Although it can be easy to think otherwise when watching the world’s best shredders treat fretboards like Michael Schumacher did a race track, guitar players are humans. And, like all humans, even the best to walk this Earth have weaknesses.
As in the case of David Gilmour, the most tactful players can turn pitfalls into their strongest weapon. Ever since he joined Pink Floyd in 1967, Gilmour has made no bones about where he feels his ceiling is in certain aspects of his players. So he’s doubled down on the things he excels at, helping him rank highly in the world’s best guitarist polls and lists of the greatest-ever guitar solos.
“I just have not got very good coordination between left and right hand,” he told British newspaper The Telegraph in 2002. “My fingers are very slow. I couldn’t do what all these other guitar players could do, so I had to do something different.”
His solution, he says, was “trying to create guitar melodies over what we did,” with the crooning, gorgeous lead electric guitar work on 1979’s “Comfortably Numb” the obvious example of his slow but meaningful approach.
“I wasn’t gifted with enormous speed on the guitar,” he echoed last year when appearing on Rick Beato’s YouTube channel. Interestingly, he reveals there was a period, before he changed tact, where he battled with his abilities, momentarily losing himself in a bid to go toe-to-toe with his peers.
“There were years,” he says, “when I was younger where I thought I could get that if I practiced enough. But it just wasn’t ever really going to happen. I’ve got no control over the music I make.”
A period of self-reflection led to him analyzing other players, ultimately finding an unlikely guitar hero in contrast to the Howes, Hacketts and Hendrixes of the world: the Shadows’ Hank Marvin.
“Back in the ’60s, Hank was just playing a tune,” he tells Beato. “I think I come from there. I just want to play a nice tune!”
Purposefully slowing things down to make his playing more melodic and spacious also allowed him to shift his focus, and he soon found that precision in what he did had far more value than putting his foot on the gas.
“I'm quite fussy about overeager vibrato,” he explains. “Sometimes a little thing gives it a little extra tone or — I hate to say the word — 'refinement,'" he adds with a laugh.
To his point, MusicRadar once put the vibrato techniques of legendary players, from B.B. King to Brian May and Zakk Wylde under the microscope. The resulting piece revealed the audio waves their respective approaches produce.
Gilmour, who is described in the article as “the grandaddy of taste,” produces the smoothest of waves. Wylde's, in contrast, is by far the most dramatic.
“[Gilmour's] vibrato,” the piece says, “is smooth, often ethereal, and has a very subtle and slow rise and fall in pitch. Think B.B. King in super-slow motion.”
The guitarist released his latest solo album, Luck and Strange, last year, calling it the best thing he’s written since “The Dark Side of the Moon”.
It was his first new record in nine years, but he’s since spoken of his hopes to keep up the momentum and release more music in the near future.
