Pink Floyd's The Great Gig in the Sky and what it teaches us about the value of improvisation

One of the most moving songs on the album Dark Side of the Moon is Great Gig in the Sky. And the solo vocal is part of what makes that so amazing. When hear how it was done, how that vocal was added, it makes it even more amazing. 

The band knew that they wanted to add some vocals to it, to get the overall feel they were looking for. Alan Parsons had worked with Clare Torry, a young singer, on an earlier album, and brought her in.  

Depending on whose memory you rely on, Torry did the vocal in one or two takes. After she was done, she came into the room with the band and apologized for her poor performance--believing herself to have failed miserably. The band members, on the other hand, felt she had taken their direction to the next level and their minds were blown.

She later, in interviews, related what had made it work. At first, she tried improvising actual words and the band members told her that was not the direction they wanted to take with it. So she started to think of herself as a musical instrument not as a singer, then improvised. You know the results. 

Best focus groups I have ever experienced were essentially improvised. This was in the days before cell phones. We were doing groups in Denver and then the next day in Atlanta. I had two different moderators for each set of groups because the travel was in the wrong direction--from west to east. An hour before the groups in Denver, the head of the division pulled me aside and let me know that my client contacts were being let go the next day and that the objectives, and the therefore the guide, were off. (That was not why they were being let go, thankfully.) I sat down with the moderator just before he was about to go on, and he refused to bend the guide at all. He stuck to the guide and those groups were terrible. Meanwhile I was calling my moderator for the Atlanta groups but it was past bedtime. I wasn’t able to get a hold of him until an hour before the groups in Atlanta, when he arrived at the facility. I let him know what the issue was. His reply was for me to tell him what three things we absolutely had to learn from the groups. Then, rather than rewrite the guide, he just wrote down the three things. He used that short list as his guide. And the groups that day were the best I have ever watched from behind the mirror. 

The lesson I take from this is that excellent qualitative can come from good direction and a moderator free to improvise to get there, just like great music can come from the same.