To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the release of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon, Jamie Humphries analyses the playing of David Gilmour, with five stylistic mini pieces.
ABILITY RATING
Moderate/Advanced ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
Key Various Tempo Various
Will improve your…
✓ String bending
✓ Melodic awareness
✓ Whammy bar vibrato
Like Brian May and Eric Clapton, David Gilmour is one of those guitarists that appeals to players and non-players alike. Guitarists love his touch, feel, melodies, string bending and tone, while non-guitar players appreciate that Comfortably Numb is one of the greatest solos ever put to tape.
Following time abroad busking and performing, Gilmour was invited by his friends to join Pink Floyd, covering for founder member Syd Barrett, who was becoming increasingly unpredictable and unreliable. Barrett would eventually exit the group,with Gilmour cementing a band line-up that would go on to become one of the greatest in music history.
The pairing of Roger Waters and David Gilmour would propel Pink Floyd from psychedelic pop band to stadium-filling progressive rock pioneers. The band has written and recorded some of the most important music in history, from heartfelt acoustic ballads, to multi-section prog-rock concept pieces, and powerful anthemic stadium-rock masterpieces. With such an incredibly rich, diverse and iconic recorded catalogue, including The Dark Side Of The Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and Waters’s conceptual masterpiece, The Wall, Pink Floyd is cited as perhaps the greatest progressive rock band of all time.
A vital part of the Floyd sound is David Gilmour’s unmistakeable guitar voice. An incredibly expressive player, soaring melodies, smooth whammy bar vibrato, blues phrasing, and unsurpassed string bending control, are unmistakable facets of his style and sound. Gilmour is also a very textural player, often producing ‘pad-like’ layers on the lap steel guitar. He is also a very accomplished acoustic guitarist.
As well as Floyd, Gilmour has worked with a diverse collection of musicians, from Kate Bush to The Orb. He’s also released and toured four excellent solo albums.
David Gilmour is the consummate lead guitarist. He demonstrates a strong melodic awareness, always playing for the song, and opting for melodies with a vocal-like quality that makes them incredibly memorable. That’s not to say he hasn’t got chops; his use of Pentatonic runs and and wide-interval string bends makes his style demanding to analyse and replicate. And his approach has helped him craft some of the most rewarding to listen to guitar solos in music history. Just have a recap of Comfortably Numb, or Shine On You Crazy Diamond.
David’s main scale choices are usually Pentatonic, both Major and Minor, but h
