The piece itself has no lyrics and consists of a synthesised tune which segues into a guitar solo. It is approximately three minutes, 25 seconds in length. The song used advanced effects for the time both in the keyboard and the guitar. The VCS 3 synthesizer was fed through a long tape loop to create the rising and falling keyboard solo. David Gilmour used two guitars with the Uni-Vibeguitar effect to create the harmonizing guitar solo for the rest of the song. "Any Colour You Like" is also known as "Breathe " because the song shares the same beat as the album's second song "Breathe". It has also nearly the same chord sequence just transposed a whole step lower from E minor to D minor. In the original liner notes, songwriting credits contain a typo with Nick Mason's last name listed as Marson. While the song is instrumental, it has been speculated that the song ties to The Dark Side of the Moon concept by considering the lack of choice one has in human society, while being deluded into thinking one does. It is also speculated that the song is about the fear of making choices. The origin of the title is unclear. One possible origin comes from an answer frequently given by a studio technician to questions put to him, "You can have it any colour you like," which was a reference to Henry Ford's apocryphal description of the Model T, "You can have it any color you like, as long as it's black." Waters may have settled this question, in an interview with the musicologist and author Phil Rose, for Rose's collection of analytical essays, Which One's Pink?:
Live versions
On earlier Pink Floyd bootlegged versions of the song, there was no keyboard solo, and the song was a long jam piece called "Scat Section" or "Scat". Gilmour frequently sang along with his guitar solo and the band's female backing singers sometimes came up on stage and sang as well. In 1975, it was often extended, sometimes up to nearly fifteen minutes. Gilmour and the backing singers often sang along with it. In 1994, it was considerably modified, to be more keyboard-heavy, though not extended, as in all earlier performances. This version is included on Pulse. Waters performed it in his 2006–08 The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour.
