It’s been really good to study this as I have found as I have learnt some things form analysing Gilmour’s playing - e.g. making vibrato a bit more subtle. He really does a great job with it. It really is nice to solo over Comfortably Numb and see how it sounds! I really focus on playing slower which I actually really enjoy. It is good to take a break sometimes from practising Malmsteen licks too! 
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I think this is a really important point - people like Gilmour because of what he plays AND because of what he’s playing over.
Everyone goes nuts for that one bit in the Regret #9 solo, but always credit Guthrie and not the songwriting/arrangement that pulled the performance out of him.
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I always bring up Knopfler, as he is the nail in this foolishness.
Listen to the later solos in “Telegraph Road”
And lets not forget possibly the best “improvement” in a career. Tipton/Downing who went from this
to this
in 12 years time!
There are many “blues” type players that feature such “shred” moments in their playing, Slash in the tail end of “Paradise City” or “November Rain” comes to mind.
Billy Gibbons’ take on “shred” in the 80s
Brian May
It’s interesting that Gilmour’s “fame” with the guitar community is largely localized to his 70s work (selection bias much). Aside from these tunes the second being a very killer lap steel solo his playing post 70s is very ignored.
This has always been a false dichotomy in my opinion.
Likely bred as an ego protection of those that had a chip on their shoulder over not being “good enough” during the 80s shred boom and as things on forums tend to do it spirated out into insane exaggeration.
Were there shredders that are unlistenable wank? sure, I won’t name names and most of them recorded well past the 80s in metal bands of the most generic and derivative of natures that 15 people listen to.
Does this critique apply to Malmsteen, Gilbert, Becker, Johnson, Friedman, Rhoads, Buckethead, Batio et. al?
No, it never has only those that have never listened to their music would apply this critique.
The aforementioned playing is loaded with melody, the shred is merely the “frosting” on the cake.
If you don’t like instrumental music, fine.
This critique has always been based in the grossest of musical ignorance.
If you can’t hear melody at high speeds, fine but don’t lambast those that can out of ignorance.
and the king imo
/rant
(this topic absolutely grinds my gears)
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I mean, let me start by saying that I absolutely agree you can play “melodic” solos with quite a lot of fast bits in them - I wrote up a whole post about it a little up the page - nd that I also think there’s a tendency in certain schools of music to automatically discount anything “fast” as “not having feeling,” and that’s silly and - yes - probably a little self-protective, too.
But, there’s a pragmatic side of this question too, and whether or not it’s a position of ignorance to lambast people who can hear melody at fast speeds just because you can’t, well,
- there’s clearly a whole boatload of people who can’t hear melody at high speeds, based on how prevalent these attitudes are, and just because we think they’re wrong doesn’t mean they’re going to stop existing, and
- a lot of fast playing often times DOES sacrifice melody for speed. The best in the genre can do both, absolutely, but being able to play melodically at any tempo is a rare enough skill that probability alone dictates there’s gonna be a bunch of shredders out there who are just mindlessly blowing scale patterns, because they have plenty of technical ability, but an underdeveloped melodic ability.
So, yeah, false dichotomy… but one we can still learn from, I think, and simply expecting everyone else to realize they’re wrong probably isn’t going to work, or at a minimum saves us from a valuable growing experience.
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This is why I’m such a fan of those that perfectly ride the melody vs speed/technicality balance.
There are a boatload of people that can’t hear melody at all at this point due to popular music shifting further and further towards rhythm and away from melody.
Modern metal from nu metal onward to djent is a good example, hyper focused on rhythm, melody in the background if at all present.
I’ve heard “I can’t get into classical cause there is no beat” far too many times from people.
I would argue Japan has largely escaped this trend in western popular music which might go to explain their affinity for all things melodic in metal (power metal, shred, etc) and the deep love of western baroque to romantic era music in Japan.
It seems Schoenberg finally got his wish, the dissonance is emancipated. So emancipated that there is no dissonance as there is no consonance for dissonance to be contrasted to. There is now just a menacing trap beat that goes on forever, the melody is dead. 
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Agree - the Gilmour effect as you see it in arguments about shredding seems to always reference Comfortably Numb. The two (his playing and the song) are inextricably linked I think in the context of the argument.
Another interesting thing is to read comments about this solo (for example in the comments section of the video in the opening post) , and the effect it has on people. Very few guitarists get those kind of compliments about their playing in my experience.
Yeah, shred or not to shred, whatevs. I think Gilmour’s ok, basically a blues/pentatonic player, and I think a good case can be made that that’s a better style for PF. He joined the band in the era when that was the height of British rock guitar aspirations–Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, of course Clapton. And because Floyd were so renowned for being experimentalists and taking things “outside,” having a solid blues-groove lead player was a way to keep things grounded. If, I dunno, Holdsworth or Steve Howe had come along at that point, would they have worked? Gilmour just has the exact right ingredients for that band’s chemistry.
I was thinking for this discussion there are better, or at least to my ear more interesting players to stand for the non-shred pole. Brian May for instance. Deeply satisfying lines, but with a lot more harmonic “verticality” than Gilmour. Rarely if ever gets above 16ths, but his playing is so architectural. That’s maybe a better term to use than the shred-vs-non shred thing. I think it describes what Gilmour is about; even though he’s mostly pentatonic, he does it in a way that’s sensitive to the underlying chordal movement, which is a thing. There’s a way of playing blues scale over progressions that’s actually pretty cool and not necessarily easy to do well. SRV an example.
And of course Hendrix. One of the things I love about Hendrix is that he could play fast, sure, and pentatonics out the wazoo, but he had HUGE ears for the vertical space as well. The arpeggio playing at the end of Axis Bold as Love among many examples. NOBODY was doing anything like that in rock guitar. I always loved his line, “I don’t play guitar, I play amplifier,” but it wasn’t just the pyrotechnics; he had giant ears.
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Be really interesting to see what Comfortably Numb would have sounded like if another guitarist had played on it. Would it have the same impact?
I think Brian May is a genius. His compositional skills and melodic playing are utterly brilliant!
I think part of the reason for the disparity is that electric guitar players are largely self-taught. In the absense of a standard pedagogical method, being able to play something that most others can’t lets you stand out from the crowd. Playing fast is easy to quantify and obvious to a casual observer, but it’s also a very naive way of judging a musician’s skill level.
If there were a well-established method for learning to play fast, then you would not be able to impress anyone with technique alone.
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Huge, huge, huge generalization, though. I’m no particular fan of either genre, and particularly in the case of djent there’s an argument to be made that the guitar functioning more as a true “percussion” instrument (which technically it is) is a hallmark of that genre… but there’s also plenty of very melodic stuff in there too. Periphery is one of the bigger bands in the genre precicely because they do mix in melodic passages, and this really speaks to my ignorance because I don’t know ifd Meshuggah is even considered djent, or one of the proto-djent bands that influenced the ones that came after them, but I always thought the outro to “Straws Pulled at Random” is one of the most hauntingly beautiful things I’d ever heard, and the fact you have to really struggle to pick up the key change that sets it up because up tot hat point it’s just so damned jarring, well, somehow makes it even more effective.
If you wanted to single out a genre of metal that really did everything they could to do away with melody, I might point to death metal… and even then, the bands there I like the most are still the ones that incorporate melodic passages in with the more atonal singing - thinking of Opeth here, back when they were a progressive death metal band and before they almost entirely embraced clean singing.
I mean, we’re talking about melody in this thread, and how it can be very effective for building a solo… but so much of what makes music effective is tension and release, and sometimes the lack of melody can really make melodic sections that much more effective when they do kick in.
Not sure how universally known Meshuggah and in particular “Nothing” is outside of the extended ranghe guitar world these days (it was one of the first recorded forays into 8 string guitars in the metal world), but I really do think this section is achingly beautufl, and while it might be a little jarring listening up to that point,
Outro starts to set itself up after 2:25 or so - that’ll let you catch the very end of the “song” itself, as well as the extended transition to set up the outro changes, around 3:30, until around the 4:00 mark a very simple lead line comes in which, ironically probably does bear more than a passing influence to, oh, what Holdsworth might play trying to imitate Gilmour. It’s a pretty awesome passage of music…
It’s like sticking this
in the intro to this
That song just backs up my point.
There is a reason a band like Tool has cross appeal, melody, consistently morphing most of the time.
If you took that 3:30 to 4:00 minute mark of that Meshuggah song and it was just that ok, interesting under rhythm nice lead, but the whole first half. 
. It’s like mixing vodka and milk.
There are some “djent” bands that don’t do this Tesseract comes to mind but Meshuggah is probably the poster child for the type of music I described in the previous post. I’m of the opinion Meshuggah should have stopped after the first album which in my mind is one of the most underrated technical thrash metal albums of all time (and it’s hilarious how hard Jens was trying to sound like Hetfield in the vocal department).
I’m reminded of the black metal equivalent of Meshuggah.
Shining, a band that is essentially one edgelord’s angry scream to the universe with Gilmourian leads hamfisted in.
I’m clearly not doing a very good job explaining myself. :lol:
This isn’t a “modern metal doens’t have melody” thing, and it’s not even a “modern music doesn’t have melody” thing. I think some genres of metal DO try to do away with as much commercial appeal as theuy can, yes, including melody, but for example, I’d say Death takes that a bit farther than nu metal bands, doubly so considering the metal of their day they had to draw on for inspiration.
It’s too easy to say that this is the fault of listeners, and “popular music” is no longer melodic, but “niche underground music, which just happens to include genres i like,” is. That’s a huge generalization and I don’t think is one that really holds up.
We’re getting a little off topic here though, but I guess to try to tie it back, 1) there’s nothing wrong with music with strong melodic hooks, 2) there’s also nothing wrong with very technical music that doesn’t just rely on melodic hooks, and 3) there’s not necessarily anything wrong with music that relies on rhythm over melody, as long as it’s done in ways that are interestng.
Funny you mention too - that’s a band that I love, but have always found them kind of interesting in that both the bass and to a degree the drums ave more of a “melodic” function in the band - you can totally hear the decades Carey has spent studying tabla playing, his phrasing is just oddly circular in ways thaty are all kinds of awesome - while the guitars are probably more of a true “percussive” instrument than in most rock bands I can think of.
Idunno. This is a really complex topic, and not one that can be distilled to something as simple as “moden metal has no melody,” and “listeners who can’t hear melody in fast passages are ignorant.”
I agree. It is surprisingly complicated with a lot of variables coming into play - as well the enigmatic trait of popularity. What makes David Gilmour’s playing so popular as opposed to other similarly well credentialed players? How do we evaluate the importance of the song Comfortably Numb in the effect?
How important is the sheer scale of Pink Floyd’s popularity in contributing to the effect?
I don’t have the answers but am enjoying discussing it! 
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I disagree with a lot in this post but that album is indeed underrated and it would be great if they revisited that style.
Have you heard their earlier project where he sounded even more like Hetfield?
I’ve been hesitant to write in this thread. Some of my opinions are likely to be unpopular.
I’m a huge fan of Pink Floyd, specifically the era from The Dark Side of the Moon to The Final Cut. I’m a huge fan of David Gilmour’s playing in the Roger Waters era Pink Floyd. The solo on “Have a Cigar” is one of my all time favourites.
Interestingly, I don’t much care for his playing on his solo material or in post-Waters era Pink Floyd. Infact, I don’t much care for his solo material or post-Waters era Pink Floyd period. Outside the context of Waters songwriting, and without his direction, Gilmour’s playing doesn’t appeal to me much.
I have at times found it self indulgent, overlong and boring. All of which are common criticisms aimed at the virtuoso (“shred”) type players. However, I’ve never felt his playing would be better if he played faster.
While he doesn’t (and probably can’t) play fast, there is a lot more to guitar technique than speed and cleanliness. There is another dimension of technique which concerns note shaping, bending and vibrato (with the fingers and the bar), dynamics and articulation and tone production. These are things that David Gilmour does masterfully. When coupled with phrasing and note-choice, it’s this dimension to technique that people usually describe as playing with “feeling” or “emotion”, or having a “good touch.” It’s not enough just to play all the write notes at the right time, you have to make it sound good.
These techniques can be studied, they can be learned, they can be practiced. Some players may naturally develop some of these technical aspects more quickly or more naturally, but all of these skills can be developed deliberately. However, there are plenty of “fast” players who seem to be completely ignorant of this technical dimension. Often enough, they seem to be completely unaware that these technical considerations exist at all.
On top of these technical elements, there’s phrasing, note choice, line construction, groove, signature, etc. All of these can be consciously developed through deliberate, focused study and practice. However, there are plenty of fast players who lack in these areas also.
It’s not a cases of “having emotion,” it’s a case of developing it. You have to learn how to make the instrument sound good. You have to ask yourself why some players sound so good, and learn how to do that. Even on something simple, you should strive to make it sound as good as possible.
Of course, Gilmour isn’t alone in his mastery of this technical dimension. I’ve said before that there may not be all that much to learn from ZZ Top, but everything there is to learn is absolutely essential. If you can’t make the riff to Brown Sugar sound that damn good, then you have some work to do.
If you don’t think Jeff Beck has truly extraordinary technique, you don’t even know what you don’t know; his command over these technical elements is astonishing and there is nobody better. Jeff Beck is also probably the most clear example of a player who continued to advance in this area as his career progressed.
There are many more, and some are monstrous in the more obvious technical dimensions also. Allan Holdsworth, Eric Johnson, Frank Gambale, etc. You know their names already.
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This is what I was trying to get at. It’s what separates Malmsteen, Blackmore, Uli, Johnson, etc. from guitar center bedroom shredder no. 11245135.
@Prlgmnr I had not heard that, thanks for sharing!
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So we have identified at least some shredders who have the stylistic capabilities to be in the conversation. So then for them to achieve the Gilmour effect if they were playing the Comfortably Numb solo, would they have to play slow?
I have always felt that the “general public” of music listeners cannot comprehend highly technical speed solos. The only ones listening to sweeps etc are other guitarists /musicians. Gilmour plays that slow melodic pebntatonic blues style that most folks think is amazing. I wont say its easy, you can screw up the comfortably numb solo if you aen’t paying attention but if you nail it in a live gig people will come up and tell you how awesome it was…etc. Play a fast Yngwie lead like the solo on Too young to die too drunk to live at a live gig and most folks will wish you’d stop…I don’t know why just the way it is.
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The “general public” doesn’t care for guitar solos at all.
Even among guitarists, you’ll find plenty who have no interest in solos. The types of people who compile “greatest guitar solos of all time” lists are a very small minority whose tastes do not reflect those of the broader audience of popular music.
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