"Eclipse" is the tenth and final track from Britishprogressive rock band Pink Floyd's 1973 album, The Dark Side of the Moon. It was written and sung by Roger Waters, with harmonies by David Gilmour and Rick Wright. After Waters left the band, Gilmour sang the lead when performing live. This song was one of several to be considered for the band's "best of" album, .
Composition
This song serves as the album's end and features a loud, repetitive melody that builds up, then ends with a very quiet outro. When the main instrumentation ends at 1:30, the sound of a heartbeat from the first track, "Speak to Me", appears, which appears again in 9/8, and gradually fades to silence. Harmonically, the song consists of a repeating 4-bar chord progression: D, D/C, B♭maj7, and A7sus4 resolving to A7. The bass line is a descending tetrachord. David Gilmour recorded two tracks of rhythm guitar, playing arpeggios, one in open position, and one much higher, around the tenth fret. The lower-pitched guitar part includes the open G and E strings during the B♭maj7, resulting in an added sixth and a dissonantaugmented fourth. The quartet of female backing singers vary their parts, rising in volume, and echoing some of Roger Waters' lyrics, as the piece builds in intensity. On the last repetition of the chord progression, the B♭maj7 leads directly to a climax on D major, resulting in a "brightening" effect, as the aforementioned implication of D minor in the B♭maj7 chord shifts to the major. Waters wrote the lyrics on the road for the "Brain Damage" / "Eclipse" closing sequence as he felt the whole piece was "unfinished". The final words sung on the song and, indeed the albumThe Dark Side of the Moon, directs the listener, "and everything under the sun is in tune, but the sun is eclipsed by the moon." Waters explained the meaning of these words as well as the entire song by asserting: The doorman of Abbey Road Studios, Gerry O'Driscoll, is heard speaking at 1:37, answering the question: "What is 'the dark side of the moon'?" with: "There is no dark side in the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun." A section of orchestral version of the Beatles song "Ticket to Ride" which was covered by Hollyridge Strings can be heard faintly at the very end of the recording. That was unintended: the music was playing in the background at Abbey Road when Gerry O'Driscoll was being recorded. This is not included on the 1983 Japanese Black Triangle CD issue of the album; the sound technicians copied one of the heartbeat samples, removed the orchestral "Ticket to Ride", repeatedly pasted the sample in and faded out the new outro.
