We have covered David Gilmour before through his legendary work, on The Dark Side Of The Moon, or Wish You Were Here, but there are guitarists that we never tire writing about, and Commander Gilmour, the humble master of technique, is one of them.

His solos are a trip to another dimension, a skate through space in absence of gravity: something to which you must close your eyes when listening to...David Gilmour plays with heart and passion, with a touch outside the normal. It’s pure emotion dipped in sublime melodies accompanied by a technique that transcends classification. Because you can classify neither sensations nor feelings. Comfortably Numb, Money, Time are just 3 of the universally known examples that could be named.

Although he himself admits as a lad he studied and learned a lot of classic blues riffs, he never felt at home with it, and chose to find his own way, developing his signature style characterised by his innate feel for melody. That’s the key to his sound, not in specific scales, or speed (he once said he could never have played like Eddie Van Halen, for instance). Gilmour plays following his intuition and inspiration, and wraps us in a sound that makes us literally float in space. The distortion, as in the start of Sorrow, or the acoustic on Wish You Were Here, whatever flows from the strings of his guitar is pure magic, brilliant and moving, that is none too common. 

Play around with our interactive graphic and look for the ‘Gilmour sound’ that best fits in your pockets.