Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Sorrow Live on P*U*L*S*E*

More David Gilmour because… well… it’s David Gilmour…

This is from the P*U*L*S*E* DVD (that entire show is a treasure trove of amazing solos, to be honest). It’s the song “Sorrow”, from their 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason.

The song opens with a guitar solo, which ends at 3:15. The second solo starts at 3:57 and ends at 4:26. The third solo starts at 5:11 and ends at 5:31, which starts a very short ambient section. The final solo starts at 6:57, which closes out the song.

Special thanks to VolcanoMan in the comments on my last GGS post for suggesting this one…

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Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Dogs

Another long one from the great Pink Floyd… with David Gilmour on lead guitar, obviously…

We’re going to their album Animals, and the song Dogs. I really love this one, and of course, as usual for David Gilmour, the solos are perfect.

Let’s get to the song…

The first guitar solo starts at 1:50 and ends at 2:25. The second solo, a guitar duet, starts at 3:40 and ends at 4:47. Then the third solo starts at 5:32 and ends at 6:46. The fourth solos starts at 13:25 and ends at 14:07, which is where a repeat of the second guitar solo (the duet) begins, which ends at 15:18.

IMO, it’s an incredible song. Sure, it’s long, but that’s Pink Floyd… and, for me, at least, they do an amazing job of keeping my attention through the entirety of their longer songs, so…

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Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Echoes

Sorry for missing this on Monday. I’ve been working a lot, and my brother is in town, so I’ve been distracted. Astronomy Picture of the Week should be up in around half an hour.

Echoes… what is there to say about Echoes? For me, it’s one of the greatest songs of all time. Yeah, sure, it’s 23 minutes and 36 seconds long… but that’s 23 minutes and 36 seconds you will be glad to have spent just… listening.

As for the guitar solos… well… there are no words. Moving, powerful, emotional…

The first solo, an understated intro piece, starts at 1:10 and ends at 2:57. Then there’s a riff that repeats itself, though it is very solo-like, that starts at 3:45 and ends at 4:12. The riff repeats again at 4:56 and ends at 5:24. Immediately, the second proper solo starts. At 5:53, a second, more distorted guitar comes, and we have two guitars soloing at the same time, which ends at 7:01. Thus begins a very funky section, in which the third solo, a really cool distorted solo, starts at 7:24 and starts to fade out into a section of ambient, atmospheric, rather creepy noise at around 10:50, and disappears fully at around 11:25.

I know the ambient section is weird, but try to stick it out. If you don’t want to, it ends around 15 minutes in. The fourth solo starts at 18:14 and ends at 19:11. The repeating lead riff, though much more simplified, starts at 19:56 and ends at 20:15. The fifth and final solo starts at 12:26 and ends with the fade out.

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My Recordings! Two Songs I Covered and One I Wrote in 2006

I entirely forgot about these.

This is really fascinating. Turns out I do have three songs recorded. Two are covers, and one is an unfinished original. I’m trying to remember the context. I know I recorded them back in 2006 (holy shit… I wasn’t even 21, yet!), but that’s about it.

The last one, the original, is what fascinates me the most. I managed to find two different versions of lyrics I wrote for it, neither I identify with now (and will not be sharing, because they’re both terrible). But I’ll get more into that with the track.

I’ve been asked in the past when people were gonna hear me sing and play guitar. Well… here you go. They’re from 2006, so it’s been a long time since I put these down, but this is what I actually have recorded…

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Self Care – Pink Floyd Plays Money Live on P*U*L*S*E*

We’re visiting P*U*L*S*E* again. This whole show is actually a really great source of amazing guitar solos.

Because David Gilmour.

Obviously.

This one is the song “Money”. I’m giving you two videos, here, because the solos on the DVD are different from the solos on the CD. So you’re getting both…

What’s really cool about the song “Money” live is that they break down the middle section. Instead of just the three solos as in the studio song, they jam it out, giving everyone a chance to shine.

On this first video, which is actually video (so there’s something to watch), the first and second solos start after an epic saxophone solo at 3:07 and end at 4:35. After a break down, which does include Gilmour noodling around on his guitar, the third solo is actually played by Tim Renwick, starting at 6:05 and ending at 6:40. Gilmour then comes in with the fourth solo, which starts at 6:44 and ends at 7:22…

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Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Shine You Crazy Diamond

I hope you have 25 minutes and 33 seconds to spare, because that’s how long this one is. And it has multiple guitar solos, and they are all amazing. But of course they are; it’s David Gilmour.

This one is audio only, so you don’t have to watch anything.

The first guitar solo starts at 2:09 and ends at 3:34. The second guitar solo starts at 5:11 and ends at 6:27. The third guitar solo starts at 7:34 and ends at 8:38. There some amazing little licks during the verses. Then some amazing saxophone solos. The fourth (slide) guitar solo starts at 15:43 and ends at 17:53. After the verses, there’s a really cool synthesizer solo that ends the song.

So turn off the lights, get yourself into some comfortable clothing and/or pajamas, light up a joint, pour a glass of your favorite alcohol to drink neat or on the rocks, take out your favorite picture of Syd Barrett, press play…

… and enjoy!

(It’s funny, but I could fill this series up with nothing but David Gilmour and Jimmy Page… so next week, how’s about some Jimi Hendrix?)

 

Great Guitar Solos – Pink Floyd Plays Careful with That Axe, Eugene

I had a time for a bit looking for a good post for today’s Great Guitar Solo. I even asked on Facebook back at the end of September. A spooky song with an appropriately spooky guitar solo and a generally spooky atmosphere…

Wait!

Pink Floyd!

Careful with that Axe, Eugene!

This one features Pink Floyd at their decidedly creepiest. It features Roger Waters whispering some spooky nonsense, David Gilmour singing along with his guitar, Richard Wright providing the amazingly sinister atmosphere on his keyboard, and Nick Mason somehow making even the drums sound creepy.

It also features what I consider to be one of the greatest screams in all of music from Roger Waters himself, which I can only emulate by sucking in (and I’m almost positive that this is how he does it, as well). It’s a hard (and honestly painful) scream to emulate, but it makes this song.

As for Gilmour’s playing… I really shouldn’t have to explain why it’s so good. It’s frickin’ David Gilmour! He always knows the perfect solo to play in a song. And this solo is absolutely perfect. It also showcases his speed, too! Not a shredder, but I think this is some of his faster playing. His solo builds along with the song itself to an absolutely stunning climax that, if you aren’t paying attention, will absolutely be an auditory jump scare… and then slows back down. It follows the song all the way through absolutely perfectly.

I will say this, though… it isn’t on YouTube, but Dailymotion. I couldn’t find this on YouTube, unfortunately. So I apologize for the ad. I have adblocker, so I don’t see it, but if you don’t have adblocker, you will. Also, I don’t know how Dailymotion handles autoplay (I have a Chrome extension that disables autoplay for me), so I’m gonna put it below the fold.

The guitar solo is pretty much through the entire song. So… make sure it’s a dark and stormy night, turn off the lights, maybe light a candle or two, put this on the big screen, and enjoy.

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Great Guitar Solos – Comfortably Numb P*U*L*S*E*

Welcome to post 1 of Great Guitar Solos. It’s a series in which I highlight guitar solos I consider to be incredible. This first one, and the next two, are being moved from my old blog space. Then I’ll be writing new ones to go up every Monday.

I love guitar solos. A lot. I love picking them apart and figuring out what’s being played and what techniques are being used and if it’s sloppy and if that sloppiness is on purpose and so on and so forth. I’m a bit of a snob about guitar solos, in fact.

It doesn’t help that I can’t play them myself. I want to; I want to be a lead guitarist, able to play mind-blowing solos, from slow, emotional, melodic, deliberate melodies to face-melting, mind-bending psychedelic, shredding goodness.

But I’m just not there, sadly. My playing is not that good.

I do, however, have solos that I hold up as pillars of what good soloing is, and what it should be.

And the first one I’m highlighting is the solo I consider to be the greatest guitar solo ever recorded.

The band is Pink Floyd. The album is the live DVD P*U*L*S*E*.

The song?

Listen to that guitar solo. It starts at 4 minutes and 54 seconds in, and ends at 9 minutes and 24 seconds.

Already listened to it?

Listen to it again…

I can wait…

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