portrait of this blog's author - by Stephen Blackman 2008

Thursday, May 23, 2024

GUITARS! | DAVID GILMOUR (Pink Floyd - and SOLO) | Don’s Tunes

Photo:  Property from The Peter Jenner Collection

David Gilmour: 

It's always been different guitars, different amps and different effects. Sometimes you go in the studio and one guitar will sound great and you play well because it sounds great. The next day you go back into the same studio and plug in the same guitar into the same amp which has not been touched and it sounds awful. So you have to try a couple of other guitars and find one that sounds good on that day. 

All guitars are different from each other. Some I buy because they are old and beautiful. But the new Fender Vintage Series guitar I bought is probably as good as any Fender I own, old or new. There is something to be said for working in a guitar over time. They may be in my imagination but it seems to feel like that to me. I also tend to like guitars without the new sticky varnish on the neck. In fact I've had Charvel make me a few necks without varnish.  

: I usually go over my mistakes so I don't have to go back and cringe a few years later. On very few occasions have I left a clunker. There are some mistakes that you like. If there's a mistake that I don't like, I change it before it gets out. I've got to live with this for years, but a lot of solos come out of clunkers. I tend to go for a solo by just putting on a guitar without even thinking about the key or anything. I just hammer through it until it feels right. I try to get disoriented, if you like. That helps me find an approach which I refine and work on.  

I don't try to get it right at all -- I'm not interested in that. I'd much rather just be wild and forget any sense of getting it right. I have time to get it right later. Out of those wild moments come good ideas that I work on, so I punch in a fair amount. Most of the solos start with doing ten different tracks. I wind up taking parts from three of them and sticking them together. I look for certain moments and if these moments match up with other moments that are right, those are the bits I keep. I'm looking for feel and a sense of movement. I don't think about it, I just say what's right is right. Performing live you try to get it right and you also try to be brave. It doesn't matter if you drop a clunker. The record lasts, the performance is transitory. They have different priorities. I'm an enormous fan of Jeff Beck because he is not afraid to screw up. People who are tend to get boring. 


Don's Tunes


David Gilmour - DW 




 Photos by Gijsbert Hanekroot.



+ 3 David Gilmour  Pink Floyd, Amsterdam Rock Circus - Olympisch Stadium Amsterdam, Netherlands on May 22 1972


 Luck & Strange - David Gilmour new single and new release SEPT 2024


The first single from David Gilmour 'Luck and Strange', released 6th September 2024. Pre-order now from https://davidgilmour.lnk.to/LuckandSt... on vinyl, CD and digital. Directed by Gavin Elder

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