facilitates the whole job for them. And they're busy people. So it's easy."
Tony comments on making the well-known ka-ching beat from the hit Pink Floyd song, "Money". "We don't just play a track. Our keyboardist, Mike, builds it on a sampler. He has the basic sounds and if he hits it four times, he'll get four sounds. Other bands will actually record something like that: they call it a 'sequencer'. They just hit it once and it keeps playing. For practical purposes their job is over. They could leave the stage if they wanted to. With us it's more about using samples, and playing them live. That's our technology."
"Here's a situation where we sampled our own sound. In Pink Floyd: The Wall, they have theatrical shows with spooky sounds. Pink Voyd has a big drum road case that's 5 feet by 4 feet. The hinges are so rusty that when we opened it up, it would creak like a haunted mansion. So Walter and I recorded that, and we used that exact same sample in playing The Wall."
"We don't copy sounds off the albums. What we try to do is we make our own sound and deviate it. It comes from the heart. It has to. During the performance, when you open up that creaking door sound on a keyboard, it goes through the subwoofers, it shakes your heart, and your chest cage just rattles!"
How far will Pink Voyd go for the perfect sound? Far enough to possibly sacrifice a band member in trouble. Tony tells the story of their old bass player, John Pitingolo, who's now living elsewhere but still does the poster and Web site art for the band. "Back in the day, when John was with the band, we played the Rochester Opera House in New Hampshire. They had this noisy freight elevator. After the show, the crew was moving the equipment and John got stuck in the elevator down on a couple of floors below. It was late at night, spooky quiet, and nobody was around. We really had no easy way of getting him out of there. And he was yelling up the elevator channel up to us on the 3rd or 4th floor. Walter and I had this 'Aha!' moment and we said, 'That's a great sample! Let's record that!'"
"So he was stuck at the bottom and we recorded him yelling. We used that in one of the songs for Pink Voyd, and the rest is history. So in a sense, even though he's moved away, John is still performing with the band."
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