Is There Anybody Out There? - 2011 Remastered Version

This is mostly an instrumental song. The first part has the same concept of "Hey You," that being a distress call from the character Pink. The second part is fully instrumental.

The classical guitar that is the basis for this song was played by the session musician Joe DiBlasi. In several interviews, David Gilmour said that he tried to perform it, but was not happy with the results. DiBlasi told Songfacts the story: "It was not recorded at the same time as the orchestra. I was called in to play the song, but when I got to the studio there was nothing written. What David Gilmour played was something completely different. I sat down with Bob Ezrin and David Gilmour and we constructed the song. They told me what they had in mind and I would come up with an idea. We continued creating the entire song that way. Then I went in the recording booth (at Sunset Sound, Hollywood) and recorded the part. We did around 10 takes of the song to get the performance that Bob Ezrin wanted for the record. After my part was recorded, the song was sent to Michael Kamen, who wrote the orchestration to the guitar part. The orchestra was recorded after the guitar was recorded. In interviews after the recording, David forgot my first name but got pretty close on my last name." Joe's name was often rendered something like "Ron di Blasin," as journalists tried to transcribe it from Gilmour. This kind of thing wasn't easy to fact check in 1979.

The effect that sounds like a siren on this song was also used in the earlier Pink Floyd song "Echoes," where it was used as a sort of whale call. Gilmour created the sound using a backwards-wired wah Pedal.