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What Makes This Song Great? Ep.104 Pink Floyd

Jun 04, 2021
Hi everyone, I'm Rick Biato and today's music is

what

makes

this

song

great

. Episode 104. The band is Pink Floyd and the

song

, you know

what

's coming next, Comfortly Numb was on Pink Floyd's album called The Wall, which was. released on November 30, 1979 when I was a senior in high school and the comfortably numb single was actually released in June of 1980, right when I graduated high school, so I have amazing memories of

this

being on the radio, this is really something like that. an anthem of mine, you know, before I went to college, just graduated from high school, I mean, it's a very, very vivid memory when it was on the radio and it means a lot to me, this song, I think it's one of the most beautiful songs that have ever existed on the guitar.
what makes this song great ep 104 pink floyd
Their solos are incredible and one of the things about this song is that it has the perfect combination of Roger Waters and David Gilmore. All the dark sections that are in B minor. The first part is Roger Waters, he wrote the lyrics to the song. and david gilmour sings the chorus when it goes to d major it also has these two guitar solos the first one i really love everyone loves second soul i love first soul i love both solos but the first solo is so anthemic so it has a solo in D major and in relative minor B minor, but the darkness of the verse and the heavenly hymn type of the chorus really make this song such a moving piece of music that I still feel the same when I listen to it.
what makes this song great ep 104 pink floyd

More Interesting Facts About,

what makes this song great ep 104 pink floyd...

I always do a night of prep before I do it, which could make a song

great

, and I look for things I might not have found. I watch interviews of people. I watched a lot of interviews with Roger Waters and David Gilmore. Anything. They're talking about the song, I found some really interesting things, one of the things I found was the original demo that David Gilmore made, where it has no lyrics, basically the chorus melody that he had made for a solo album and abandoned it. He finished it and they played it for producer Bob Ezran, who said, yeah, let's work on this.
what makes this song great ep 104 pink floyd
The demo sounds like this. Now that the demo is playing, Gilmore explains in this interview. You can find it on YouTube. He plays it on a high string. guitar, he had asked someone what a high-string guitar was, and he tells the story that one of his friend bands was working with the producer and they were using a high-string guitar in combination with a regular six-string acoustic, so that this drummer was explaining to him. I told him about it, but he didn't even know what it was, so he essentially created a Nashville-tuned guitar, which means all of these strings are active except this one in particular, the low E is two octaves up, the same way David Gilmore strung it up. where you get this sound from the demo that you just heard really beautiful on the d normally you wouldn't leave that low string open but that note that e becomes the added nine and david gilmore actually in this interview explains that it's the ninth and that's why It sounds so good, he said he tried to keep as many strings open as he could, but then it has a beautiful, beautiful sound, so when they heard that, I think they knew, wow, we have something here, so Roger Waters in an interview explains that I had a disagreement between him and David Gilmour.
what makes this song great ep 104 pink floyd
I told them all this stuff before we even heard the song, but about the basic rhythm tracks, they cut them one day and everyone seemed to be happy with it, but the next. The day David Gilmore came back and they re-recorded the rhythm tracks, when I say rhythm tracks I mean guitar, bass and drums, because he wasn't very happy with the timing in some places, so what they ended up doing was editing together. different sections like maybe a roger waters verse the david gilmour chorus part and you know, and they came up with basic tracks as we call them from the song as we know it that appears and now roger waters says I couldn't even say where were these edits later, so once the song is finished, Roger Waters explains that they sent the tapes not to Bob Ezran, not to Gilmore, not to Roger Waters, none of the Pink Floyd guys were sent to New York, where Michael Caiman, the uh, the late great arranger and orchestrator put in all the amazing orchestration himself without the band being there, which I'll also play, which really takes the song to a different place, so said this, let's look at the intro part of the song and then slide guitar first harmony echo guitar nothing interesting about this is that there are three phrases before going to the chorus, which you don't know, normally you will have two or four, so it's actually a verse of three phrases and then it reaches the chorus when it goes to the relative major D major one of the things about this that really

makes

the track is Michael Caiman's arrangement its orchestration that is hidden behind these beautiful layers of echoes of guitars and keyboards is this, listen to this, you can hear that A slide guitar is added to this, but this is the orchestra along with those effects instruments, you are the guitar that echoes, but you are the brass, you are the duh, that ninth in that chord , another thing that makes this third phrase of the first verse unique. and beautiful is this here, so there are two things happening right there, you hear that, in B minor you hear the second resolve back to the root, so it's a sus2 and then you hear it from the seventh resolved to the fifth . true, but the second and the third, the second and the third flat are next to each other, so it creates that distance on the downbeat and gives it an eerie quality.
I love those vocals, that's what it would be on the guitar, but that's actually done in the orchestration and I think it makes Roger Waters' voice make the tone of what he's saying even more intense because of that dissonance that It is resolved right there. Let's look at the lead voice and the acoustic guitar. That acoustic when you listen to it sounds like high string acoustics. right, 'cause you can, you can hear those high strings at the top of the strum, listen on the downbeat of the chorus, definitely listen, so he's playing, I strung your stitches, but really the star of this, too, is the orchestration , so the strings at the beginning of the chorus start with this figure which is a d add 9 chords starting a f e d that's what creates the movement under those long held strings and you get the high string guitar strumming, but that creates the harmonic motion now on the a chord goes so you have that sus four to three there so it's an e d c sharp that d to c sharp adds that dissonance that really draws your ear in and gives it that emotional vibe so throughout From this chorus you will hear these nines added to this type of thing.
I call adding fours, so then down to C, same pattern, really, really beautiful, let's hear it in the mix here. Another thing is the upbeat accents that happen and help move along the chord progression. Look at it, you hear that sus there. here's the accent two three, it's really at the base, but he does it again. The bass doesn't have an upbeat accent and then they bring the harmony in that third phrase and it's beautiful. One thing I will always say about David Gilmour is him. he is the most underrated singer absolutely a phenomenal singer when he joined Pink Floyd.
I really don't think he considered himself a singer. I think it took him a while to get used to the fact that yes, he's a great singer and his voice, I can't imagine anyone else's voice here, especially in that register, just makes the chorus explode when he gets to the third phrase, although It's just beautiful, double track when I was a kid, I had a fever, my hands felt like two balloons. once again, let's listen to what the orchestra is doing during this part of the chorus, listen, my hands felt good, all those upbeat accents and the vocals to really get it going because in some ways it's really a ballad or the harmony of the sun part time is amazing. and then that up line in the hair, let's do it with the whole band playing, you realize there's no kick drum there, which is really so the kick goes boom boom boom, nothing with that, there's really no upbeat kick along with the Roger Waters baselines that happened there in that Listen to the whole chorus, in fact, I think that's what makes it not sound clumsy, right, you don't even notice it, it's such a powerful movement in the base going up, I love the feeling that happens just before the peak of the chorus. look at this, crash and then there's no kick to go with that base, there it is, okay, that solo is one of the best, if not the best, guitar solo ever followed by the one at the end of the song that Most people think it's the best guitar solo, so let's talk a little about that.
Well, one of the things he starts with is the rake over the muted strings, which looks a lot like something like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan, but he does it well. on the third of the D major chord right in G major and then goes to the sus4, which excites us so much that we go from the sus4 to the third again, then doubles on the fifth of the A chord and then goes down this sus to the right . sus4 then a major triad and then goes back to the d the d note the tonic is a very powerful end to the phrase then goes back to that which is so emotional so beautiful love this is good, that is really beautiful leans into that sus4 again then It leans towards the fifth of the egg.
I love this sound that he's playing on a that really goes all the way to the fifth of the C chord and then he uses that Lydian, the sharp four and then the G six to five and then there's the major seven. the G chord and then it bends from the four sharp of the five and then this lidio, I love it, then G sus A and then it goes to the and it does it here on the C it goes back to that four sharp, so it's constantly going sus fours in D major sus4 in A major sharp 11 in C major seventh in G major all those upper extensions or what I call the haunting tones, those notes give you so much excitement if you were just playing roots or playing the pentatonic scale wouldn't be as interesting like these melodic modal lines, the second verse enters, believe it or not, at about two minutes and 49 seconds, that's about the length of a pop song today.
What's really strange about the song? If you think about it, the first verse is three phrases, then you have the chorus which is actually divided into several sections, and then you have a guitar solo after the first chorus. Okay, so we get to the second verse, so it's a very, very strange way. let's look at the second verse, look what's going on here in the orchestration, you've got all this, you've got that beautiful vocal in the background, but I can hear it sounds like a harpsichord, but I think it's the high string guitar playing there, which it's something like this. selecting the chords, let's listen to the mix again, let's go check the orchestration again, right there, listen one more time, you've got that ninth there, it's just beautiful and then and you're hearing that sharp fourth and fifth on the uh g major chord that note from lydia they are constantly coming back to that listen so now here is the four sharp listen beautiful okay then only two phrases happen in the second correct verse and you hear the swell that takes you to the chorus listen to that dissonance there of that character of beautiful now listen to the rhythm loud again for the swell to happen and then it's time to go and you hear that guitar again the guitar just announces bring on the strong rhythm of the chorus I love that and then the voice change is so direct beat everything is so simple the whole movement happens in the strings oh let's listen to the vocals there I mean the harmonies are amazing and their strings oh brass beautiful high strings I love the simple moment Phil right there listen and then something else after that drum fill .
I love it, it is a very majestic drum bar. Listen, I love you, it's so rockin', right, it's so heavy, it's so simple, it's just a caveman drummer, right there, listen and then, though, and then, no upbeat accent with the bass is beautiful, just never goes there and that's it. It has to be a conscious decision that everyone is playing and I wonder if that's one of the things why the argument was between Roger Waters and David Gilmore, maybe the bass drum was playing those and one of them didn't really like it. It was like that didn't feel right, it makes it too clunky and then it extends well, okay, the chorus solo, what do you say about that?
I mean, it's just pure genius, here we go, I love the squeal, there's tons of reverb, oh. I love it, no, I love how it doubles from the ninth, that's a big deal. He's using that B minor pentatonic. He likes to use it in the ninth, he gets a Dorian type sound. It doubles in half tone, triplets, incredible, I won't do it. I'm not going to play on this and make it sound worse. I'm going to let David Gilmore do the talking here because he's amazing, so powerful, you notice how the drums follow along with a triplet right here as well.
Awesome, it actually sounds like a symbol of China to me, I don't know if it's playing, if that's what it's playing there, but the way this works is a two and four crash time and then okay, once more, here we have that when I heard David Gilmour play that. It was like a big influence on my playing that using that no and doubling the second to the thirdminor and we also have the caveman fill that happens right before that high part on the guitar. Listen, you can't go wrong with cavemen, especially in these The tempos make it so heavy, so dark and all the singles fail, oh so well, that's why.
We're still listening to this song 41 years later. Richard Wright passed away in 2008. Keyboardist and Nick Mason is just a great drummer. The drums are incredibly well played, but the juxtaposition of those two, David Gilmore and Roger Waters, is just that. this song really shows off what they do best, the moody voice of Roger Waters, a great lyricist, the amazing lead singer, the high pitched singing of David Gilmore, once again a truly underrated singer, and then these two amazing guitar solos and the addition of Michael as the arranger. who also died suddenly in I think about 2003, he was a very young guy, he was 31 when he did the orchestration and the song wouldn't be what it is without his contribution as well, Bob Ezran, the producer, this is just an absolutely brilliant record and this, what makes a song a great series, would not be complete without Pink Floyd and I still have the same feeling when I listen to this song as I did when I was a senior in high school.

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