Few players have helped sell more stompboxes than David Gilmour. He was one of the original masters of fuzz. He would use tape echo and mechanical devices such as the Binson Echorec to suspend notes in the air, seemingly indefinitely.
And then there was his use of the the Uni-Vibe, the disorienting swirl of rotating speakers to cast a spell on his audience.
Not that it was always to his benefit. As many early adopters of cutting-edge electric guitar technologies can attest to, incorporating these effects live brought their own issues.
Upon the release of On An Island and his bravura performance at Live8, The former Pink Floyd guitarist admitted to MusicRadar in 2006 that playing a Fender Stratocaster through a bunch of effects at high volume was a recipe for disaster. The single-coil pickups kicked up a fuss.
“For many years one of the problems of touring was [RF] interference – especially if, like me, you're the sort of bastard who tends to use a huge pedalboard,” he said. “Those effects pedals really tended to pick up interference, as did the dimmers on the lighting rigs. And with Pink Floyd we did have extensive lighting rigs, which buzzed horribly.”
Over the years, Gilmour made modifications to his Strats to tackle the issue, and by and large they worked. Active EMGs stopped the hum “dead”. “They sounded great – a very full and rich tone – but they didn't sound quite as ‘Stratty’ in some ways,” he said. The pedalboard grew. Gilmour would refine his mastery of it would come to the fore.
So when he joined YouTube’s Rick Beato for an expansive, nigh-on two-hour interview, there was bound to be some insight for today’s pedal freak. There is a lot else besides, such as Gilmour’s recollections of first seeing Jimi Hendrix perform live at a club in London, with the Beatles and the Stones and anyone who was anyone among the crowd. He talks about fuzz, and about how he got turned onto it playing with Blue Cheer in the States – and how his parents got him a fuzz pedal for his birthday.
But when the conversation turned to Comfortably Numb, and Gilmour’s approach to that first solo – not the second one that was comped together solo – he shared some insight that might change how you think about dialling in your delay. Or at least it will give you something to keep in mind if you’ve got a delay pedal on the ‘board.
“That solo was a very early thing, and I don’t think it changed at all,” says Gilmour. “That particular first solo in Comfortably Numb was a one-off.”
Listening to that first solo, it’s pretty much as majestic as you can get, with big elastic Strat notes floating off into the either. It’s what you think of when you think David Gilmour.
Beato presses Gilmour on his technique: how much work is his left hand doing when it comes to vibrato, how much work is the whammy bar doing?
“I always wondered how much this changed in your playing over time,” says Beato.
“I have no idea how that happens. I do know that, when I get on a Tele or something without a whammy bar, I’m fine too, and the vibrato is still my vibrato,” says Gilmour. “But Hank Marvin from the Shadows always used the tremolo arm, and I liked to think that I refine it a lot, and take it down to almost inaudible.”
The trick for Gilmour, however, is in appreciating just how your delay reacts to your vibrato – and if you are playing a Strat, as he does, how the whammy bar movements affect the repeats. Gilmour demonstrates how a reasonably upfront delay set with long repeats can be subtle, but manipulating the whammy bar gives it the illusion that you've just turned up that mix dial and the repeats become more pronounced.
“When you have a delay or something on a guitar. [Plays a chord tab]. So there’s a long, very positive delay. Doesn’t sound really wet, but if I go [works the whammy bar] then suddenly you are in a huge chamber, and that’s the effect of a little bit of delay with using the [whammy bar],” he explains. What he can’t explain is how he arrived at this epiphany. “But how that all developed, I can’t work that out,” he continues. “They work together, hopefully in perfect cohesion.”
Watching Gilmour demonstrate this, it seems perfectly obvious. A ‘Why didn’t I think of that!?’ moment. But then sometimes you don’t, especially if you’ve grown accustomed to a hardtail.
If you are using delay on a Strat, or any guitar with a tremolo, however, it might be an invaluable approach that allows you to keep your signal quite dry, with your delay’s repeats in the background, with the option of making them more intense by manipulating the bar.
The more vibrato you apply, the deeper the ensuing psychedelic, seasickness you get from having those manually pitch-shifted repeats playing out even as your guitar has returned to standard pitch.
Working the bar like that could give you some of that wow and flutter effect not dissimilar to a mechanical tape echo. Even subtle movements on the bar can yield a dramatic effect. And as Gilmour says, it’s a similar idea when you’re applying vibrato manually, i.e. the old-fashioned way, fretting a note and shaking it.
Looking for delay inspiration? Check out MusicRadar's 10 tips for getting more out of your delay pedal.
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